By Harry Haun
14 Jul 2010

And a true star of the stage she was. "Except for a bit in 'Stage Door Canteen,' she never made a movie and never wanted to," Gurney explains. "The little television she did you can find at the Paley Center — The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which was her big moneymaker, and There Shall Be No Night, which the Lunts originally did — and you can tell she's not comfortable with television. In fact, when she did it, she insisted on playing it straight through without stopping or shooting it from another angle. She had to get the feel of doing a play. She couldn't act in the movies without an audience because nothing was coming back.

"One of the last things they offered her was the head nun that Edith Evans wound up playing in 'The Nun's Story.' I know because Robert Anderson, who wrote the screenplay, was a pal up at Roxbury. They begged her, but she wouldn't. We talk about movie acting in the play. She didn't say it, but I made up this allusion that it's like talking on the phone when you're not sure the connection is still there. There's nothing coming back. She always needed an audience to react and respond."

Come to that, Gurney needs it, too. "I feel very strong that theatre is an important part of cultural life. It brings people together in a room to collaborate on a thing — and then to collaborate with an audience about making it work — particularly in America, where we are more and more isolated, listening to our own iPods and our own little private computer screens.

"It's so important that American audiences get that feeling of community which we have already created in working on the play."