Anywaa...here is what I wrote in 2006:
LOOK at that face...
That's right folks...don't mess with her!
I am a woman OBSESSED right now. My obsession lies in finding out as much as I can on the actress Kim Stanley. I did not know who this woman was at all (I don't think). Until, I went to the Drama section at the Borders in the Cerritos Town Center a couple of weeks ago. There was a hardback book with a title that intrigued me, FEMALE BRANDO: The Legend of Kim Stanley. Now, I was confusing this actress with Kim Hunter (the one who played Stella opposite Brando in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE). I kept thinking of Hunter but when I looked at the pictures, they didn't look like her. At all. OBVIOUSLY! HELLO! I'm such an idiot! But, while I was looking through the book and the pictures...I could not think of Hunter's last name. Until, today when I was researching on Stanley. Sheesh!!! Man! I'm gonna have to go and buy the biography. There are a couple of films that I want to buy as well: SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, THE GODDESS, THE THREE SISTERS, FRANCES, &c.
What got me thinking about Kim Stanley, again, after all these weeks was John Garfield. I was flipping channels (as usual) and came upon TCM. They were doing a special on John Garfield and it was at the point where he had to testify during the McCarthy trials and he put himself through a professional suicide. Then it went on to him performing in GOLDEN BOY (which, I believe, Clifford Odets wrote for him) and they showed a clip of him performing it in 1950 (?) on CBS (?) alongside Kim Stanley. And, now, here I am beginning my journey on trying to learn as much as I can on this actress that I know nothing about except that she was a great actress. A great, great actress. A method actress that took the method too seriously, perhaps. Her life is laced with tragedy. She had numerous affairs, 4 failed marriage, some children (3, I believe). She was an alcoholic. There's so much. I'm gonna have to get that book. I want to get the biography! Her film credits are few. Too few. She's had many, many appearances on television, doing live drama. Live. Not taped. She much preferred the theatre. That was her home. Definitely.
Kim Stanley seems very fierce to me. Meticulous and tenacious. Ferocious. Rawrrr.
I wrote a bit more in the entry about my difficulty getting into the skin of the part I was playing at that time, Princess Estrella in LIFE IS A DREAM. I wasn't filming any comfort in her skin, at all. It was a strange discomfort of nothing fitting and it was driving me crazy. I was researching Kim with no end believing that she would help me with Estrella, in some mystical way as it can happen only in the theatre to an actress that is stuck.
Currently reading: FEMALE BRANDO: The Legend of Kim Stanley by Jon Krampner
