Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") | |
| Posted by: dbdbdb 06:06 pm EST 03/05/21 | |
| In reply to: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") - writerkev 05:24 pm EST 03/05/21 | |
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| Sad news. Mass Appeal was a minor success at a time when the New York theatre was suddenly flooded with plays about Roman Catholicism. I wonder if it holds up. I saw it during the Boston tryout when Eric Roberts was still in the show as the younger priest. Milo O'Shea had something of a triumph. Davis certainly knew those characters inside and out. But like several other notable playwrights in those years, there was no follow-up success, although he clearly kept plugging away. Dancing in the End Zone was kind of a mess. Avow had some very funny lines, but the premise didn't really make sense. Both Mass Appeal and Avow made it to the screen; I'm rather surprised about the latter. | |
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| re: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") | |
| Posted by: Stagebuff718 07:44 pm EST 03/06/21 | |
| In reply to: re: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") - dbdbdb 06:06 pm EST 03/05/21 | |
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| It’s a shock for me to read this here. Billy and I hung out periodically a long, long time ago. In 1979 I was a young entertainment editor at a newspaper in Orange County, N.Y., and we did a profile of Billy. He and I discovered we shared a birthday, and we became friends. Moreover, his parents were living in retirement in my hometown in the Berkshires, so when I drove to my mom’s home, I would stop by Poughkeepsie and pick up Billy to take him home too. I even saw one of his plays in a grungy basement in Poughkeepsie, but I can’t remember the name of it. I do remember his energy and his long, curly brown hair. He was on the cusp of making it with Mass Appeal. On the 4th of July in 1979, he took me to Port Jervis, where Geraldine Fitzgerald was filming The Jilting of Granny Weatherall for PBS, and he introduced me to her as the director of the upcoming Mass Appeal, which I was lucky enough to see at MTC. I quit my job upstate early in 1981 and left for the West Coast before the Broadway production, and we lost touch. I don’t think I saw him again till a press preview of Avow. | |
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| re: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") | |
| Posted by: kieran 06:33 pm EST 03/05/21 | |
| In reply to: re: RIP Playwright Bill C. Davis ("Mass Appeal") - dbdbdb 06:06 pm EST 03/05/21 | |
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| I saw the play several times, once with Davis as the seminarian. O’Shea was unforgettable! | |
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