William Gibson wrote it (with the uncredited help of Arthur Penn) first as a 1957 TV movie with Teresa Wright, Patty McCormack and Akim Tamiroff, directed by Penn. It was a massive hit. Penn had directed many TV films by then. Gibson then wrote the play 'Two for the Seesaw' which opened with Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft. So knocked out by Bancroft was he that he decided also to adapt the Helen Keller story for theatre for her. It opened on Broadway in 1959 with Bancroft and Patty Duke, with Arthur Penn directing, so all three were well rehearsed for the film - and it shows.
Penn had had one feature film under his belt - The Left Handed Gun with Paul Newman. When it came to the film of The Miracle Worker, he was allowed his own cast (the studio wanted Audrey Hepburn to play the lead) and final cut. Bancroft and Duke quite rightly won Oscars, as did Gibson, and Penn was nominated.
His only regret was that he left too many of the play's words on-screen, not fully realising the power of the film medium. (Thanks to the Archive of American Television for this interview.) However this is where I'll butt in and say that Penn hired the right editor, and that elevates the film to a higher level. Aram Avakian was best known for his documentary editing on Jazz on a Summer's Day in 1959, had one feature to his credit (Girl of the Night). He does these incredible things with overlapping images and sound, multiple exposures, and also brings in this element of the childhood flashbacks appearing in a super-grainy, almost ghostly way, again, only exposing a part of the image.
There's no way the girl's six, by the way - she's far too strong. The scenes of conflict between the two women are exhausting, brilliantly filmed (multiple cameras? They would have been on TV. Not sure. According to TCM, via Wikipedia, the dining room scene was shot over five days with three cameras.) Made me think they were the inspiration for The Exorcist!
Rest of cast good too: Victor Jory, Inga Swenson, Andrew Prine, Kathleen Comegys. Hadn't heard of Cuban DP Ernesto Caparrós, music by Leonard Rosenman.
Avakian edited the weird and wonderful Lilith, again with some panache, then cut Mickey One, again for Penn.
So great to see something so good we'd never seen before.
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