Kerr Crushes, Part 1

Deborah Kerr

Hello Everyone, and thank you once again for allowing me to guide you through my hall of memory mirrors.

I’ve mentioned two iconic women recently who dazzled me during my most formative tot television viewing years; actresses, Ingrid Bergman, and Deborah Kerr left indelible impressions in a handful of movies; Bergman’s Anastasia and Kerr’s Tea and Sympathy most significantly. Both of these women graced the Broadway stage during their prestigious careers in a handful of significant plays. But, I had the good fortune of seeing just one of them. I was a high school student when Deborah Kerr traveled to Boston’s Shubert theatre for the 1974 pre-Broadway tryout of a play called, The Day After the Fair; playwright Frank Harvey’s touching adaptation of a short story by the great Thomas Hardy. I have a couple of wonderful takeaways from that evening’s experience. Firstly, I’d saved just enough money to have a special dinner that night with a Francophile high school friend at a (way too pricey for a guy slinging burgers at McDonalds) restaurant called Monsieur Robert. I remember the both of us running several blocks across town to make curtain time while I was being both mentally and physically challenged by the calves' brains I’d been coaxed to order by my friend. The taste lingers still.

But, I digress...

What I remember most was the way the play closed. Ms. Kerr’s character moves upstage to privately read a letter. We knew its contents might very well be devastating. With her back to us, we began to see something erupt from the spot where she was rooted. And during a dangerously sustained silence, we watched her attempts to fight the tremors slowly traveling through her arms and shoulders until she chose to surrender to the weight of her unwise actions as the final curtain fell. Up until this point, I had never experienced anything as unorthodox as this as a play’s final visual moment. The risk taken by not allowing us to see the emotional map on her face. It was a canny choice—permitting us the greatest gift the theatre provides; the play of our collective imaginations. The willingness for an actor—in this case, Ms. Kerr—to trust us to play detective to her psychological dilemma by bringing our own emotional lives into the chaos of her scenario.

From her 1949 debut at MGM in the Spencer Tracy film, Edward, My Son right through to what I’ve only recently seen and think of as one of her finest performances in John Frankenheimer’s 1969 film, The The Gypsy Moths; this woman has had a firm grip in making figure eights while holding me in the palm of her hand. At her best, she brims to the lip of high wired experience with her controlled displays of percolating inner life. Which brings me to, Sada Thompson and one of the two greatest stage performances…

But, I digress—

I’m on a digression bender. It was my intention to lead you directly to Deborah’s Kerr’s Tea and Sympathy play mate, John Kerr (same spelling, different pronunciation).

So, for now I‘ll ask that Sada’s spirit remain patient while John tugs at my shirt tails and heartstrings, too.

Until then…And as always—

Be well.

And stay engaged.

Bye bye for now.