William Daniels did not care for the film, either. In his autobiography, he said he felt it needed to begin as an on-screen stage play, a la Olivier's Henry V, and that it should not have gone into realistic filmed locations until after Sit Down, John.
We will never know, will we?
Having seen the play on Broadway early enough in its run for Clifford David to be the only original cast member to have been replaced (by David Cryer), I can agree that the film has little of the show's dynamic energy. That said, however, nearly everyone I knew who had not seen it on stage loved it on film, and it has been embraced as an Independence Day perennial for years now. And I can appreciate it as a preservation of much of the original production, if not as a cinematic masterpiece.
I believe Ben Mankiewicz said that Blythe Danner had been a replacement Martha Jefferson on stage, but if so it was not on Broadway. I might have misheard him, however. |
