BWW Exclusive: A History of Tony Award Winning Plays Becoming Oscar Award Winning Movies
By: Katherine Blauvelt Mar. 11, 2017
Late last month, Viola Davis took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Rose Maxson in FENCES. Based on the August Wilson play of the same name, FENCES is the story of an African-American family living in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1950s. Davis's win marks a long tradition of actors being able to to take their successful Tony winning roles and make them Oscar winning roles.
While Davis won her first Oscar, her co-star, Denzel Washington, was also nominated for Best Leading Actor, losing to MANCHESTER BY THE SEA's Casey Affleck. Both Davis and Washington won Tony Awards in 2010 for their performances in the Broadway revival of the play.
This is not the first time a Tony-winning play has become a hit at the Oscars. Since the beginning of film, screenwriters have been inspired by the work of playwrights, anyone from Shakespeare to August Wilson. Hollywood has also seen the common practice of playwrights adapting their own work for the screen, such as Aaron Sorkin with A FEW GOOD MEN.
It isn't surprising to find out that a movie is based on a play, but it is surprising when a play can win big at the Tonys and at the Oscars. Those rare instances often serve as reminders of how transcending a well-written script can be. It does not matter what format or medium the story takes, it captivates its audience regardless.
To celebrate the work of playwrights and the transition to Hollywood, here are a few examples of classic plays that took Hollywood by storm.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: At the Tony's, Jessica Tandy received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1948, sharing the honor with Judith Anderson's portrayal of Medea and with Katharine Cornell. Tandy would be replaced in the film version by Vivien Leigh, who played Blanche in London. It was apt to cast the actress who had played Scarlett O'Hara a decade before in "Gone With the Wind" as an older Southern belle trapped in her dreams of a rosy, genteel past.
At the Oscar's, in 1951, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden all revisited the roles they originated in the original Broadway production, with the play's original director Elia Kazan at the helm of the celebrated film.
Vivian Leigh earned an Oscar for her portrayal of the tormented Blanche DuBois, one of her two very memorable screen roles. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE earned 12 Oscar nominations, including acting nods for each of its four leads. The movie won for Best Art Direction, and Leigh, Hunter, and Malden all took home awards.
The only loser was Brando, despite giving one of the most pivotal performances in the history of stage and screen. He would not win his first Oscar until 1955.
THE MIRACLE WORKER: At the Tony's, William Gibson's 1959 play starred Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in the emotional true story about the relationship between Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. It was a critically acclaimed success.
Time Magazine called the original production "a story that, however well known, acquires stunning new reality and affectingness on the stage. The overwhelming force of the play's crucial scenes could not have derived from the stirring facts alone, nor from Playwright Gibson's vivid use of them."
The original production was nominated for five Tony Awards and won four including: Tony Award for Best Play, Tony Award for Best Direction (Arthur Penn), Tony Award for Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), and Tony Award for Best Stage Technician (John Walters).
The 1962 film went on to be an instant critical success, despite being only a moderate commercial hit. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director (Arthur Penn), and won two awards, Best Actress for Anne Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress for Patty Duke.
Surprisingly, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke almost didn't get a chance to reprise their roles and win at the Oscar's. United Artists executives wanted a bigger name cast as Anne Sullivan in the film adaptation, despite the fact that Anne Bancroft had won the Tony for the role.
They offered to budget the film at $5 million if Elizabeth Taylor was cast, but only $500,000 if director Arthur Penn insisted on using Bancroft. Penn remained loyal to his star, and the move paid off when Bancroft won the Oscar.
Also, despite the fact that Patty Duke had played Helen Keller in the play, she almost did not get the part either. The reason was that Duke, 15 years old at the time, was too old to portray a seven-year-old girl, but after Bancroft was cast as Anne, Duke was chosen to play Helen in the movie.
WHO'S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf?: In 1963, Edward Albee's seminal American play, WHO'S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf?, took home the Tony Award for Best Play. Its stars, Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, won the awards for Best Actor and Actress as well.
At the Oscar's, Mike Nichols' 1966 adaptation of monumental play tightens the action to fit the claustrophobic confines of his close-ups, featuring the ferocious Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor going for each other's throats - at times, quite literally.
The film is one of only two films to be nominated in every eligible category at the Academy Awards. Each of the four actors was nominated for an Oscar but only Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis won, for Best Actress and Supporting Actress respectively.
It was the first film to have its entire credited cast be nominated for acting Oscars, a feat only accomplished two more times. The film also won the Black and White Cinematography award for Haskell Wexler's stark camera work (it was the last film to win before the category was eliminated), Best Costume Design, and for Best Art Direction.
THE LION IN WINTER: At the Tony's, the 1966 play by James Goldman depicting the personal and political conflicts of Henry II of England, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, their children, and their guests during Christmas 1183, starred Robert Preston and RoseMary Harris. Harris won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Eleanor and Noel Willman was nominated for Best Direction of a Play.
At the Oscar's, the 1968 movie starring Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, and Anthony Hopkins, was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three of them including Best Music Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress for Katharine Hepburn.
Katharine Hepburn tied for the honor with Barbara Streisand for FUNNY GIRL, the only time this has happened for actresses in Academy history. This also marked Katharine Hepburn's third Oscar win. She would win her fourth and final Oscar in 1981 for ON GOLDEN POND.
AMADEUS: Director Milos Forman's 1985 film adaptation of Peter Shaffer's acclaimed play AMADEUS garnered wide-spread critical praise, including 11 Academy Award nominations. This epic, lavish story centers on the creative feud between composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Of its 11 nominations, the film won eight awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer).
At the Tony's, AMADEUS won the 1981 Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in 1980 with Ian McKellen as Salieri, Tim Curry as Mozart, and Jane Seymour as Constanze. It ran for 1,181 performances and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, of which it won five, including Best Actor for Ian McKellen. In 2015, Curry stated in an interview that the original Broadway production was his favorite stage production that he had ever been in. Compared to the movie, the original stage version focuses in on the story of Salieri and his quest for Atonement, while the movie focuses in on Mozart's quest for revenge.
*a previous version of the article mentioned that Edward Albee won the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for WHO'S AFRAID OF Virginia Woolf?, which is not accurate. Albee won Pulitzers for A DELICATE BALANCE (1967), SEASCAPE (1975), and THREE TALL WOMEN (1994).
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