Hollywood Arms (play)

Hollywood Arms
Original poster
Written by	Carrie Hamilton Carol Burnett
Date premiered	April 9, 2002
Place premiered	Goodman Theatre, Chicago
Original language	English
Genre	Dramedy
Setting	A dilapidated apartment building in Hollywood, 1941 and 1951

Hollywood Arms is a play by Carrie Hamilton and Carol Burnett.

Adapted from Burnett's memoir One More Time, the dramedy is set in Hollywood, California in 1941 and 1951, and centers on the heartbreak and laughter shared by three generations of women living on welfare in a dingy apartment house. The cast of characters, based on Burnett and her real-life relatives, includes no-nonsense grandmother Nanny; Louise, a beautiful, alcoholic mother determined to be a writer for movie magazines; Jody, an absent father who is struggling with his own demons; and Helen, a young girl whose only escape is the rooftop of their rundown building, where she creates her own magical world and dreams of a successful show business career.

Hamilton never saw her work reach the stage. On January 20, 2002, she died of brain and lung cancer. Burnett, determined that the play serve as a tribute to her late daughter's memory, brought it to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where it opened on April 9, 2002. Directed by Hal Prince, the cast included Linda Lavin as Nanny, Michele Pawk as Louise, Frank Wood as Jody, and Sara Niemietz and Donna Lynne Champlin as the younger and older Helen, with Barbara E. Robertson, Nicolas King, Patrick Clear,and Emily Graham-Handley in supporting roles.

Reviewing it for the New York Times, Bruce Weber said, "Borrowing from the likes of Herb Gardner and Neil Simon, the play has the tone (if not the professionally honed structure) of A Thousand Clowns West or maybe Venice Beach Memoirs . . . [T]he narrative conforms more to the contours of biography than invented drama. That is, there's a lot that seems to be here because it was actually so, not because it suits a well-crafted tale . . . [T]he play doesn't persuasively argue that it is compelling in itself. Much of its interest has to do with the celebrity of its subject . . . It's a story of haplessness and waste and the inexorable narrowing of lives to nothing. But because this is a star's tale, and it has a happy ending, there is something sanitized, if not gilded, about it all. Circumstances never seem oppressive or as entirely unpleasant and depressing as they must, in truth, have been."

After twenty-eight previews, the Broadway production, also directed by Prince, opened on October 31, 2002 at the Cort Theatre, where it ran for 76 performances. Most of the Chicago cast remained with the play, with Leslie Hendrix replacing Barbara E. Robertson. Michele Pawk won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

Reviewing it again for the New York Times, Bruce Weber observed, "In its Broadway incarnation . . . the show . . . has made strides from the version that appeared in the spring at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Strains of seriousness and ambition are more clearly evident . . . But like the kind of teenage girl that Ms. Burnett suggests she never was, the play still suffers through a million identity crises. It reaches for the organic independence of inventive fiction but stays with the training wheels of the biographical format . . . So a play that can't make up its mind whether to be a potent family saga or an episodic comedy worthy of a laugh track ends up ignoring what it has: a potentially bruising and affecting drama about the tough life of a woman in Hollywood in the 1940's and 50's. Instead, I found myself thinking more than once that Hollywood Arms is what would have resulted if television executives had gotten their hands on a script by O'Neill."

Lawrence Frascella of Entertainment Weekly graded it B and commented, "[W]hile it's not the most trenchant piece of writing you'll ever experience, under Harold Prince's expert direction some very harsh material takes on a warm, appealingly nostalgic glow . . . This moving production may kick off a new media subgenre: the Broadway-bound star autobiography."

Writing for the website Talkin' Broadway, Matthew Murray said it "has a tendency to play as little more than a series of skits, such as might have been found on Burnett's variety show. Some are comic, some are serious, but nearly all feel incomplete, different pieces of a puzzle that never come together to form a complete picture. More than once, when a scene appears ready to explode into powerful drama, the lights fade out, preventing the show from establishing a real dramatic connection with the audience. Still, a number of the elements are interesting; the show may be disconnected, but it's never boring."

External links

• Internet Broadway Database listing