Hari K wrote: '... the description of Laurence Olivier playing a version of Gerry Healy sounds fascinating...' My late pal John Sullivan wrote this about Healy, the acting profession, and the attempt to reproduce him on stage:
If you were to stumble into a meeting of the Workers Revolutionary Party Central Committee, you might wonder for a moment why there are so many familiar faces. But of course! You’ve seen them on the telly! Vanessa Redgrave is the best known of this group of proletarian activists who have long fought bitter struggles to win the toiling masses of Equity (the actors’ union) to revolutionary positions. Is real life merely an escape from the pressures of the stage? It’s certainly true that if the CIA ever succeeds in eliminating the WRP leadership, casting directors everywhere will be in trouble. The WRP’s main star, Gerry Healy, has not himself trodden the boards of the legitimate stage, but his gifts as actor, producer and director are considerable. Lawrence Olivier’s shot at portraying him in the play The Party was generally acclaimed as a brave try, but not really up to the histrionic standards of the original. Apropos David North, I saw him some years back at a meeting of the British franchise of the Socialist Equality Party. He came across not as a Healy-style ranter, but as an urbane American professor, speaking intelligently and soberly. I had quite a pleasant conversation with him afterwards. I gave him a copy of my book The New Civilisation? , but to my knowledge the WSWS site never reviewed it. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33938): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33938 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109871183/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
