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… Uncensored John Simon: Great Performances. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As I look back, I encounter what may be the most often lauded performance by an American actress in all time, Laurette Taylor’s as Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” (1944). As it happens, I saw it and liked it, but was perhaps too young to sufficiently appreciate it, or able to recall it now. The role certainly boasts writing good enough to attract fine actresses, but none other has achieved comparable glory in it, adulation even on hearsay from persons who weren’t there. And let us not forget that Julie Haydon, as daughter Laura, was pretty great too, but is not half so often cited.