A lively, well-researched book that displays great affection for the film and the highly gifted and vastly troublesome people who made it.” —Glenn Frankel, Washington Post
“Delicious . . . unapologetically obsessive . . . [Gefter gets] to the marrow: of male ego, rushing into new projects with hubris and jostling for posterity.” —New York Times Book Review
“Good, harrowing fun . . . Just as the extreme nature of George and Martha's all-night brawl helps us to understand all marriages, the antics of Liz and Dick and Mike and Ernie reveal the love-hate dynamic that's common to all artistic collaborations.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Charming . . . filled with enjoyable anecdotes and recollections of how Hollywood accidentally makes great movies from time to time.” —The New Republic
“In this well researched and deliciously dishy new book, Philip Gefter explores the world that shaped Albee and how he used it to develop his great work, and follows the ups and downs involved in creating the film-Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were just the beginning!-to paint an incredible picture of the creative process among some of the brightest minds of their time.” —Town & Country
“Raucous, unpredictable, wild, and affecting.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Multilayered and eminently revisitable (like the play and the film), Gefter's wonderful book helps readers reevaluate vis-a‘-vis values prevalent half a century later.” —Library Journal, starred review
“A cinematic history of an explosive portrayal of marriage . . . [Gefter] takes a deep dive into the genesis, making, and reception of the movie, from its 1962 beginnings on Broadway (the first three-acter for playwright Edward Albee) to its transformation into the acclaimed movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton . . . Gefter offers a close reading of the movie to support his assessment of it as 'era-defining' . . . A penetrating examination of a bold film.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[An] erudite study . . . Gefter persuasively credits the film with setting the template for more bracing Hollywood depictions of love after romance's first blush. This will renew readers' admiration for the classic film and its source material.” —Publishers Weekly
“Very smart and entertaining . . . dishy-yet-earnest . . . Gefter shows why Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the '60s like a torpedo.” —NPR, Fresh Air
“[Gefter] virtuosically plumbs the depths of Albee's masterwork and its cultural impact . . . Cocktails with George and Martha offers a gimlet-eyed interpretation of Albee's play, and by book's end, readers should be fully behind Gefter's submission that Virginia Woolf challenged 'the hypocrisies of mainstream America, herald[ed] the sexual revolution, and register[ed] an entirely new psychological dimension to the public discourse.” —Shelf Awareness
“Gefter filters the limelight cast on, and by, iconic personalities into a kind of granular beam. Irradiating long-archived details, he interrogates monumentalized reputations up close, weighs the bad and good in a crumbling studio system, and explores the movie's influences and origins.” —Air Mail
“Terrific! With a dynamically deft touch, Philip Gefter chronicles how a uniquely volatile mix of timing, talent, pressure, and passion turned a landscape-altering play into a cinematic detonation. Savor this juicy bit of time travel, because we'll never see the likes of these people and these circumstances again.” —Steven Soderbergh, Academy Award-winning filmmaker
“The high-stakes film adaptation of Edward Albee's famous play was turbocharged by the real-life chemistry between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They were the perfect couple to play the shockingly honest George and Martha. This book vividly captures the realities of marriage, onscreen and off, taking the reader into the fraught fictional world of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as well as its stars' famously passionate and volatile relationship.” —Kate Andersen Brower, #1 New York Times-bestselling writer and author of ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE GRIT AND GLAMOUR OF AN ICON
“A finely detailed, step-by-step, sometimes day-by-day account of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - from the play to the movie and beyond. I thought I knew this story already, but Philip Gefter's book is full of surprising twists, startling quotes, and striking insights. Many marriages are examined: not just George and Martha, of course, and Liz and Dick, but the intimate, radioactive partnership of a hungry writer-producer and a rising young director. This is a wonderfully readable work of cultural history, sexual politics, and social comedy.” —Christopher Bram, author of EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGED AMERICA
“With a critical acumen as keen as his eye for a juicy anecdote, Philip Gefter goes spelunking into the deep history of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a work that would scandalize audiences and transform two artistic mediums during a pivotal four-year stretch of the mid-twentieth century. No one who's interested in the history of theater, film, media censorship, or good old-fashioned celebrity gossip should miss the chance to read this book.” —Dana Stevens, author of CAMERA MAN: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century
★ 02/01/2024
Gefter (Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe) skillfully assesses how Edward Albee's 1962 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? became the 1966 Mike Nichols film that challenged many white, middle-class, Western cultural assumptions of the mid-20th century. The film is about family, deception, marriage, and loyalty, and audiences often had trouble distinguishing between the marital woes (different though they were) of the pedestrian characters George and Martha and of the glamorous stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Gefter relives the film's taunts, dares, and one-liners, which helped end the film industry's Hays Code. Gefter offers vignettes of all the major players: actors Taylor, Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis and producer Ernest Lehman. He delves into the verbal and conduct codes and the campy worlds of gay New York and Hollywood, which inform much of the book. Its insights include that George's and Martha's names are derived from the first First Couple of the United States. The book also reveals how Lehman cut the three-and-a-half-hour play by an hour for the movie adaptation. VERDICT Multilayered and eminently revisitable (like the play and the film), Gefter's wonderful book helps readers reevaluate vis-à-vis values prevalent half a century later.—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.
2023-10-31
A cinematic history of an explosive portrayal of marriage.
When he was 15, biographer and photography critic Gefter saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and was fascinated. The film, he recalls, “put its finger on the rumbling beneath the polite surface” of suburban marriages—like his parents’—and laid bare “tensions that I felt but that were left unacknowledged.” Deeming the movie “my standard against which all movies about marriage are measured,” he takes a deep dive into the genesis, making, and reception of the movie, from its 1962 beginnings on Broadway (the first three-acter for playwright Edward Albee) to its transformation into the acclaimed movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The play, with Uta Hagen as Martha and Arthur Hill as George, was a hit, burnishing Albee’s reputation and garnering several Tony awards. Warner Brothers paid generously for the film rights, handing the 3.5-hour play to screenwriter Ernest Lehman to be condensed into two hours. Mike Nichols, a well-regarded Broadway director, agreed to take on his first movie. Taylor and Burton, recently married after a notorious affair on the set of Cleopatra, were signed as the stars. Gefter chronicles a spate of conflicts, shifting alliances, and emotional outbursts that erupted on the set. Nichols argued with Warner over whether to film in black and white, as Nichols insisted, or color; actors and staff balked at Nichols’ impatience and arrogance; Burton goaded Taylor. The result, nevertheless, was a critical and financial success, praised by the New York Times as “a magnificent triumph of determined audacity.” Gefter offers a close reading of the movie to support his assessment of it as “era-defining.” Revealing the emotional struggles and challenges at the core of any marriage, the movie was “both a product of the 1960s and a catalytic influence that came to define that decade.”
A penetrating examination of a bold film.
