Katharine Cornell - The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Katharine Cornell is perhaps best known in her role as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Rudolph Besier's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street. The play is based on the real story of the Barrett family who lived on Wimpole Street in London. The play opens with Elizabeth, the oldest child of a large and loving family. Their father is widowed and has become embittered and determined that none of his children would ever marry, lest they become slaves to the "brutal tyranny of passion" and "the lowest urge of the body." As the play progresses, his smothering concern for his family and particularly for Elizabeth, who is an invalid, takes on a sinister character. Poet Robert Browning has read some of Elizabeth's poetry and comes to meet her, and they immediately find an attraction for each other. When he leaves, Elizabeth struggles to her feet to watch him disappear down the lane. Elizabeth and Robert later elope, against her father's strict orders, and when he finds that she has married without his permission or knowledge, he orders that her beloved dog, Flush, be put to death. However, her sister had taken care to see that her cocker spaniel joined them in their escape.Text of the play

The play has several difficulties. The lead role of Elizabeth has to be played as submissive to her father, yet must be the center of attention throughout. Although the ending is happy for Elizabeth and Robert, the rest of the family remains under the domination of the father, who is deranged in his obsession. Elizabeth must be played for the first half laying still on a sofa wearing heavy Victorian costume, and covered with a blanket, as befitting an invalid. Many, including Lionel Barrymore, who was asked to play the part of the father, thought it was too melodramatic and past its time. The play was turned down by 27 New York producers before Guthrie read it and found it so moving, he cried whenever he read it.

When Guthrie was in London, he was able to secure Brian Aherne to play the part of Robert Browning. Afterwards, Guthrie immediately went to a London jewelry store and bought a necklace, two bracelets and a garnet ring, all at least 100 years old. For every single performance that she ever gave as Elizabeth Barrett, Cornell wore this same jewelry in the last act where she leaves the family home for the last time. Katharine Hepburn was selected for the part of Henrietta, but since she was going to play in a summer stock company a few months later, she couldn't contract. Casting the dog was troublesome, since it would have to lie still in his basket on stage for a great length of time, and then exit when called for. Guthrie selected an eight-month-old cocker spaniel who played the role for the full run and many others afterwards to unanimous applause.

Guthrie directed the play with a meticulous attention to period detail, and it lasted three hours. Cornell was herself listed as the producer, although it was actually produced by C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company wholly owned by both Guthrie and Katharine. The play opened in first in Cleveland, then Buffalo before reaching New York in January 1931.

Brooks Atkinson wrote of opening night: "After a long succession of meretricious plays it introduces us to Katharine Cornell as an actress of the first order. Here the disciplined fury that she has been squandering on catch-penny plays becomes the vibrant beauty of finely wrought character.... By the crescendo of her playing, by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights, she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records. Her acting is quite as remarkable for the carefulness of its design as for the fire of her presence.... The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a triumph for MIss Cornell and the splendid company with which she has surrounded herself."

All other critics were uniform in praise of her acting: superb, eloquent, exalted, dark, rhythmic, luminous, haunting, lyric, ravishing. Even Dorothy Parker, known for her caustic wit and unsentimental reviews, wrote that although she didn't think it a good play, she "paid it the tribute of tears." Further, "Miss Katharine Cornell is a completely lovely Elizabeth Barrett.... It is little wonder that Miss Cornell is so worshipped; she has romance, or, if you like better the word of the daily-paper critics, she has glamour." The play ran for 370 performances. When it was announced that it was closing, the remaining performances sold out and hundreds were turned away.

The play's success engendered a revival of Robert Browning's poetry, and cocker spaniels became the popular dog that year. Irving Thalberg wanted Cornell to play her part in an MGM production, even offering that if she was not completely satisfied with the result, the film would be destroyed. She refused, and a movie was released with most of the cast intact, and Thalberg's wife, actress Norma Shearer, played the part. Cornell refused to ever act in movies because she had seen audiences laugh at the acting of old movies and did not want that to happen to her. According to biographer Tad Mosel, "she did not feel that she was acting for historians or nostalgia fans of the future but for audiences of the here and now, people who came into the theatre tonight, sat in their seats and waited for the curtain to go up. Not only were they the ones she wanted to reach, but she wanted to be there when they responded, she did not want to be off in another part of the world while they gazed at a second-hand image on a screen. In fact, she was not sure she could give them anything to respond to without the inducement of their presence." Moreover, the largeness of her facial structure—her bone structure—were so explicit that they could be seen to the last row, but "might have been less than an asset on the screen where the camera enlarges and exaggerates. Her voice and gestures were eloquent theatre props that might have been too much for the screen, necessitating adjustments so basic that she could not make them. And beyond physical equipment... it is possible that the quality she had as an individual, the unique something about her that transcended technique and craft and fifth-rate writing might not have transcended cameras; it would not have come through to an audience without her physical presence."

However, other sources state that Hollywood would secure Broadway plays for its own actors under contract, and that Cornell was never considered for the roles she originated. Additionally, Cornell apparently wrote to film director George Cukor, intimating that she would consider a film if he would direct her. Nothing came of this effort.

She turned down many movie roles that eventually won Academy Awards for the actresses who actually did play those parts, from Olan in The Good Earth, to Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Additionally, many of her hit plays continued life either as vehicles for other great actresses, or became movies. However, as audiences were deserting live theater for the movies, Cornell became even more determined to stay in the theater in order to help keep it vibrant.