Five months ago, actress Claudia Christian reminisced on Facebook about her experience working with Peter Falk in the 1993 Columbo episode "It's All in The Game" which featured Faye Dunaway. She described Falk telling her about his experiences with John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.
Christian's onetime Babylon Five co-star Bill Mumy (best known for playing Will Robinson in the 1960's TV show Lost in Space) replied noting that he had worked with Cassavetes and Rowlands in the 1963 film A Child is Waiting which starred Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland and was directed by Cassavetes and produced by Stanley Kramer. Mumy described Cassavetes as "a yeller." To which I asked Mumy, "If Cassavetes was a yeller than how would you describe Kramer, Lancaster and Garland?" Much to my surprise, Mumy replied describing Kramer as passionate, Lancaster as professional and Garland as fragile.
Judy Garland would have turned 100 in June. In commemoration of her centennial, the Brattle Theatre has held a retrospective of her films throughout the summer. In light of my exchange with Mumy regarding A Child is Waiting, I wanted to see the film. In so doing, I made a point of not looking up anything about the movie online.
Written by Abby Mann (who also wrote the screenplay for Judgment at Nuremburg), A Child is Waiting is centered around a child named Reuben Widdicome (played by Bruce Ritchey) who is abandoned by his parents (played by Rowlands and Steven Hill who later went onto fame playing D.A. Adam Schiff in Law & Order) to a home for children with special needs run by Dr. Matthew Clark (played by Lancaster). Dr. Clark hires Jean Hansen, a failed pianist who is unmarried and drifting (played by Garland). Mumy appears briefly in the film as a child who is fascinated by the pearls worn by Hansen when she arrives at the school. Hansen develops a strong bond with Reuben much to the dismay of Dr. Clark who seems to have a particular disdain for Reuben calling him one of the school's "most spectacular failures".
As this film was released nearly 60 years ago, the term special needs, developmental disability or intellectual disability were not in our lexicon. Rather the terms used were mental retardation or mentally defective. There is an authenticity about the film as many of the children cast in the film had special needs and this bit of realism was right up Cassavetes' alley. Although after viewing the film, I learned that Cassavetes and Kramer clashed over editing and Kramer ended up re-editing much of the film although Cassavetes retained the directorial credit.
Nevertheless there are remarkable performances delivered by Garland who was going through a divorce at the time from Sidney Luft which goes a long way in explaining her vulnerability. Garland shines the most in her interaction with Ritchey who despite uttering very few words during the film spoke volumes with his facial expressions. Remarkably, this was Ritchey's only film credit and very little about his life after A Child is Waiting is known other than he died in 2018 at the age of 67. Hill's performance also stands out for his conflicted feelings over his son at one pointing bluntly wishing he was dead.
A Child is Waiting would turn out to be Garland's penultimate film. Later in 1963, she made her final onscreen appearance in the musical drama I Could Go On Singing. Garland would perform sporadically in concert up until a few months before her death in 1969 at the age of 47.
While the language has changed where it concerns developmental disability we are truly no further along in understanding the human mind than we were 60 years ago much less in knowing how to treat people, particularly children who have this condition. Whatever disagreements there were between Cassavetes and Kramer, the film was direct in dealing with its subject matter without being heavy-handed. Notwithstanding the turmoil which Garland was experiencing at the time, she managed to channel that turmoil into a fragile, vulnerable yet determined character trying to find her way in the world.
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