Hume Cronyn : The Cronyns in Detroit circa '76

The Cronyns in Detroit circa '76


Late in the Seventies for the Chicago Sun-Times I interviewed Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in Detroit while they were on tour at the city's Fisher Theatre with "Noel Coward in Two Keys" (aka "...Suites"), which was about to move to Chicago with a cast including Anne Baxter and Bert Parks Jr. The night before our meeting he invited me to join him and Jessica and Bert in a loft done up as a screening room, the seats being overstuffed living room furniture, to see a sneak showing of Otto Preminger's "Rosebud," which turned out to be that filmmaker's final feature. Parks and I, being about the same age, quipped mercilessly during the movie on how awful it was, but Cronyn remained generous to it, saying as we were about to leave "there surely will be some people who will like this picture." The next day in their large and cozily old-fashioned hotel suite he explained they were doing Coward "to get away from Beckett for awhile." (I believe they had a year or at least some months before done Samuel Beckett's "Not I"--her tour de force--and "Krapp's Last Tape"--his.) She knitted while he expatiated, which he loved doing, and during a break when he had to go to another room she simply said he was the talkative one. They were an amusing couple, and despite her reticence from time to time she might put in a word that stepped a bit on something he'd started to say. He'd apologize and ask her to go on. She'd say no, it was nothing. He'd say, darling I interrupted you, and I distinctly heard you about to speak. She'd repeat it was unimportant. He'd say, "Well, then,...," and proceed. He memorized a line from one of his detractors, Pauline Kael, along lines of "Hume Cronyn has to be the worst actor on film, now that Ernest Borgnine is showing some promise." He said by some mischance he was asked to present Ms. Kael with an award and had prepared an introduction quoting her lambasts of him, but then she got wind of it and phoned him pleading that he do otherwise, to which he, being a gentleman, acquiesced. He phoned me a few days after their show opened in Chicago to give me info about some book on or by Beckett because he'd remembered my asking about it weeks before in Detroit. I did not speak to them before or since that time, but the memory remains one of a sweet and thoughtful man. GH

Re: The Cronyns in Detroit circa '76

Just a correction. The fellow I identified as "Bert Parks Jr." tells me "never" did he go by that name. His name is Joel Parks; he is with Fox News, and he is one of Bert Parks' identical twin sons, the other named Jeffrey. Perhaps the twin-like resemblance to his own dad morphed my recollection of his name.
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