Introduction

Here's an introduction to the history of The Miracle Worker and the critical reception of the stage play and the film version.

Production History

The Miracle Worker began as a teleplay directed by Arthur Penn for the much-honored CBS series Playhouse 90 on 7 February 1957. The cast included Teresa Wright as Annie Sullivan and Patty McCormack as Helen Keller. Burl Ives played Captain Keller, and John Barrymore, Jr., appeared as James Keller. The success, both critical and popular, of the television production led to the Broadway stage play. The “tryouts” in Philadelphia and Boston were hits, and The Miracle Worker opened on 19 October 1958 at the Playhouse Theater, the first Broadway theater on 48th Street by Rockefeller Center. (By the way, it replaced Bedtime Story, an adaptation of a Sean O’Casey play that starred Jessica Tandy, who, a block away and nine years earlier, had created the role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.)

The Broadway production, also directed by Penn, starred Anne Bancroft as Annie and the Patty Duke as Helen. Torin Thatcher played the Colonel, and Patricia Neal—who would win her Oscar for Hud five years later—created the role of Kate Keller. The critics divided. In general, they applauded the two principals but disliked other aspects of the production, especially the attempts at stage “flashback” and the flatness characters other than Annie and Helen, although not the actors playing them. Brooks Atkinson’s in the New York Times on 20 October praised Bancroft and Duke but had harsher words for the production. Kenneth Tynan in The New Yorker was much less enthusiastic, finding the play “bordering on cute.”

In spite of that lukewarm critical reception, the play ran for nearly two years—719 performances—and won five Tony awards in 1960: Bancroft for Best Actress, Penn for Best Director, John Walters as Best State Technician, and Best Play. Duke won the Theater World Award. In February 1961 Suzanne Pleshette replaced Bancroft and immediately got equally strong reviews. The London production opened in the West End on March of 1961, three months before the Broadway closing. Anna Massey played Annie Sullivan and Janine Fay played Helen, and the Annie Sullivan was Anna Massey, who—40 years later—would play Miss Prism in the 2002 movie of The Importance of Being Earnest. That London production moved to Wyndham’s Theater two months after it opened. (Now on stage at Wyndham’s is Driving Miss Daisy, with James Earl Jones as Hoke Colburn and Vanessa Redgrave in the Miss Daisy role played in the movie version by Jessica Tandy, the original Blanche in A Street…, but you know this song already, don’t you. It’s getting like a ‘six degrees of separation’ game here.) Big theater revivals of The Miracle Worker have not fared well. Broadway revived the play for its 50th anniversary in 2009, but the run was unsuccessfully short, and a 2010 London revival at the same Wyndham’s Theater ran just over a month. Familiarity may have hurt there; the movie has found a huge audience, and the stage version has become an established staple in college and community theaters around North America—including a production this year in Washington State directed by Patty Duke.

The movie reunited Penn as director and Gibson as writer. The United Artists studio wanted, though, a bigger name for the role of Annie, even though Bancroft had won two consecutive Tony awards and done over a dozen films. Specifically, they wanted Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn. Ingrid Bergman has said she was also offered the role. But Penn and Gibson insisted on Bancroft, and the studio finally agreed—after cutting the picture’s budget from $2 million (some sources say $5 million) to $500,000. Helen turned out to even more difficult to cast because Duke by then had turned 15—a stretch to play the 7-year-old Helen. But her success in the part on the stage carried the day, and the original pair took their stage roles to the screen. The rest of the cast included Victor Jory as Captain Arthur Keller, Inga Swenson as Kate, Andrew Prine as James, and Kathleen Comegys as Aunt Ev. Penn shot the movie in black-and-white, even though color was already the standard. Filming took place in Simi Valley, California; and in Middletown, New Jersey. The famous “dining room scene” runs almost nine minutes and took a week to film. The movie was a strong success both with critics and at the box office. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Penn for directing and Gibson for writing. The winners were the two stars. Bancroft won the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a starring role, and Duke the same in a supporting role. Two actresses from the same movie had not won since 1952, when Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter… oh, never mind.

The movie appears on numerous lists of “bests.” The American Film Institute lists it as #15 among the 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Time, and in 2006 Time Magazine named it one of the “7 Greatest Plays on Film.”

Criticism

The Play

Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke came in for praise from nearly all critics. Other performers came off not quite as well, and some of the production decisions pleased few.

In the NYTimes [Brooks Atkinson] is light in his praise. He says in part, "Anne Bancroft gives a glorious performance.... little Patty Duke is wonderfully truthful and touching…. altogether superb." But he goes on that, " Mr. Gibson has not translated his drama out of the idiom of television into the medium of theater," and bemoans " the disarray that is now on the stage," naming specifically the "embarrassing off-stage voices and gratuitous bits of local color." Atkinson's complete review.

Kenneth Tynan in The New Yorker was harsher. The story, he says, “could scarcely be nobler, or more squarely affirm the dignity of our wayward species.” But he says he “was unmoved throughout,” finding the play “very nearly describable as a barrel of laughs;” and adding that, “some of the stage business that has been worked out for the child borders closely on the cute, and her guardian seldom lets a line go by without a snappy, indomitable Irish comeback. You feel that an agonizing process is being sweetened, discretely softened, and made publicly palatable.” Tynan's complete review.

The Movie

Again, the two stars are universally popular with the critics, as with the Academy.

Bosley Crowther in The New Yorker has some misgivings about some of the acting and other aspects of the film but admires the film. Crowther's complete review.

Contexts

The Miracle Worker shares a Southern setting with A Streetcar Named Desire but takes place in the mid-1880s, just twenty years after the end of the Civil War. Some of the Captain’s lines reflect the concerns of the defeated Southerner; certainly his attitude toward Annie is colored by her coming down from the North. Keller’s discussion with James of the battle strategy at Vicksburg clearly has him refer clearly to Gen. John C. Pemberton as “a half-breed Yankee traitor.” Earlier he labels Annie a “half-blind Yankee schoolgirl.” Gibson tells the audience something about him by having his wife address him as “Captain,” and his defensive personality ceratinly color the way he interacts with both Helen and Annie.

Unlike Streetcar, though, The Miracle Worker does not really depend on the Southern location. The New Orleans setting is crictical to Williams’s play; it would be a different play if it were moved to New York or California. Gibson’s play would be somewhat different with a Northern or Western setting, but it could still be "the same play." Make sense?