ANNE FRANK Q & A with Marisa Kilgallen Part Two

Guest Article

SS: How is it different?

MK: Not only story wise, but also how she is portrayed. The play and the movie were both created in the 1950s. At that time, America was glad that the war was over and it was time to start healing. The late writer, Meyer Levin, had played a big role in promoting Anne’s book. He wrote a wonderful review in the New York Times and that article got the book a lot of attention. He wanted to dramatize Anne’s novel. He wasn’t that well known of a writer. Broadway producers were looking for a famous playwright. Meyer Levin, who was working with Otto Frank at the time, was saying, “Oh, we can’t have this person because they are this and that.” He would just come up with so many excuses why somebody else, other than him, could not adapt the diary for the stage. He did write an adaptation of the play -- it’s close to the diary, but it’s very, very dark. “We have to keep the audience in their seats” –that was the main thing on producers’ minds. They didn’t want a show that the audience was going to have difficulty sitting through. They needed somebody who was going to balance the terror and lightheartedness of the book. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were those people. In addition to The Diary of Anne Frank, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett wrote It's A Wonderful Life . Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett wrote 8 drafts of The Diary of Anne Frank before one was picked. In my opinion, the playwrights recreated Anne as a character who is very simple to play with. I’m actually reading this book right now for the second time called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife written by Francine Prose. Within her work, Prose examines Anne Frank as a writer in order to direct attention to her [Anne] as an artist. She talks about the play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. After I first read Prose’s work, I felt myself agreeing with Prose that the Goodrich and Hackett play provides no trace of the development of Anne Frank’s intelligence and how her writing supports that type of growth. You don’t see the power of reflection that you see in her diary. The reflective component of the diary is important because it’s only when she looks back at an important event that she can learn from that experience. As she reflects on a situation through the writing of her diary, she develops her character. Take, for example, her romance with Peter – that’s in the play – that’s great, but what does she learn from it? What is its relevance to her? In her diary, it is apparent that she learned a lot about herself from this relationship. At one point, she wrote about one thing she learned from this experience: “I committed one error in my desire to make a real friendship: I switched over and tried to get at him [Peter] by developing it into a more intimate relation, whereas I should have explored all other possibilities” (Frank, 262). That statement shows me how Anne’s relationship with Peter was relevant to her developing maturity. You don’t see that kind of reflection in the Goodrich &Hackett play. Therefore, I don’t like Anne’s portrayal in the play as I want to see the girl on the page of the book that I read.

SS: How many productions of Anne Frank have you seen? Which is your favorite and why?

MK: I saw Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s play, The Diary of Anne Frank, performed at Mason Gross’ Performing Arts School in New Brunswick in the fall of 2007. I liked the production. I thought that it was very well done. I did like how it was performed by the actors and actresses who played the roles. I don’t see too many productions of the play. Sometimes I’ll catch a snippet of different play versions on YOUTUBE as I browse through the web. The movie that is based on the Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett play, I really did not like. I thought that casting could have been a lot better. Francine Prose actually talks about that subject in her book as well.

SS: In the movie Anne was portrayed as frivolous and childish and that there was a jealousy between her and her mother (Edith Frank).

MK: In terms of jealousy, there is a bit of jealousy in the book, but you can infer that for yourself. If there was any resentment, it was, most likely, forgotten during their imprisonment in Auschwitz. In the concentration camp, Anne, her mother, and Anne’s sister (Margot) were an inseparable unit. They were together until, unfortunately, they were separated. Anne had gotten sick at Auschwitz (a concentration camp). She got scabies. Margot, I don’t think, was infected, but she went to the hospital with Anne to watch over her. In October, Anne and Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Their mother was left behind at Auschwitz.

SS: What do you remember from the 1959 movie starring Millie Perkins as Anne Frank?

MK: I can’t remember too much of it because the last time I saw it I was 13. I kind of liked the movie but once I read and studied Anne Frank’s diary more, my favor toward the movie decreased. I did not think Millie Perkins was a good choice for the role because she was 21 at the time. She did not look like a 13 year old or a 15 year old. I would say she looked 18. I think that, at times, she was too sweet. I think that Anne had more spunk. I think whatever actress plays Anne needs to provide a balance between sweetness and toughness. Anne Frank thought of herself as “torn in two.” She had an outer self and an inner self whom, she thought, were two very different people. She was afraid to show that inner self because she thought people would mock her because she had developed this reputation of being an outgoing, superficial person. Although Anne didn’t want people to see her solely as that person, her “established” reputation made the task of bringing out her inner self a challenge for her. An actress has to give the role of Anne Frank the essence that there is another person beneath the exterior persona. It’s not just the spunk or the sweetness. There is this one girl who is trying to come out against a personality that consists of no cares, cleverness, and superficiality.

SS: So there was a lot of miscasting?

MK: Quite a bit. The young man who played Peter, Richard Beymer (later in West Side Story as Tony), was 21. He looked seventeen, at the youngest, when he was supposed to be playing a boy who ages between 15 ½ -17 years of age. Additionally, Francine Prose described the movie’s cast as many people who appeared to be coming in from different areas. Richard Beymer was a Brooklyn native and that accent came out. Therefore, I really did not like the film because it was miscast. I also did not like how Anne was portrayed because it did not show how she developed her maturity during her time in hiding-which is a core idea in her book. You see her change throughout the book. She wants to change. I didn’t see how she matured in the movie. There is one movie that I have seen and I would recommend it to you: Anne Frank: The Whole Story (TV mini-series 2001). It’s a 3 hour film. It does get dark, but one of the reasons why I like it is because I think that it had absolutely perfect casting.

SS: Who was in it?

MK: Hannah Taylor Gordon was in it. She played Anne Frank.

SS: She was close to Anne’s age, wasn’t she?

MK: She was 14 when she portrayed Anne. She played Anne from ages 9 to 15. But at that time, technology had developed. She could look 9 and I could believe that.

SS: Was she Anne’s body type?

MK: She was. She was very skinny and rather tall.

SS: I didn’t think that Anne was tall.

MK: I tend to think that she was – she had very tall parents. But based on what I read about her, she had that body type. What I liked about Gordon’s performance was that I could see there was this spunky girl on the surface, but a deeper, truer person inside. I liked Gordon’s performance a lot because it was the person who I was reading about. It was Anne Frank off the page.

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