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The Killing of Sister George
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Killing of Sister George | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Robert Aldrich |
| Produced by | Robert Aldrich |
| Written by | Lucas Heller |
| Starring | Beryl Reid Susannah York |
| Cinematography | Joseph F. Biroc |
| Distributed by | Cinerama Releasing Corporation |
| Release date(s) | 1968 |
| Running time | 138 min |
| Country | USA |
| IMDb profile | |
The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 stage play written by Frank Marcus and originally starring Jessie Matthews in the London production. It was adapted into a 1968 film, starring Beryl Reid. It is mainly noted for its treatment of lesbianism. Both stage and film versions are fairly well known.
In the stage play, the central character is a female actor who plays a nurse, Sister George, in a long-running radio series. She shares a house with a younger, somewhat immature woman, Childie; their relationship contains curious elements of psychological sado-masochism.
George discovers that there are plans to kill off her character in the radio series.
Although it is strongly implied that George and Childie are lesbians, as is a third woman who appears, this is never explicitly stated. The author intended the play as a farce, not a serious treatment of lesbianism, but because there was so little material about lesbians at the time it became regarded as such.
The play opened in the US on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre on October 5, 1966 and ran for 205 performances. Starring were Eileen Atkins, Beryl Reid, Lally Bowers, and Polly Rowles. Beryl Reid won the 1967 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play. It was revived in 1983 by the Roundabout Theatre.
The 1968 film version was a fairly faithful adaptation. It starred Beryl Reid as George and Susannah York as Childie, and was directed by Robert Aldrich. However the lesbian elements were made somewhat more explicit, and it changed Sister George's series into a TV programme. Part of the film was shot in the real-life lesbian Gateways club with club regulars appearing as extras.
Curiously, some elements of the plot (though not the lesbian elements) were similar to an episode of Hancock, The Bowmens, a pastiche of the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where he played an actor who was playing the popular character Old Joshua Merryweather. Because of his bad behaviour in the studio he is killed off. Both appear to be loosely inspired by the killing of Grace Archer in The Archers (broadcast Thursday 22nd September 1955).
- IMDB entry
- Internet Broadway Database listing [1]
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