‘Jessica Lange: An Adventurer’s Heart’
—Cathy Ritchie
Jessica Lange: An Adventurer’s Heart
—by Anthony Uzarowski (University Press of Kentucky, 2023)
True story….
On a Sunday afternoon in May 2016, I attended a Broadway performance of my favorite play, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. In its final few moments, the lovely lady portraying Mary Tyrone stepped to the front of the stage to deliver her closing monologue. Almost immediately, I realized something amazing: the entire theatre was dead silent. No coughing, no candy wrappers, no Playbill pages turning, no shifting in seats. The woman’s unamplified voice sharing the playwright’s eloquent words held us in reverent thrall, as I whispered to myself: “I’m watching one of the greatest actresses who’s ever lived.”
She was Jessica Lange, who won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play a month later. On that amazing day in May I felt both pride, in that an performer in her 60s was inspiring audiences into speechlessness; and sheer gratitude at the power of art in general and theatre in particular to make all our lives richer, if only for an afternoon.
Lange is one of the few performers who’s won all three awards in the so-called “Triple Crown of Acting”—Oscar, Emmy, and Tony. Author Anthony Uzarowski has now added to her lustre via his superb biography, a “read” of fewer than 200 pages, but thoroughly researched and rendered in effortless prose. His narrative swept me along on a wonderful journey from opening word to last. Jessica Lange: An Adventurer’s Heart is an outstanding work.
Uzarowski offers a chronological recounting of Lange’s life, masterfully blending her professional achievements with details of her somewhat unorthodox personal life.
Lange was born in 1949 in Cloquet, Minnesota; though she would live in numerous locales, she would always consider the northern reaches of that state a home base. Her early adult years found her married to photographer Paco Grande, and traveling through France, where she studied mime theatre and acting, and pursued her interests in art and photography. Her marriage would not last, but her drive to perform held steadfast.
Lange’s first film was a notorious 1976 remake of King Kong, inspiring much derision. It could have signaled the beginning and end of her acting career, but fortunately, she soon met Bob Fosse, who became a mentor and, briefly, a romantic partner. Her appearance in his All That Jazz (1979) kept her in the public eye, and 1981 brought a controversial reworking of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson. In 1982 came her watershed role: the doomed actress Frances Farmer in Frances, for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. While Lange’s career has included numerous highlights, many critics still consider her work in that film her finest hour. It was also a pivotal step in her personal life: on the set of Frances she met her eventual decades-long life partner, playwright Sam Shepard.
The comedy Tootsie, also in 1982, resuled in two Oscar nominations for Lange in one year, a rare feat. Uzarowski theorizes that she won Best Supporting Actress for Tootsie perhaps as a consolation prize: she was competing for Best Actress with Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice. Nevertheless, Lange’s career was finally solid and evolving.
As Lange and Shepard established homes and raised three children (including Lange’s daughter from an earlier relationship with Mikhail Baryshnikov), she continued making films featuring multi-faceted women, as such roles materialized. Her resume would eventually include Country, Sweet Dreams, Crimes of the Heart, Music Box, Streetcar Named Desire (for television), O Pioneers!, Losing Isaiah, and Men Don’t Leave, among others. In 1995, Lange scored a “comeback” of sorts with a Best Actress Oscar for Blue Sky, co-starring Tommy Lee Jones. Author Uzarowski details Lange’s experiences with each of these projects, interspersing her own reflections along the way.
Throughout her career, Lange embraced motherhood, taking her children with her to numerous movie sets. She and Shepard, who did not legally marry during their 25+ years together, would permanently separate in 2009. Shepard died from ALS in 2017.
The 2000s brought changes to Lange’s career, as substantive roles for women of advancing age became hard to find. She began appearing on stage more frequently, and remained visible via television productions such as 2003’s Normal, co-starring Tom Wilkinson. Perhaps her greatest triumph during this period was her portrayal of Big Edie in HBO’s Grey Gardens (2009), for which Lange won her first Emmy Award.
In 2011, she joined the cast of FX’s American Horror Story. Over four seasons with the show, Lange offered what many believe to be her finest performances, amassing several more Emmys along the way. As we know, in 2016, Long Day’s Journey on Broadway became yet another triumph. And in 2017, she returned to the small screen, playing Joan Crawford in FX’s miniseries Feud, with Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis. At age 74, Lange continues seeking projects offering challenges and artistic satisfaction.
This book’s subtitle is totally fitting. Jessica Lange has indeed always been an “adventurer,” investing her heart, talents and convictions within roles offering not only entertainment, but also casting an eye on life’s oddities and glories. Anthony Uzarowski deserves his own “Standing O” for this wonderful biography. His book is another round of applause for that lovely lady who inspired us all on that springtime afternoon.
