Everyone who has seen this film will remember the rare footage of a screen test that Laurette Taylor made (by the look of it) some time in the 1940s. I wonder if anyone happens to know what was the movie for which she was testing?
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Hey there. It was none other than the "Glass Menagerie", which is the play that brought Laurette Taylor back (for a while) triumphantly to Broadway. She is stunning in that test, but the studio didn't get it, and she didn't get the part, and Menagerie went on to be just an OK film with Gertrude Lawrence in the part of Amanda.
I have to make a correction: the screentest was done in the late 1930s at the behest of David O. Selznick, it was for the movie THE YOUNG IN HEART, the role was the rich old lady befriended by a family of con-artists (played by Roland Young, Billie Burke, Janet Gaynor and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) and the role was eventually played by Minnie Dupree. (Actually, Selnzick was very interested in having Laurette Taylor, but she was the one who really refused to consider doing a movie at that point; she had made some silent movies, including PEG O' MY HEART and HAPPINESS in 1924 and 1925, both directed by King Vidor.)
It was NOT a screentest for THE GLASS MENAGERIE.
Correct. Laurette's test is actually a passage from the script of THE YOUNG IN HEART. Minnie Dupree is completely forgotten but apparently she was also a big turn of the century stage star who like Laurette very rarely did films and unlike Ms. Taylor did not have a sensational finale to her stage career.
Remembering JANE WYMAN (1917-2007), BETTY HUTTON (1921-2007), YVONNE DE CARLO (1922-2007)
Thank you all for that information.
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