Watching Susan Strasberg in The Other Side of the Wind made me
waste/spend an hour or so googling her and her career. I always liked
her because of her good work in Taste of Fear (1961), The High Bright
Sun (1965) and Psych Out"(1968) where she specialised in the role of
Woman Who Gets Scared By Things (mean step mothers, Cyprus terrorists,
hippies).
The daughter of Lee Strasberg, she started her career with a
real bang - she is great as Kim Novak's sister in Picnic (1955)
and became a Broadway sensation before she was 20 playing the title
role in The Diary of Anne Frank. It was thought she was going to be
this incredible star but after she was in Stage Struck (1958), a
remake of the Katherine Hepburn film Morning Glory, everyone seemed to
decide she was crap and she didn't help by doing things like run off to
Italy and believe Richard Burton when he said he'd leave his wife for
her.
As she later admitted she also didn't try as hard as she could in
part because she was afraid of not living up to the family name. She
kept working for most of her life as an actor and later wrote some
memoirs. It's a shame she didn't make more better quality stuff but she
had an interesting life. And (SPOILERS) no one seems to comment how the
climax of Other Side of the Wind involves the John Huston character
punching her character in the face for suggesting he might be gay.
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