The Actress

Perhaps the key to what Ruth Gordon's play, Years Ago, lost in Hollywood is shown in the change of title. Years Ago, with its straightforward, unpretentious title was exactly that type of play: direct, pleasant nostalgia with no particular aim but a considerable degree of warmth. The film version is now called The Actress, and the mood has been changed accordingly. It is now a large-scale production. The fragile plot is pointed up to take on the broad proportions the new name implies. And since Miss Gordon's delicate material would not sharpen to that extent, the picture is often dulled around the edges.

All this does not deny that the picture has its highpoints. Miss Gordon's father and his misadventures with the new telephone, for example, are well carried over from the play. But the continuous skein of leisurely memory is lost, and the plot seems threadbare without it.

The actress of the title is a young girl of the early 1900's who wants to go on the stage--against, of course, her father's wishes. Miss Gordon's successful career in the theatre testifies to which will prevailed. As the father, Spencer Tracy plays himself more often, and probably more effectively, than he does the domineering, soft-hearted codger the play requires. Jean Simmons, in the title role, experiments with a unique accent: partly British, partly what she has been told was authentic for Wollaston, Mass.

Miss Simmons is spirited in the role, however, and does capture some of the wistfulness which distinguished Years Ago from standard A Star Is Born cliches. Teresa Wright, who always appeared to be a pretty girl, is made to look careworn and greying as the mother. But an even greater error in judgment than this is the showing of the film on the new Panoramic screen. Since this greatly magnifies the picture, quick movements flicker and blur. Besides this, Spencer Tracy is now not only in front of the viewer but on each side as well. It seems a misuse of technology somehow.