I've been a Richard Burton fan ever since seeing him in "The Taming of the Shrew," Franco Zeffirelli's glowing and exuberant take on the Shakespeare play. It was 1967 and I was 11; I have wonderful memories of seeing that film with my mother at the Astro theatre in Omaha, Nebraska.
However, I am not a fan of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," in any form. It was my grandmother's favorite book, and though I've tried to read it through many times it's not my kind of story. Emily's sister, Charlotte, wrote a book that is my kind, "Jane Eyre." I've loved that book since I first read it at age 12. I'm too optimistic in nature; doomed romances don't hold my interest, and I like a happy ending. After watching this teleplay I am still not a fan of WH, but it's importance lies in seeing an early Burton performance.
I would have been two when this live TV production of "Wuthering Heights" aired, and would have been oblivious to it at that time; I have no idea if my late mother watched it. She was a Burton fan as well, but this was too early for her to have known anything about him; I don't think she knew of him until the fan magazines began their endless stories of the Burton/Taylor years. That's too bad, since this Burton is satisfyingly savage, barbaric, and quintessentially Heathcliffian, in the role that every male actor yearns to interpret. As an adult today, I can savor his acting style and enjoy it without really enjoying the story.
Live television from the early days of the medium, seen in our 4k and UltraHD era, looks like a shadow play. The way those early live productions were filmed gives them a cardboard cutout appearance. The sets look like they're carved out of foam rubber, and then painted with hard black outlines. The actors/actresses appear smudgy, and the black and white looks like gray and beige. The farmhouse of Wuthering Heights looks spectacularly dirty and decrepit, the one good thing age gives to this production.
All that being said, somehow, Burton shines through the murk. He is larger than life and a force of nature; Rosemary Harris matches him in his power. The only adult still alive from the show as of the 2019 airing on TCM, Harris gives a bravura performance as Catherine; as her sanity slips away she's appropriately bizarre. Denholm Elliott is good as the shallow Linton, and seeing John Colicos as loathsome Hindley Earnshaw was amazing; did he ever get to play a nice character? Certainly everything I've seen him in has been as a bad guy. Cathleen Nesbit expertly holds the cast together as the one person who thinks kindly of all the people in her orbit, as the servant Nelly. Without her I fee; the show would have been much less successful.
Live TV in those days required a bit of over-acting because of the 12-inch screens but when seen on our widescreen TVs now, it looks as if the actors are shouting right in our faces; this has to be taken into account when watching "Wuthering Heights." Patty Duke mentioned that working with Burton, who had a true magnetic personality, made you want to continue working with him; he was fascinating in person. That magnetism comes through in this show, even with the shouting; Burton IS right in your face, and Heathcliff was that kind of character. He's the only one truly alive...confronting anyone that stood in his way, hating everyone, and not necessarily loving Catherine; obsessed with her, yes, but love doesn't seen to be in him as an adult. The young Heathcliff seemed to love her, but the cruelty inflicted on him negates any love he might have had for her.
The point of "Wuthering Heights" was that harsh environments create harsh people, that isolation can cause men and women to give free rein to their emotions, and those emotions can spiral out of control and spill over into the world outside of their isolation; the author is telling us that is what life should be like, not hidden away from all eyes. When Emily Bronte published the novel, many reviewers were repelled by the violent emotions it contained; polite society dictated that emotions be kept in check. Emily Bronte kept her emotions to herself her entire short life; she was the daughter of a minister and expected to be meek and subservient. Underneath that tightly bound demeanor a volcano of passion must have seethed. The only place she gave voice to her true self was in her one novel, and her poetry. If she had lived longer what might she have written?
"Wuthering Heights" was a production from first season of the "Dupont Show of the Month," sponsored by the DuPont Corporation; at the time, they were a research and development company, "making our lives easier." More on what they actually did, is below.
The finding of this long lost gem was miraculous; a TV historian who had spent decades collecting early TV productions died and left the collection to the Library of Congress. A research manager for the Paley Center for Media had been looking for it for 20 years, after Rosemary Harris asked her if she'd ever seen a print of it. That chance remark led to the discovery.
The decision of TCM to leave in the DuPont commercials is a unique confluence with this precise moment in history. The new Todd Haynes film, "Dark Water," about the legal fight that went on for almost 20 years against the same DuPont Corp. that sponsored this show, for poisoning the world's water supplies with PFOA from their Teflon product, premiered just two weeks before TCM aired the show. Watching those commercials, with the horror of what DuPont has done in your mind, and with the knowledge that they had been lying for decades about PFOA, gives the production up-to-the-minute relevance. This is how corporations have gotten by with committing crimes...by lying as long as they could possibly get by with an litigating until the victims are broke or dead.
Amazing that television can give us that context, and also give us a rare second look at an explosive Burton performance. He won't be soon forgotten.
However, I am not a fan of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," in any form. It was my grandmother's favorite book, and though I've tried to read it through many times it's not my kind of story. Emily's sister, Charlotte, wrote a book that is my kind, "Jane Eyre." I've loved that book since I first read it at age 12. I'm too optimistic in nature; doomed romances don't hold my interest, and I like a happy ending. After watching this teleplay I am still not a fan of WH, but it's importance lies in seeing an early Burton performance.
I would have been two when this live TV production of "Wuthering Heights" aired, and would have been oblivious to it at that time; I have no idea if my late mother watched it. She was a Burton fan as well, but this was too early for her to have known anything about him; I don't think she knew of him until the fan magazines began their endless stories of the Burton/Taylor years. That's too bad, since this Burton is satisfyingly savage, barbaric, and quintessentially Heathcliffian, in the role that every male actor yearns to interpret. As an adult today, I can savor his acting style and enjoy it without really enjoying the story.
Live television from the early days of the medium, seen in our 4k and UltraHD era, looks like a shadow play. The way those early live productions were filmed gives them a cardboard cutout appearance. The sets look like they're carved out of foam rubber, and then painted with hard black outlines. The actors/actresses appear smudgy, and the black and white looks like gray and beige. The farmhouse of Wuthering Heights looks spectacularly dirty and decrepit, the one good thing age gives to this production.
All that being said, somehow, Burton shines through the murk. He is larger than life and a force of nature; Rosemary Harris matches him in his power. The only adult still alive from the show as of the 2019 airing on TCM, Harris gives a bravura performance as Catherine; as her sanity slips away she's appropriately bizarre. Denholm Elliott is good as the shallow Linton, and seeing John Colicos as loathsome Hindley Earnshaw was amazing; did he ever get to play a nice character? Certainly everything I've seen him in has been as a bad guy. Cathleen Nesbit expertly holds the cast together as the one person who thinks kindly of all the people in her orbit, as the servant Nelly. Without her I fee; the show would have been much less successful.
Live TV in those days required a bit of over-acting because of the 12-inch screens but when seen on our widescreen TVs now, it looks as if the actors are shouting right in our faces; this has to be taken into account when watching "Wuthering Heights." Patty Duke mentioned that working with Burton, who had a true magnetic personality, made you want to continue working with him; he was fascinating in person. That magnetism comes through in this show, even with the shouting; Burton IS right in your face, and Heathcliff was that kind of character. He's the only one truly alive...confronting anyone that stood in his way, hating everyone, and not necessarily loving Catherine; obsessed with her, yes, but love doesn't seen to be in him as an adult. The young Heathcliff seemed to love her, but the cruelty inflicted on him negates any love he might have had for her.
The point of "Wuthering Heights" was that harsh environments create harsh people, that isolation can cause men and women to give free rein to their emotions, and those emotions can spiral out of control and spill over into the world outside of their isolation; the author is telling us that is what life should be like, not hidden away from all eyes. When Emily Bronte published the novel, many reviewers were repelled by the violent emotions it contained; polite society dictated that emotions be kept in check. Emily Bronte kept her emotions to herself her entire short life; she was the daughter of a minister and expected to be meek and subservient. Underneath that tightly bound demeanor a volcano of passion must have seethed. The only place she gave voice to her true self was in her one novel, and her poetry. If she had lived longer what might she have written?
"Wuthering Heights" was a production from first season of the "Dupont Show of the Month," sponsored by the DuPont Corporation; at the time, they were a research and development company, "making our lives easier." More on what they actually did, is below.
The finding of this long lost gem was miraculous; a TV historian who had spent decades collecting early TV productions died and left the collection to the Library of Congress. A research manager for the Paley Center for Media had been looking for it for 20 years, after Rosemary Harris asked her if she'd ever seen a print of it. That chance remark led to the discovery.
The decision of TCM to leave in the DuPont commercials is a unique confluence with this precise moment in history. The new Todd Haynes film, "Dark Water," about the legal fight that went on for almost 20 years against the same DuPont Corp. that sponsored this show, for poisoning the world's water supplies with PFOA from their Teflon product, premiered just two weeks before TCM aired the show. Watching those commercials, with the horror of what DuPont has done in your mind, and with the knowledge that they had been lying for decades about PFOA, gives the production up-to-the-minute relevance. This is how corporations have gotten by with committing crimes...by lying as long as they could possibly get by with an litigating until the victims are broke or dead.
Amazing that television can give us that context, and also give us a rare second look at an explosive Burton performance. He won't be soon forgotten.