Clash by Night (play): Difference between revisions

The title carried a certain irony when Odets' play, produced by [[Billy Rose]], debuted on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Directed by [[Lee Strasberg]], the production opened December 27, 1941 and ran for a total of 49 performances before closing on February 7, 1942.

When the play was adapted to film a decade later by screenwriter Alfred Hayes, the setting was changed from Staten Island to [[Monterey, California]], and the character names were altered from Wilenski to D'Amato. [[Fritz Lang]] directed the 1952 [[black-and-white]] [[film noir]]/drama, ''[[Clash by Night]]'', starring [[Barbara Stanwyck]], [[Paul Douglas (actor)|Paul Douglas]], [[Marilyn Monroe]] and [[Robert Ryan]]. By this time, Ryan had outgrown the juvenile role of Joe Doyle and instead co-starred as Earl Pfeiffer, the role Joseph Schildkraut created on Broadway. In the film's storyline, Mae Doyle D'Amato (Stanwyck) returns to her home in a small town and a love triangle develops between Mae, fisherman Jerry D'Amato (Douglas) and film projectionist Earl Pfeiffer (Ryan), even thoughafter Mae and Jerry are married and have a baby together. A subplot covers the blossoming romance between Peggy (Monroe) and Joe Doyle ([[Keith Andes]]). Others in the cast included Silvio Minciotti as Papa D'Amato and [[J. Carrol Naish]] as Uncle Vince.

:The latest of Artistic Home's resurrections of great writers' assumed-dead works, Mossman's razor-sharp production slices open Odet's hard-boiled poem of the people. What's revealed is utterly devastating. <ref>[http://www.theartistichome.org/stage/clash_by_night.html The Artistic Home: ''Clash by Night''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070208191028/http://www.theartistichome.org/stage/clash_by_night.html |date=2007-02-08 }}</ref>

:''Clash by Night'' is best known as a flaccid 1952 B movie, directed by Fritz Lang and starring Barbara Stanwyck, that chronicles Mae's anguish in her marriage to a simple, hard-working guy, and her subsequent affair with a complicated, drifting layabout. The filmmaker tried to inject some energy by transplanting the story to California (and, for some reason, the fishing industry) and tacking on a happy ending. (In the play, Mae's affair comes to a violent end; in the movie, she ends the affair and goes back to her bland but loving husband.) The revival, directed by Richard Caliban, returns the play to its more credible roots, Staten Island just before the American entry into World War II. Mr. Caliban understands that this is, more than anything else, a period piece, the period marking the growing power and prominence of the blue-collar class. The director immerses us in a specific time and place; the evening begins with a young couple performing, in reverse chronological order, the dance crazes and musical styles of the last half of the 20th century, until they arrive in the summer of 1941 on Mae and Jerry's suitably ramshackle porch, designed by George Xenos. Still, even with global war looming, Odets and Ms. Markell can make it seem as if the only significant problem in the world is Mae's paralyzing depression. Because some of the other actors are not playing at Ms. Markell's level, the focus on Mae's hollowed-out life is all the more intense. Some of the best moments in ''Clash by Night,'' in fact, occur as Ms. Markell stands on the porch, a remote figure commenting on the folly of her existence. <ref>[http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?html_title=&tols_title=CLASH%20BY%20NIGHT%20(PLAY)&pdate=19980227&byline=By%20PETER%20MARKS&id=1077011429594 Marks, Peter. "Theater Review; Wife in Stifling Marriage Seeks a Shining Knight," ''The New York Times'', February 27, 1998.]</ref>

The Matthew Arnold poem has been a source for numerous titles, including [[Norman Mailer]]'s ''The Armies of the Night'' and [[Clifford Irving]]'s ''On a Darkling Plain''. The 1964 [[British film]], ''Clash by Night'', carries an identical title, but it is a different story, not based on Odets play.<ref>[httphttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209974/ IMDb: ''Clash by Night'' (1964)]</ref>

[[Category:FilmsAmerican basedplays onadapted playsinto films]]