Such Tragic Ironies

Dominick Dunne's novel was called The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, but the real name was Woodward. Ann Margret was the only logical choice to play Ann Grenville in this NBC mini-series, but the role of the matriarch Alice Grenville was almost played by the great Barbara Stanwyck, instead of the Academy-Award winning legend Claudette Colbert, who actually was a friend of the real Alice Woodward and looked more like her than Stanwyck, whom I consider the greatest actress ever. This would have been an interesting combo because Ann Margret thought Stanwyck a class act after the latter won the Emmy for The Thorn Birds and acknowledged A-M's nomination for A Streetcar named Desire in her acceptance speech at the Emmy Awards in 1984. Yet Colbert was great and won a Golden Globe even though it is A-M's performance as the younger Mrs. Grenville which holds this gem together.

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles had a stellar cast with stand-out performances by Sian Phillips as the Duchess of Windsor (she looked so much like the real Wallis), Sam Wanamaker as the Prosecutor, John Rubinstein as Bratsie, and Elizabeth Ashley as Babette van Degan.

The only disappointment I feel when I play this on DVD is watching the sad, wasted life and tragic death of Billy Grenville/Woodward unfold because he is played by the equally tragic and wasted Stephen Collins, the gorgeous preppie WASP actor who has since been outed as a child molester. It is ironic that the bad karma that enveloped the blueblood Billy Woodward and the millionaire Dan Broderick (whom Collins portrayed in 1992's The Betty Broderick Story) has descended on the fine actor who played both. The Two Mrs. Grenvilles was the highest rated mini-series on television in 1987, and The Betty Broderick Story did the same for CBS in 1992.

Some sad footnotes: Billy Woodward wanted to divorce Ann to marry the beautiful Italian socialite Princess Marina Torlonia (the paternal grandmother of Brooke Shields), who herself was killed in a car crash in 1960, five years before her grand-daughter was born. Ann and Billy's two sons both committed suicide; the youngest Jimmy, a Vietnam veteran, jumped out of a Central Park window in 1976, a year after Ann killed herself, and in 1999 the oldest son William Woodward, known as Woody, also jumped out of his high rise apartment window. Woody was despondent over the death of his brother (Jimmy blamed their mother for killing their father) and the fact that his own marriage had unraveled. His wife divorced him and refused to allow him to see their daughter. The same fate took the life of Gloria Vanderbilt's son Carter Cooper (older brother of Anderson Cooper). He also jumped out of his mother's Gracie Square townhouse window when Gloria tried to stop him. Rumor has it that she set him up with Brooke Shields at his prep school graduation party. Vanderbilt was thrilled but Carter later became involved with someone else at College who dumped him. He was depressed for several months before his death at the age of twenty-three. Why do we envy the rich, famous, and powerful?