Remembering Kim Hunter During Oscar Month!

By Richard Eric Weigle

KIM HUNTER (center) with Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando in A Street Car Named Desire. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

So many pop culture references in the United States come from American movies, and certain quotes from films are also embedded into our national psyche. Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind proclaiming “Tomorrow Is Another Day” and Clark Gable quipping “Frankly My Dear I Don’t Give A Damn.”

Although Marlon Brando famously said “I could have been a contender” in On The Waterfront, he may be even more famous for yelling “Stella, Stella” in A Streetcar Named Desire to our former friend, neighbor and member of the Bedford Barrow Commerce Block Association for many years, the late Academy Award Winner, Kim Hunter, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 79.

Most people do not know that in 1951 when Kim won her Academy Award for playing Stella, she lived in a brownstone at 28 Grove Street. It was before the Academy Awards were televised, and she actually found out by telephone that she had won. Soon of course, motorists and pedestrians were screaming “STELLA, STELLA” up at her second story windows. Pregnant with her second child, she said to her husband Robert Emmett, “Robert, we need to move and I have three stipulations. It has to be a bigger apartment, it has to be in the West Village and it has to be in the back.” So, when they found their perfect three-bedroom apartment with a terrace and a living room big enough for a grand piano at 42 Commerce Street, I think they felt like they had hit the lottery.

I was lucky to know Kim as a friend, an acting colleague, her official archivist, a producer of a documentary she appeared in called Broadway: the Golden Age and as a sort of caregiver, along with my husband, Michael Anastasio, for the last few years of her life. It was a privilege to shop and do errands for her, spend time organizing photos and reviews of her 60-year career in radio, television, stage and screen, and just spend time with her in her quintessential New York apartment above the Cherry Lane Theater which was filled with books, art, awards and mementos of her illustrious career.

I had the pleasure of acting with Kim in her final Off-Broadway Show entitled The Madwoman Of Chaillot in 2001. It also starred another well-known actress, Ann Jackson, and a lovely and talented actress who lived at 49 Grove Street, Sloane Shelton. Even though Kim was the Academy Award Winner for A Streetcar Named Desire and had more Broadway shows to her credit than anyone in the cast, she was the least demanding and most professional of anyone in the production. She showed up knowing her lines and never complained about the cramped dressing rooms or lack of amenities as others did. What a great role model she was for the younger members of the cast to see how a true star and professional should behave. I was so proud of her. To go to and from the theater with her every night, was a privilege and a pleasure. Who else could discuss the differences between Jessica Tandy’s interpretation of Blanche Dubois and Vivien Leigh’s? Kim had originated the role of Stella on Broadway and in the film, so she knew whereof she spoke. She told me that although Jessica Tandy was wonderful in the role of Blanche on Broadway, she did not quite have the sex appeal or the flirtatious aspect of the character as Vivien did. According to Kim, Vivien had it all. She also confessed to me that Marlon Brando was the best and sexiest actor with whom she ever worked.

Even though Kim was black-listed during the McCarthy Era for being a NY liberal and signing petitions for civil rights and peace conferences, she still managed to carve out a long and distinguished career. One of her highlights came in the late 1960s when she played Zira, the coquettish chimpanzee in Planet of the Apes. In that film, she gets to say an unforgettable movie line. When the dashing Charlton Heston, playing the human, asks to kiss her goodbye, her retort is “All right but you’re so dammed ugly.” She went on to star in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes and Beneath The Planet Of The Apes. Later in the 1980s, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for playing Nola Madison in The Edge Of Night and continued to work in television, film, and on stage until her death.

One of her last performances was at a night honoring Oscar Wilde at the Jefferson Library. It was a star-studded event. Kim was very frail at the time and walked with a cane. As she cautiously made her assent up the stairs to the podium, she was a fragile and aging actress. Michael and I wondered how she would even make it through her dramatic reading of Wilde’s letters from prison. And then the miracle and skill of great acting took place before our eyes. As Kim reached the podium, she became a different person. She straightened her shoulders, looked straight at the audience and showed what a pro she was. She became Oscar Wilde in prison and the audience was mesmerized, and so were we. When the reading was over, she grabbed her cane, her shoulders began to slump over and she once again became frail and elderly.

She had enough energy to greet her fans and colleagues, and then it was time to slowly walk her home and watch her carefully make her way up the slanted and narrow staircase at 42 Commerce Street to her second-floor apartment which she and her husband, Robert, found together over 50 years before. It was their little piece of heaven, being larger than the one on Grove Street, still in her beloved Greenwich Village, and most importantly, shielded her from all the noise from the street, IT WAS IN THE BACK.