Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

This erudite study from photography critic Gefter (What Becomes a Legend Most) explores the genesis and impact of Edward Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and its 1966 film adaptation. The play’s disquieting vision of domestic discord, Gefter suggests, was inspired by the “dissonance [Albee] experienced throughout his emotionally barren childhood in a household of abundant material luxury.” Recounting the drama that plagued the making of Mike Nichols’s film version, Gefter notes that the first-time director sparred with original cinematographer and industry veteran Harry Stradling, whom Nichols claimed undermined his creative vision and eventually replaced with Haskell Wexler. During heated squabbles between married costars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, other personnel on set were unsure “if they were witnessing the actors getting into character or simply watching the husband-and-wife dynamics of the Burtons’ real-life marriage.” The trivia entertains (Gefter contends the real-life sources for Albee’s embittered married protagonists were a Wagner College faculty couple whose notorious fights were also the subject of Andy Warhol’s 1965 verité documentary, Bitch), and Gefter persuasively credits the film with setting the template for more bracing Hollywood depictions of love after romance’s first blush. This will renew readers’ admiration for the classic film and its source material. Agent: Adam Eaglin, Cheney Agency. (Feb.)