The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 116

A Kiaire TTireatt: HDB5uttlln fi a Editor's Note: Television has a real treat for a change, a two-hour "Death of a Salesman." It is 17 years later for Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, who created the original roles, and for Miss Dunnock, at least, a to do again "the major role of my life." A rare television treat, the presentation of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" will star Lee J. Cobb, re-creating his original Broadway role as Willy Loman. By CYNTHIA LOWRY NEW YORK LD Television's "meat-and-potatoes" shows have all but eliminated the dessert items from the viewers' diets. Thus while the evening screens are full of entertainment shows with their heroes and heroines continuing from week to week, drama is almost missing.

Therefore, a television revival of a fine play, with some of the original cast recreating their roles, automatically becomes a real event. And certainly tonight's "Death of a Salesman," occupying two hours on the CBS channel, is one of this season's few nights to anticipate. Playwright Arthur Miller himself has trimmed the play to fit it into television's rigid time corsets. Lee J. Cobb, once again will play Willy Loman and Mildred Dunnock, his wife Linda.

This is 17 years after the play's Broadway run of 742 performances, which won the Pulitzer and New York Drama Critics' Awards. Cobb has spent the past several years playing Judge Garth, the wise father image in NBC's western, "The Virginian" and grumbling every chance he had about the frustrations of being a television actor. (He leaves the show at the end of this season now that his contract has expired.) Miss Dunnock, a slight woman with large, expressive eyes, is one of the theater's great character actresses and has appeared on the stage in drama ranging from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams. She has also played many roles in motion pictures and television. She was appearing in "Phedre" off-Broadway as rehearsals for the "Salesman" revival started, and took time off to recall the way she had originally become involved in the Miller play, which Elia Kazan was to direct.

"Of course," she said, "it has been the major role of my life. I had heard about it, and then one day I met Kermit Bloomgarden, the producer, on the street, and sort of kidding on the square told him I'd like to read for the wife's part." A short time later, however, Bloomgarden called her to say that "Kazan thinks you're wrong for the part but why don't you read for it anyway?" Miss Dunnock thought it over carefully. She decided that her normal speech she had been an English teacher was too pure for the part, and that she might be a bit too young for the role. "So I flattened my vowels and dropped final consonants. And I wore a gray wig and padded myself out." After a few words, she recalls, Kazan called up to her, "Take all that stuff off, Millie." Later, he joined her on stage and asked, "Are you married?" She replied that she was.

Children? Yes, one. "Why didn't you have more?" he prodded. "That's none of your business, Mr. Kazan," she replied in a low, level voice and got the part. "Kazan loves actors," she said.

"He studies them and thinks about them and he was obviously looking for some sort of a special reaction from me. He got it, thank heavens, because I would hate to think that someone else might have gotten that role." Over tjie years, she has done the play not only with Cobb as her husband but with seven other actors in the part. Once she read it with Miller himself handling Willy's lines. Miss Dunnock said that the revival came up almost a year ago and she was approached to play her original role again. "They talked about getting Lee back, too, and it all seemed wonderful," she said.

"But nothing came of it then, and along came a chance to do 'Phedre a perfectly fascinating play. But before I agreed to do that, I told them there was a chance for a television 'Death of a Salesman and if that came along, I'd have to leave the cast. "To tell the absolute truth, I don't really want anyone else to play Linda Loman." CBS gave the taped show extraordinary care even permitting several weeks of rehearsals. The actress knows that both she and Cobb were too young for their roles when they opened on Broadway and they both had to do some discreet aging. Now, 17 years later, that isn't necessary: That gray in her hair is the real thing.

"After all," she said, "I'm a grandmother now." Miss Dunnock is a native of Baltimore, taught at a fashionable New York finishing school, and eventually went into the theater. She is married to Keith Urmy, an executive with a New York bank, and has a married daughter, Linda who was not named after Mrs. Loman. "Doing the play in television will not carry the same problems that it had in the theater," she summed up. "The play had such enormous impact on audiences that if an actor really let himself go and spilled over too much, suddenly you would hear a sob in row 6 and then the whole house would sob.

I've never been in such a drama anywhere in my life." Sad DBui True By VAL ADAMS c) New York Times News Service NEW YORK Salesmen are said to be sore about the two-hour television production of "Death of a Salesman." have not yet threatened to demonstrate against the Columbia Broadcasting: System, but the Sales Executives Club of New York has proposed certain changes in the script of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play in order to improve the image of the salesman depicted in the drama. The club, which calls the play a classic, says on the other hand that the story of Willy Loman 'has been plaguing our 'selling as a career efforts for years. Young persons, it adds, are reluctant to go into selling because they "believe Willy's fate to be that of the typical salesman in a cruel and heartless business world." CBS has twice postponed the presentation of "Death of a Salesman," which will co-star Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock in the roles they had on Broadway back in 1949. Recently Harry R.

White, executive director of the Sales Executives Club, wrote a letter to Joseph C. Wilson, president of Xerox, the show's sponsor, offering ideas for script modifications. Whatever his real intention, White's letter Qualifies him as the tongue-in-cheek man-of-the-week. White suggested a prologue to the play alerting viewers that they were about to see the tragedy of a man who went into selling with the wrong ideas, a man who had been improperly trained by today's standards. The prologue would warn that Willy Loman would have been a failure "in anything else be tackled." The official also had an idea that "Death of a Salesman" might add a brief epilogue called "Life of a Salesman," which would point out "that with modern, customer-oriented selling methods, Willy Lomans are ghosts of the past." White cited certain lines In the play that might be eliminated or modified.

He described them as "needless anti-selling, anti-business comments that run through the play and add nothing to either plot, mood or characterization." Arthur Miller, who wrote "Death of a Salesman," could not be reached for comment. On the Cover Mildred Dunnock and Lee J. Cobb as Linda and Willy Loman in the CBS-TV adaptation of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." Mildred Dunnock, with George Segal as her son, in the television adaptation of t4Death of a Salesman" tonight at 9 o'clock on nnday j4ay 1966 21 Florida Accent.