The Glass Menagerie : Dream Amandas - Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, or Lynn Fontanne

I have nothing against Gertrude Lawrence - I've always been intrigued by her but I wish WB would have taken the risk Paramount did that year when they cast Gloria Swanson in her first major role in ages in SUNSET BLVD. and given the role of Amanda to one of the two of mega-legends of the silent screen, Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish. There's no denying Lillian could have handled it - she was still wowing stage audiences at the time. Mary is a bit more intriguing and I dare so more perfect - she would have well caught the sentimental quality of Amanda and yet been able to supply her steel backbone as well. If only Mary or Lillian could have made this movie I think either one of them would have won the Oscar.

Now Lynn Fontanne was British but she was thoroughly Americanized on the stage. She's one of the most fascinating stage legends and I think she could have pulled this off as well even if it went going against her glamorous persona. Remember this is an actress who triumphed in O'Neill's STRANGE INTERLUDE. If WB wanted a stage star, why not Lynn?

Of course this is all armchair casting some half a century plus too late.

I actually liked Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Amanda, but well, I never read the play, probably she wasn't supposed to be like Lawrence made Amanda finally. Still I think she did a good job with it.

I loved Lawrence's portrayal (read my review of the film), and I can not understand the negativity towards it.

I just saw TGM for the first time in many years, and I have to agree now, Gertrude Lawrence was quite good in the role and great in several scenes. She didn't quite play Amanda as "Southern" all the time but she was thoroughly believable as an American matron and caught both Amanda's toughness and her touch of faded grace as well as her control-freak personality in regards to her adult "children". I listened to the Helen Hayes radio performance of it from the same period just the day before and Hayes overplayed the venom in Amanda, making her thoroughly unsympathetic and unlikable.

And, ironic due to my OP, I was struck how much Lawrence resembled the way Mary Pickford looked in the 1950's!

It is easier to picture Gish in the part, but I really like your Pickford idea. She was a wonderful natural actress and could have been world's better than Lawrence. I think at that time, she was probably too insecure to try a comeback. Too bad, it could have been a career capstone as Sunset Blvd. was for Swanson. Even if it didn't lead anywherewhich it really didn't for Gloria.

Mary was undoubtably nervous about the possibility of returning to the screen but she was definitely interested in doing so during this period. LIFE WITH FATHER had long been expected to be her comeback, I think the stage producers and Warner Bros. were both anxious for her to do it but then Michael Curtiz was signed to be the director and he refused to cast Mary in the part of Mother. And of course Billy Wilder allegedly offered Norma Desmond to Mary first but she certainly would have never agreed to appear in such a sordid albeit brillant story. Several years later she was cast by Columbia in the film that became STORM CENTER but then back out after Hedda Hopper went on in her column about it being a "commie" story or whatever. Bette Davis eventually made it.

But you're right if she had done THE GLASS MENAGERIE as a film, it probably would have done very little to revive her career as a working film actress as SB didn't almost nothing for Swanson. The studios were really not interested in starring women past 50 back in the 1950's even if they remained famous like Mary or made a big comeback like Gloria. I like to think though maybe a late career hit would have kept Mary out of seclusion in her final fifteen years though, basking in the longterm glow of that success as Swanson did for the rest of her life, a good thirty years after SB.