David Kronke: Method Fest: Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee and Julie Harris will accept Calabasas and Woodland Hill’s Method Fest’s 2006 Lifetime Achievement Awards this weekend, as well as appear at the screening of their film “The Way Back Home,� about the relationship between a woman who has suffered from a stroke and her housekeeper.
I spoke to Dee for a story on the Method Fest that ran in Wednesday’s paper, but there wasn’t enough space for her to talk about the film, so here’s a little bit of that. After the links.
In addition to her prodigious acting resume, Dee, of course, was with her husband Ossie Davis – who died last year – a tireless civil-rights champion; they were inducted into the NAACP image award Hall of Fame in 1989 and in 2004, were honored at the Kennedy Center Honors. She’s won and been nominated for a slew of other trophies, as well.
Anyway, here’s her love letter to Harris, who had suffered a stroke before the film, but had sufficiently recovered by the time production began:
“I’ve known Julie Harris for a long time, and I had first fallen in love with her when I saw her in (the 1952) film ‘The Member of the Wedding.’ We’ve been threatening to work together for a long time, and it was quite an experience.
“The author (Michael Houston King) used her recovering as an element of the story. It was very moving. The stroke didn’t seem to affect her as an actor, and she deliberately made use of her present state. Her memory of that time was so important to her performance, as are all the things we go through as we get older.
“I was amazed at her artistry and the technique as far as using what is within yourself as a performer. All those elements came into play. She really grasped the reality and the art of the moment, and I was deeply impressed with that and moved by that.�
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