SUMMERTIME, 1955. David Lean’s entrancing film of Arthur
Laurents’ “The Time of the Cuckoo” effortlessly draws one in again, no matter
now many times one has seen it. I wonder though what it would be like if the
homlier Shirley Booth, who played it on the stage, had re-created her role as
Jane Hudson, the spinster secretary from Akron ,
Ohio , on the loose in Venice .
Jane considers herself independent and happy to go it alone, but you can feel
very alone in a strange, new beautiful city, we can feel her ache with
loneliness among the crowds in the Piazza San Marco, then suddenly she is aware
of the handsome man who is watching her …


Arthur Laurents though, at his waspish best, who wrote the original play “The Time of the Cuckoo” is less than enamoured with star and director in his memoir, writing that “Shirley (named Leona Samish) came by boat to Venice on a budget holiday, her clothes were bought on a secretary’s salary, and with an ordinary camera. Kate Hepburn’s Jane Hudson flew to

SUMMERTIME was moderately
successful at the box office and Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar. The
screenplay was credited to H E Bates, a first-rate English novelist, it should
have been credited to Hepburn and Lean, true believers that stars can do
anything they want, even write. In this aspect of the movie business they were
unoriginal.

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