Cocktails with George and Martha

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. A lively, well-researched book that displays great affection for the film and the highly gifted and vastly troublesome people who made it. Delicious . . . unapologetically obsessive . . . [Gefter gets] to the marrow: of male ego, rushing into new projects with hubris and jostling for posterity. 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. Charming . . . filled with enjoyable anecdotes and recollections of how Hollywood accidentally makes great movies from time to time. Raucous, unpredictable, wild, and affecting. Very smart and entertaining . . . dishy-yet-earnest . . . Gefter shows why Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the ‘60s like a torpedo. [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. 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. Expand reviews