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Dame Judith Anderson: The Great Classic Actress
From: Columbia University
| By:
Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 The legendary
performer Dame Judith Anderson (1898-1992) was one of the great classic actresses of her era. Besides a list of stage credits that includes "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1932), John Gielgud's "Hamlet" (1936), "Macbeth" (opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in London, in 1937) and "Medea" (1947), she was also a star of the silver screen. She is best known for her powerful performance as Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Judith Anderson (above) in 1960, making her the first Australian-born actress to receive the title "Dame." In this 1971 interview by Charles Higham for a Columbia University Oral History Research Office project on the Hollywood film industry, Anderson recalls her mishaps while shooting the 1970 film A Man Called Horse. |
Dame Judith Anderson reminisces about filming A Man Called Horse.
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Dame Judith Anderson: Well, now, you now take A Man Called Horse, which I didn't want to talk about because it was a disaster for me. I did not have my way about that at all. Now here is the matriarch of the tribe and old harridan--rough, rowdy, humorous old girl. But she was a matriarch; she was the wife of the head of the tribe, the chief of the tribe; she was the mother of the chief of the tribe and the mother of the daughter, who was so and so. |
But I was directed to always shout and scream and yell and carry on like a very ordinary person. There were times when I agreed that she was ridiculous, when she was carrying on with her horse Shankabakan, but I was not allowed my clean line of thought and feeling, the rhythm of Buffalo Cow Head. That was direction. I was not permitted to do what I wanted to do. |
Charles Higham: Did you have to master Sioux? |
Anderson: Sioux, yes. Oh, yes, it was all in Sioux. |
Higham: Was that difficult to master? |
Anderson: One, you know, just learned phonetically, and then we had a teacher, learned the words. It was a disastrous picture for me because they discovered after being on it for a couple of weeks I had blue eyes, and there's no blue-eyed Sioux, so I had to wear contact lenses. I stupidly agreed to wearing them. And I was finally, after awful goings-on in Durango in Sears Roebuck to get contact lenses, went to Mexico City to get them. Came back, had them put in, and they hurt too terribly and I just couldn't tolerate them. So I went back to Mexico City and they discovered that the lenses were faulty, they were scratching my eyes. So I said, "No more of that." |
And then the last day of work down there I fell and hurt my back seriously and I was hospitalized for five days with that, because the camera should have been sunken. It was a close-up of the death scene, which had been played in long, but this was the close-up and I had to crouch down. But I was built up on an apple box that was a little insecure, and to move off camera I fell into a bunch of jagged rocks about five or six times. I suppose I tensed my back. |
So when I came back I--they wanted me to do either 12 or 15 or 16 more close-ups. I had no close-ups at all, because I couldn't use the contact lenses, and my back was still too bad to do any more work, and I just couldn't wear the lenses, so I had very few close-ups. |
I didn't even finish the picture, somebody else finished--but not much, just a gesture or something in the snow. But I've not seen it and I'm not going to see it. And somebody else dubbed my voice when the dubbing was necessary. So I can't have much feeling about Buffalo Cow Head in A Man Called Horse. Oh, and added to that, Richard Harris had my best scene taken out of the picture; he wouldn't let me shoot it. |
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