Period of Adjustment *** (1962, Tony Franciosa, Jane Fonda, Jim Hutton, Lois Nettleton, John McGiver, Jack Albertson, Mabel Albertson, John Astin) – Classic Movie Review 7043

Director George Roy Hill’s engaging 1962 black and white comedy drama brings to the screen one of Tennessee Williams’s lesser-known plays, with a marriage under threat while the husband George Haverstick (Jim Hutton) tries to ‘readjust’ after returning from Korea, where he suffered from battle fatigue. Typically for a Tennessee Williams piece, the husband’s marriage to his nice southern nurse Isabel Haverstick (Jane Fonda) is not consummated.

They visit another couple, Ralph Bates and rich Dorothea Bates (Tony [Anthony] Franciosa and Lois Nettleton), whose marriage is under attack from her parents (John McGiver, Mabel Albertson). This brings the Haversticks (Hutton and Fonda) together and they set out to help the Bateses (Franciosa and Nettleton).

Adult themes are humorously tackled with great zest in Isobel Lennart’s screenplay from one of Tennessee Williams’s least-known plays, in which he showed for the first time that his comic scripts could be just as devastating as his melodramas. Hill competently handles his directorial début, suggesting the promise that he later fulfilled when making The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, although this early in his career his direction seems rather theatrical.

Perhaps surprisingly, Franciosa steals the show from the other performers in a precise performance in a far from easy role, but the relaxed acting all round helps to make this odd piece work. Jack and Mabel Albertson are siblings.

The main cast are Tony Franciosa, Jane Fonda, Jim Hutton, Lois Nettleton, John McGiver, Jack Albertson, Mabel Albertson, John Astin, Scott Robertson, Lee Krieger and Barbara Perry.

Period of Adjustment is directed by George Roy Hill, runs 111 minutes, is made by Marten Pictures, is released by MGM, is written by Isobel Lennart, based on Tennessee Williams’s play, is shot in black and white by Paul C Vogel, is produced by Lawrence Weingarten, is scored by Lyn Murray and is designed by Edward C Carfagno and George W Davis.

The play’s Broadway debut opened at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York on 10 November 1960 and had 132 performances.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7043

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