The Diary of Anne Frank

June 12 was the birthday of Anne Frank (1929-1945). Confronted with the bewildering descent of America into a place where schoolgirls need to hide out in attics and where Jews are being violently attacked in the streets, it seems like an appropriate time for a post on the dramatization of her story.

Art needn’t have a moral component, but it often does, and when it does, it can be powerful, for it allows us to experience another human being’s point of view. The decision of Otto Frank to publish his murdered daughter’s diary in 1947 proved more consequential than he could have dreamed. It allowed millions of people the ability to experience the miseries and terror of the Holocaust in the first person, through the eyes of someone most of us can relate to, a normal, well-adjusted modern teenager. Where I come from, it is assigned in school when you’re about the age that she was. The power of first-person narrative is that it takes you BEYOND empathizing. It puts you in the head of the person in pain. If you have a brain and a heart it will affect you. And if you don’t, I guess nothing will work on you.

Ordinarily drama works on us differently from literature. With theatre and film you are watching other people, so in that case the experience IS about empathy (or cruelty, depending on how you and the vehicle are constituted).

But there is actually a third way, with elements of both, and stage and screen adaptations of The Diary of Anne Frank have a tendency to take us down this middle path. The third way is environmental theatre, where the audience gets the distinct feeling that they are in the same space with the characters and are thus IN the drama, more than watching. In fully immersive theatre, the characters will actually speak directly to audience members and interact with them. Most productions of The Diary of Anne Frank don’t take it that far, but you nonetheless feel that you are in the secret annex with the Franks and the other characters. And again, if you’re not some sort of psychotic, maybe you’ll remember the feeling and will hope no one else will have to go through it.

The idea of adapting The Diary of Anne Frank for Broadway must have sounded insane in some quarters in 1955. What, down the street from Damn Yankees? The concept, you’ll admit, sounds a bit like Springtime for Hitler. But producer Kermit Bloomgarten was associated with the straight plays of Lillian Hellman, and most of those are pretty damn serious. The husband-wife writing team Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and director Garson Kanin were mostly associated with light comedy and banter. Seemingly an odd way to go, but it proved an intelligent choice — they managed to inject light, air, and life into what might have otherwise been a fairly suffocating experience. 18 year old Susan Strasberg (daughter of the Actors Studio’s Lee) played Anne, with Jack Gilford and Lou Jacobi in the cast. The play won Tony, Pulitzer and Drama Critics Circle Awards and ran for nearly two years.

George Stevens, who had seen Nazi concentration camps first hand, was hired to direct the 1959 film adaptation. Audrey Hepburn, who had actually spent the war years in Amsterdam and endured privations, was approached for the lead but turned it down, citing her age (she was 30) and her professed inadequacy for such a weighty role (to date she was known for things like Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Funny Face). Millie Perkins, who had played the part in the national tour, took the role to great acclaim. Diane Baker was very well cast as her sister Margot. Also in the cast were Shelley Winters (who won an Oscar), and Richard Beymer (soon to do West Side Story). The great stage and screen clown Ed Wynn took over the role that had been Jack Gilford’s. Lou Jacobi reprised his stage role, as did Joseph Schildkraut and Gusti Huber.

The film is long (some critics said too long, nearly three hours) but one would think that would be the point, to make you share the characters’ wish to escape. Likewise it was shot in a widescreen format, with characters clustered in the middle of the compositions, so that they’re always on top of one another. Harsh lights were used to heighten feelings of anxiety. The aesthetic instincts were admirable, and critics generally appreciated it, but unlike the Broadway version the film was not rated a box office success.

There have also been numerous television adaptations in 1967, 1980, 1987, 2009, etc.

The Diary of Anne Frank returned to Broadway in 1997 directed by James Lapine, with a cast that included Natalie Portman, Linda Lavin, George Hearn, and Harris Yullin. (Rest in peace, Mr. Yullin! We lost him just yesterday, a fact overshadowed by the same-day passing of Brian Wilson. I have long planned a post on Yullin. I’ll save that tribute for his upcoming birthday, rather than letting it get lost in the shuffle.)

Some people get their noses out of joint when you mention the present situation in the same breath with the Holocaust. No one is saying this looks like 1945 or 1944 or 1942 or even 1940. But it sure looks an awful like 1934. 1934 was the year Otto Frank fled with his family to the Netherlands in the first place, because the writing was on the wall when Hitler came to power. Those people in the attic were killed because most other people in Germany didn’t believe Hitler’s ugly threats and promises. Why on EARTH would you roll the dice a second time?