Trish Van Devere

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Trish Van Devere (* 9. March 1943 as Patricia Louise Dressel in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey ) is an American film and stage actress . From the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, she appeared in almost 30 film and television roles, mostly dramas. From 1972 until his death in 1999 she was married to the American actor George C. Scott , with whom she frequently appeared in film, television and on the theater stage together in the 1970s.

Life

Training and success with "My heart needs love"

Trish Van Devere was born Patricia Louise Dressel in New Jersey in 1943 (according to other sources, in Tenafly in 1945 ). She attended the renowned Ohio Wesleyan University , where she received a theater education. She made her professional stage debut off-Broadway in New York in 1967 in the play Kicking the Castle Down . In the mid-1960s, she co-founded the non-profit Poor Peoples' Theater, and this was followed by sporadic appearances in American television series, including the part of Meredith Lord in the series Love, Lies, Passion (1968). She made her feature film debut in 1970 under the stage name Patricia Van Devere with a minor supporting role in Hal Ashby's tragic comedy The Houseowner , in which Beau Bridges and Lee Grant played the leading roles. In the same year, under the name Trish Van Devere, a larger role followed in Carl Reiner's feature film Wo is' Papa? (1970), in which the actress was seen as a young nurse and object of desire by George Segal . The comedy about a quirky old woman (played by Ruth Gordon ) who terrorizes her two grown sons, met with a continuous storm of protest in the US American feature pages because of its pitch-black staging . Although the film was taken out of distribution by United Artists shortly after its launch and was only to come back to the cinemas ten years later, critics praised the performance of the cast. In its review, the New York Times referred to the still unknown Trish Van Devere, who appeared in Where is' Papa? as a “commedienne of complexity, precision and goodness” and would understand how to exactly balance the unfolding atrocities of the film. Meanwhile, the American industry service Variety compared the actress with her "sweet, unadulterated face under a white hood" with an "angel of mercy" .

After the critical acclaim for Where's Papa? Van Devere made the acquaintance of George C. Scott while filming Richard Fleischer's gangster film Wen die Meute (1971) . The Oscar-winning actor, 15 years his senior , divorced his wife, actress Colleen Dewhurst , in February 1972 and married Van Devere in September of that year. A few months later, the first lead role in Mel Stuart's My Heart Needs Love paved the breakthrough as a film actress. In the drama, Van Devere slipped into the role of a young woman who is abandoned by her husband and who, after the divorce, tries to take her life into her own hands for the first time. American critics were impressed by her performance and compared the actress to the young Laraine Day because of her beauty . The role of Aimee Brower brought Van Devere a 1973 Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a drama ; however, she was left behind compared to the later Oscar-nominated Norwegian Liv Ullmann ( emigrant ) .

Collaboration with George C. Scott and ending his film career

Van Devere was unable to build on the success of My Heart Needs Love in the following years, during which she almost without exception realized film and television projects with her husband George C. Scott. With him she starred in Mike Nichols ' feature film The Day of the Dolphin (1973), in Scott's unsuccessful directorial work The Savage Is Loose (1974) or the British television play Beauty and the Beast (1976), an adaptation of the folk tale of the same name . In parallel to their film careers, the couple also appeared together on New York's Broadway . In the theater, Van Devere starred in the revival of Eugene O'Neill's All Children of Gods Have Wings (1975), in which she played the part of Ella Downey. Although the critics were impressed by her attractiveness, they rated the performance of the actress, who was still little experienced in the theater, as emotionally and vocally weak. Van Devere and Scott also appeared together in Arthur Penn's successful 1976 production of Sly Fox , based on Ben Jonson's comedy Volpone , which saw nearly 500 performances over the next two years. Their joint appearance in the four-person play Tricks of the Trade (1980) was less successful . The romantic crime story about a psychiatrist and his patient was discontinued after the premiere.

Trish Van Devere and George C. Scott only achieved mutual success in the film in 1978 with the leading roles in Stanley Donen's musical comedy Movie Movie . The multiple Golden Globe nominee parody of the two typical Hollywood genre pieces Dynamite Hands and Baxter's Beauties of 1933 presented Van Devere as a bespectacled librarian and rejected lover of a boxer or as a well-known Broadway actress whose alcohol problems made a chorus girl famous overnight help. The New York Times praised the couple in both episodes as "superb" and American critic Van Devere as just as funny and attractive as eight years earlier in Where's Papa? . The last joint film project was the Canadian horror film The Changeling (1980). The conventionally staged production about a composer who retires to a lonely country estate after the accidental death of his wife and child, won both of them the most important Canadian film prize, the Genie Award as best foreign performer, one. In the 1980s, Van Devere and her husband turned their attention to television work. She made guest appearances in series such as An Angel on Earth (1985) and Love Boat (1986) and was only sporadically represented in the cinema with films such as Hollywood Cop (1986) or J. Lee Thompson's The Law Is Death (1988). Van Devere's film and television career ended in the early 1990s. She then turned increasingly to work at the theater.

Until their husband's death in 1999, Trish Van Devere and George C. Scott alternated between living in Malibu , California , and on a five-acre estate in Greenwich , Connecticut that they acquired in the mid-1970s. The marriage remained childless. In the early 1980s, the couple publicly campaigned against an expansion of the Westchester County Airport near their property. In 1984, their marriage came into the focus of the tabloids after police issued summons for both of them over a domestic dispute. From the mid-1980s, Van Devere publicly campaigned for better government treatment for schizophrenia patients after her seven-year-old brother, a University of Oxford student and gifted photojournalist, was diagnosed in the early 1970s.

Filmography

  • 1970: The homeowner (The Landlord)
  • 1970: Where's Papa? (Where's Poppa?)
  • 1971: Who instigated the mob (The Last Run)
  • 1972: My Heart Needs Love (One Is a Lonely Number)
  • 1973: Harry with the long fingers (Harry in Your Pocket)
  • 1973: The Day of the Dolphin (The Day of the Dolphin)
  • 1974: The Savage Is Loose
  • 1976: Stalk the Wild Child (TV movie)
  • 1976: Beauty and the Beast (Hallmark Hall of Fame: Beauty and the Beast , TV movie)
  • 1977: Sharon: Portrait of a Mistress (TV movie)
  • 1978: Columbo : Mord (Columbo: Make Me a Perfect Murder , TV movie)
  • 1978: Movie Movie
  • 1979: Mayflower: The Pilgrims' Adventure (TV movie)
  • 1980: The Changeling
  • 1980: The hearse (The Hearse)
  • 1980: All God's Children (TV movie)
  • 1984: The Visitation (Haunted , TV movie)
  • 1986: Uphill All the Way
  • 1986: Hollywood Cop (Hollywood Vice Squad)
  • 1988: The Law Is Death (Messenger of Death)
  • 1993: Curaçao (TV movie)

Plays

  • 1975: All God's Chillun Got Wings (German: All God's children have wings )
  • 1976: Sly Fox
  • 1980: Tricks of the Trade

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Trish Van Devere. In: Ephraim Katz: The Macmillan international film encyclopedia. Macmillan, New York, NY 1994, ISBN 0-333-61601-4 , p. 1402.
  2. ↑ a b Profile at filmreference.com (English; accessed June 14, 2009)
  3. ↑ a b Profile at allemovie.com (English; accessed June 14, 2009)
  4. ^ New York Beat. In: Jet. 34, No. 20, 1968, p. 63.
  5. ↑ Where's Papa? In: The large TV feature film lexicon. (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006, ISBN 3-89853-036-1 .
  6. ↑ Roger Greenspun: Screen: 'Where's Poppa?' Aims to Remove Bachelor's Momma. In: The New York Times. November 11, 1970.
  7. ↑ Where's Poppa?  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Variety. January 1, 1970.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  8. ^ Howard Thompson: 'One Is a Lonely Number' on Twin Bill. In: The New York Times. June 20, 1972.
  9. ↑ Michael Manheim: The Cambridge companion to Eugene O'Neill. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-55645-7 , p. 104.
  10. ↑ Vincent Canby: 'Movie Movie' Satirizes 30's Styles: Hollywood Flimflam. In: The New York Times. November 22, 1978.
  11. ^ David Ansen: Down Memory Lane. In: Newsweek , November 27, 1978, p. 93.
  12. ^ The Changeling. In: film service compact (accessed via Munzinger archive )
  13. ^ Mel Gussow: George C. Scott, Celebrated for 'Patton' Role, Dies at 71. In: The New York Times. September 24, 1999, Section B, p. 10, Column 3, The Arts / Cultural Desk
  14. ↑ Danielle Reed: General interest for George C. Scott's old home. In: Chicago Sun-Times . April 11, 2003, p. 10.
  15. ↑ Airport Master Plan: A Review of Facts. In: The New York Times. May 3, 1981, p. 26.
  16. ^ People In The News . The Associated Press, June 14, 1981, Greenwich, Conn.
  17. ^ Names in the News . The Associated Press, Nov. 14, 1984, Domestic News, Stamford, Conn.
  18. ^ Robert M. Andrews: Actress Urges Federal Help for Schizophrenia Sufferers . The Associated Press, November 20, 1986, Washington
personal data
SURNAME Van Devere, Trish
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dressel, Patricia Louise (maiden name); Van Devere Scott, Trish; Van Devere, Patricia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey , United States