Strawhead

In 1967, Norman Mailer had adapted his 1955 novel The Deer Park for an Off Broadway production. American Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter, and film director and composer Tom O'Horgan were interested in a stage adaptation of Mailer's 1980 book, Of Women and Their Elegance. According to Mailer, Strawhead represents "(Marilyn's) ironic, whimsical, tortured way of thinking." To move the script along, Mailer presented the beginnings of Strawhead for critique to the Actors Studio Playwright And Directors Unit, an exclusive group to which Mailer belonged. The early draft had a clichéd Monroe giving a blowjob to the Mailer-interviewer character. In response to former Marilyn Monroe roommate and Academy Award winning actress Shelley Winters blasting Mailer's effort, Mailer rewrote the part to be a burly Maileresque feminist who burst into the play from the audience. ==Production==

With the script finished, Mailer and the others set out to find the lead actress for the play. In October 1982, Mailer was attending a Park Avenue dinner party given by Claus von Bülow, who at that time was on trial for the attempted murder of von Bülow's wife, Sunny, and had been out of jail only two days on US$1 million bail. Also attending the party was Australian-based theatre actress Kate Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick turned down the part, since she already was committed to playing Marilyn Monroe in Terry Johnson's 1982 play, Insignificance. The presentation was part of the theaters noted Monday night series at the Loeb Drama Center. At Mailer's recommendation, Oglesby selected ART actor Karen MacDonald to play the Monroe character. In late August 1983, Strawhead was presented at Provincetown Playhouse. and Mailer put himself in position of director of the two-act production. In addition to the cast including Robert Heller, Mickey Knox and Patrick Sullivan, Mailer added his wife Norris Church to the cast. There was no admission charge to the workshop. ==Debut and aftermath==

In January 1986, Strawhead was debuted in full at the Actors Studio, American playwright and critic Bonnie Greer, who shared a close relationship to Mailer and reviewed an initial version of the play, stated that what Mailer put on stage ultimately was not Monroe. After the 1986 performances, the commercial performance of Strawhead all but disappeared. In her 2005 book The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, author Sarah Churchwell notes that Strawhead was a commercial failure. formerly a resident of Sebastian, Florida. Included with those papers were correspondence with Mailer and drafts and final script for Strawhead. The drafts and final script evidence the literary techniques used in Strawhead and Mailer's efforts to continually improve his own writing for Strawhead and that of Hannums. Importantly, they convey research and teaching about how the style and substance of Strawhead was developed through layers of revision. == See also ==