Laurette Taylor’s performance as Amanda Wingfield in the original 1945 production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is the most vividly remembered piece of acting ever to have taken place on an American stage. Yet nothing remains of it but memories and a few still photographs–some of which can be seen here–since Taylor made no sound films save for the brief screen test included in Broadway: The Golden Age (a documentary you’ve absolutely got to see, assuming you haven’t already). The greatness of her acting is thus like the greatness of Nijinsky’s dancing: all who saw her agree on it, but the rest of us must take it on faith.
Or…must we?
After reading that Times story, I did a bit of fugitive Googling, and found something that sent my jaw dropping floorward. It’s from the Web site of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which is where Taylor’s private papers ended up. I was looking at the HRCRC’s description of its Taylor collection when I stumbled onto this statement:
A number of published works and recordings were transferred to the HRHRC book collection….Taylor’s recordings, mostly 78 RPM, include The Glass Menagerie (1945); a 1939 WJZ radio broadcast of Peg O’ My Heart; Among My Souvenirs (1943); a segment of We The People (1945); a Rudy Vallee radio program (1939); and a very early 1913 voice recording trial done of Laurette Taylor in New York.
Excuse me? Am I the last to learn that that there is a sound recording of some portion of Taylor’s legendary performance in The Glass Menagerie? Or is its existence not widely known to scholars of American theater in general and Tennessee Williams’ work in particular?
If anybody out there in the blogosphere knows anything at all about this recording, starting with whether or not it really exists, I’d like to hear from you. And if you happen to live in Austin and have access to it (assuming it does in fact exist), I’d really like to hear from you.