I overreacted a bit. It is clear, but it's also kind of dismissed. Here is the paragraph in which it’s mentioned: “As her co-stars' careers began to soar, Burns' arc slowed, ultimately to a complete halt. In 1971, reports suggested that Brian De Palma might cast her in a film he planned to adapt from another Eleanor Perry script, but nothing came of it. She reunited with Thomas on a 1973 episode of The Waltons. And then she wound up back in repertory theater — in North Hollywood for several years and then back East, from off-Broadway to the Berkshires.”
So it actually says that her career arc slowed to a complete halt, and then she did repertory theatre, as if her only real career was acting in movies and television, and theatre hardly even counted as a career. That is probably not what they intended, but it’s kind of how it reads, at least to me.
She spent several years at the Guthrie, one of the top theatres in the country. A lot of actors would be thrilled to work there. They could have mentioned that. They make it sound like doing theatre was a huge comedown and a disappointment and not perhaps what she really wanted to do.
I’m in touch with one of the authors. I’m sending him some stuff. Between 1980 and 1985, she wrote a bunch of articles for Backstage about her theatre work. I know the authors of the article wanted to honor her, but I really wish they had not dismissed so much of her career in one sentence and seem to have felt it was a huge comedown for her to only do theatre. |
