User reviews

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Wow! Long title...) is an interesting drama about an awful mother and her two teenage daughters. The mother, Beatrice (Joanne Woodward), is a widow who doesn't really work. She instead chain smokes, complains about everything, insults everyone, including her kids, and doesn't seem to know how to raise children. Her oldest daughter Ruth (Roberta Wallach) is a popular cheerleader, who occasionally has convulsions. Youngest daughter Matilda (Nell Potts, Woodward's real life daughter) is good at science, but is very shy and has no friends (despite being more attractive, in my opinion). They have an old woman as a border to earn some money. This movie is very sweet and deals realistically with family problems. Beatrice is obnoxious and self-centered and Ruth is the same. The only character one can sympathize with is shy Matilda. The film was directed by Paul Newman, husband of Woodward and father of Potts. It was based on a play by Paul Zindel, who wrote a book, "The Pigman", that I had to read for high school. I think the movie was once available on VHS, but it's probably out-of-print. I hope someday the Newman family will take some time off from making spaghetti sauce to collaborate with 20th Century Fox to give this movie the deluxe DVD treatment.

Released by 20th Century Fox in December of 1972, Paul Newman's sensitive screen version of Paul Zindel's Pulitzer-Prize winning play has been unjustly forgotten. A showcase for wife Joanne Woodward who gives a bravura performance as Beatrice aka "Betty the Loon". In addition to Woodward, there are excellent performances from 2 second generation actors: Nell Potts and Robert Wallach as her daughters Matilda and Ruth, and Judith Lowry as "Nanny" who manages to create a character without uttering a single word. Newman, the 4 actresses, and a well-chosen supporting cast succeed in making the crux of the film funny, touching and believable. This film, and Rachel,Rachel(68)are tributes to director Newman. Marigolds is not available on VHS or DVD. I saw it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music(BAM) as part of a retrospective tribute to Paul Newman the actor and director.

This film has the same wonderfully subtle direction as "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter," "Diary Of A Mad Housewife" and "Goodbye Columbus." The lost 60s/70s style for dialogue films with immediately profound social messages is probably best exampled in "EGROMMM" -- Newman's daughter (Nell Potts) plays the stoic, life-dampened child who refuses to let her drunken slob of a mother destroy her brilliance.. at least for now. We're just slightly distant observers in this style of filmmaking. You won't get under anyone's skin or into anyone's head. But you may have grown up in similar circumstances, god forbid. An excellent film about the subtleties of abuse without coming across preachy in the slightest. Deeply moving.

"This is an adaptation of Paul Zindel's wonderful but tormented play. This play itself is compelling and has a kind of Tennessee Williams flavor; especially "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire". The adaptation is very successful as the production designer (Gene Callahan) manages to transfer the book's psychologically oppressive ambiance to film; "shame hangs in the air of this house" like a cloud of poison gas.

Director Paul Newman gets performances from his cast that pull together parallel stories of how a "strong, strange, and beautiful" flower can unexpectedly spring from an environmental wasteland. His most difficult task is restraining or masking Joanne Woodward's earthy likability so that we waste little sympathy on her character. But using Woodward as the mother allowed him to get a once-in-a-lifetime performance from their daughter (Nell Potts as Matilda-Tillie in the play). Potts abandoned acting after this movie but her ethereal take on Matilda is right on the money and a big reason why the film works so well.

This is really just a story about Matilda's science fair project in which marigold seeds are subjected to varying amounts of gamma ray radiation (the independent variable in her experiment). Those flowers receiving a moderate amount of radiation bloom in amazing and wonderful ways. However, those flowers subjected to additional radiation either have their growth stunted or whither and die.

Meanwhile Tillie and her older sister Ruth are living an analogous story with their mother Beatrice in an extremely emotionally abusive household. In the play it is stated that Beatrice is insane but not how or why she became this way. In the movie the viewer soon reaches this same conclusion. Older daughter Ruth (an amazing performance by Eli Wallach's daughter Roberta) maintains a fairly normal lifestyle at school, she is a majorette and popular but is very selfish and demanding of attention. Notably she is also an epileptic, which is subtly significant because it is analogous to receiving an excessive amount of radiation. Tillie is very different (analogous to receiving a moderate amount of radiation), seemingly shy and withdrawn, she is actually very independent and has found an outlet from the family in her science projects. This outlet serves as a protective niche in which she can bloom.

A truly great scene is Matilda's acceptance speech at the science fair. She explains the results of her project and really lays out the main theme of the story for the viewer. Watch as she mentions how excessive radiation causes dwarf plants, at that point they cut to a closeup of Ruth in the audience. Both the experiment and the family illustrate that while a reasonable degree of adversity can actually be beneficial, too much of the same adversity will poison life.

While this would be a good film if focused solely on Matilda, it is elevated to extraordinary because Newman chooses to also make Ruth a central part of the story. The conventional "movie-way" to tell this story would be to make it an inspirational tale of triumphing over adversity; of free-will overcoming destiny. But fortunately Newman elects to show both sides of the story, in Ruth he shows someone who never has a chance, who cannot recognize her destiny or ever hope to overcome it.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Paul Newman again surprises (along with "Rachel, Rachel") as Joanne Woodward is presented in the unglamorous role of Beatrice Hunsdorfer, a bitter widow living on the fringe in an anonymous Connecticut suburb.

Nell Potts and Roberta Wallach in diametrically opposed roles, Ruth, the epileptic popular daughter, and Mathilda, the science-project sensitive daughter who relates to her pet rabbit.

While some is a bit overdone it is no stretch to imagine a bored housewife trying to make ends meet; Woodward is sympathetic and annoying at the same time. A brilliant performance.

This film was made in 1972 and it would truly amazing to see real character portrayals in film again. Today we have to visit the theater for such affecting performances. Well worth more than one viewing. 9/10.

It's tempting to revist a "favorite" film from one's teenage years. It's fascinating and more than a little intimidating to see how much of it you do or don't relate to as an adult. This was the defining movie of the "in" crowd of which I was a member. We were so full of angst (and ourselves) that we were just insufferable. Having said that, I can now look back and say that although the story did not meet our life's expectations or our predict how our lives would turn out, it was very accurate about how we felt and was able to portray all those awful teenage emotions we were feeling. It's all about perceptions. I would suggest that any parent of a teenager, especially a girl, watch this and then read the novel. As an adult, you might think it melodramatic and extreme, but I promise you, I remember how it felt, and Paul Newman poignantly and heartbreakingly captures every single tear shed by these two sisters and their mother. An under-rated gem and a teenage must-see film.

A derelict mother with hostility issues raises two radically different daughters in a hovel. Based on a Pulitzer prize winning play this story is pure fiction and could have only crept out of the mind of some couch potato writer who had a dismal outlook on single- parent upbringings. One of the daughters is a wise-cracking, boy- crazy socialite who deals with her mother's heavy handed tirades by modeling her own mother's behavior against her. Oh, and she happens to be an epileptic prone to grand maul seizures. The other, a shy and delicate girl with sweet and refined manners who escapes her depressing home life through an interest in her High School science projects. Woodward puts her all into the performance, yet is still too refined to plausibly portray a degenerate hag who chain smokes, drinks malt liquor and spews out witty and sarcastic barbs. Her vocal manner doesn't quite jibe with the nature of the character and it comes off as a bit too stagy. The family lives in squalor while the mother scrounges a measly living selling scam vacations from her dingy living room chair. No surprise comes when she senses she's losing her prospect's interest that she lashes out with insulting quips to exact revenge for her life filled with rejection and abandonment. The early 70's brought us movies that focused more on character interaction where the underlying intention was to make the audience feel uncomfortable and enthralled at the same time. Marigolds serve as a metaphor in which radioactive relationships can have either vexing effects on their victims or they can yield strangely beautiful results depending on the frequency. One peculiar and offensive aspect of the film is where we witness a case of elder abuse in which a woman drops off her elderly mother as a lodger in the dysfunctional family's slattern home. This is not an enjoyable film and I found some of the scenes repugnant, but it is certainly a thinking person's movie for those who are drawn to corrosive drama, people with bad character traits and folks who are simply down and out have-nots of the world.

Paul Newman stepped into the director’s chair for the fourth time (the IMDb curiously omits his now ironically-titled 1961 short, ON THE HARMFULNESS OF TOBACCO) in bringing Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play to the screen. Predictably, the depressing but whimsical domestic drama provided his actress wife Joanne Woodward with a meaty central role of a delusional, alcoholic and widowed mother of two girls; she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival and earned a nod at the Golden Globes but was curiously bypassed at the Oscars. The girls are played by Roberta Wallach (daughter of actors Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson) and the Newmans’ own daughter, Nell Potts.

The film may wallow in the family’s squalid surroundings for the duration but is redeemed by disarmingly funny moments (Woodward’s foul-mouthed tirades against rabbit crap all over the house, Wallach’s uncanny imitation of her boorish mum for the benefit of her jeering schoolmates and the gleefully sadistic speech given by the little girl who boiled the skin off a cat for her science project!) and characters (the silent old lady they take on as a lodger). Another good sequence is when Woodward goes to her brother-in-law for a loan to start off her proposed tea-shop business and causes a scene in front of their guests. Thankfully, the alcoholic side of Woodward’s character only comes to the fore towards the end – culminating in the moving sequence of her dressing up for Potts’ science contest (which she eventually wins) but arrives late and, once again, embarrasses herself in public.

Maurice Jarre provides a fine score and Newman’s direction is practically invisible as he highlights the performances of his cast. Incidentally, the strange title must have turned a lot of spectators away back in the day – as the film is virtually forgotten nowadays; in fact, I only got to watch it via a pan-and-scan copy off U.S. Cable TV!

This film captures with unflinching accuracy the anguish caused to a family by a parent with a severe alcohol problem. However alcohol abuse is just one symptom displayed by this particular family unit which is struggling to survive economically disastrous times, from a severely disadvantaged position. The daughter's school science project "The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" mirrors the ongoing American social experiment of economic rationalism.

Joanne Woodward's character Beatrice is not evil, though she does some of the most cruel and demeaning things imaginable to her children. I believe that it's a great credit to both the playwright and director that we are able to develop empathy for her in spite of these actions. Much of what has happened to Beatrice in life has been out of her control, and yet she struggles to support her family and she holds desperately to hope of a highly unlikely avenue of economic escape (an as yet unformulated cheesecake recipe).

This is one of the most demanding, highly impacting and yet compulsive films I've seen. It's a window to the interpersonal relationships of good people who are struggling to respond with vigour to a system that delineates winners and losers.

Brash widower Beatrice Hunsdorfer (Joanne Woodward) and her daughters Ruth (Roberta Wallach) and Matilda (Nell Potts) live in a ramshackle home. Ruth suffers from epilepsy and is boy-obsessed. Matilda is an introvert and more taken with science. She does a school project to see the effects of radiation on her marigold plants in different ways. The three female characters have a complicated relationship.

Paul Newman's directions are very plain. One can feel rusty grim and see the simple style. Joanne Woodward delivers the character broadly. Real life daughter of Newman and Woodward, Nell Potts, delivers her character in a quiet simple manner. These are compelling characters but the plot meanders around. There is a simple sad beauty to it all.

Middle-aged single mother of two teenage girls, living in near-squalor due to her stop-and-start career as an in-home telephone saleswoman, tries convincing relatives to invest in her dream business, a tea shop which she imagines will become a chain of tea shops. The woman's children, an epileptic boy-chaser and a science nerd, regard their only parent mainly with disdain. Paul Zindel's intimate Pulitzer Prize-winning play has been opened up by screenwriter Alvin Sargent, yet the addition of supporting characters doesn't change the focal point of the piece: the shrewish, ill-tempered Mama. Joanne Woodward obviously saw a potential tour-de-force in the role, a born loser right out of high school who never made a good decision in her adult life, and yet she's too refined an actress to carry off this strident characterization. Sargent and director Paul Newman (Woodward's husband) attempt to make Beatrice Hunsdorfer a bit of an eccentric (trying on kooky wigs in the opening scenes), but this doesn't work either. Hoping to vulgarize the woman's personage by putting her in slatternly attire and surrounding her with decay doesn't jibe with the tony dialogue we hear--nor with Woodward's precise delivery of it. The girls (Roberta Wallach and the soft-spoken Nell Potts, Newman and Woodward's daughter) are a bit more interesting but hardly any more convincing, and the Eugene O'Neill-styled 'plot' becomes as heavy as its burdensome title. * from ****

I have only seen this film once, at the Tyneside Cinema, an early arts house independent cinema in the UK. I saw the film in the year of its release. I still treasure memories of Joanne Woodward's performance as the tragi-comic loudmouth of a mother, who is desperate to do things right, but also has little time for the opinions of others. I would dearly love to see it again, but on the few occasions that I have enquired, I have been greeted by bewildered expressions from folk who plainly think that I am having them on when I mention the title. Perhaps this is an apt result, given the way that the star of the film played such an alienated role that fans of the film should now find themselves being looked at in a somewhat dubious way! To those who have not seen it, grab this powerful performance with both hands. It truly is a gem, with a fine range of emotions, and a cast that works fully together. Thank you for giving me the chance to write this.

I was a student at Read Middle School and a very influential woman had come into my life in the name of Mrs. Jettie Tisdale (R.I.P.)...news of an upcoming movie being filmed in Bridgeport and I was destined to feel those lights on me! I remember not only meeting Mr. Paul Newman, his lovely wife Joanne Woodward but was given the "task" of accompanying and acquainting their daughter Nell Potts with the area setup, the logistics of Harding High School as well as taking my meals and studies with her. She was a regular girl and didn't act "different" or "funny" and seemed to like me as well. I found her parents to be likable and kind and it was a privilege to have met Mr. Paul Newman personally. He was and will remain to be a charitable and sensitive man. I'm in the auditorium scene...I swear I was mesmerized when Ms. Woodward-Newman burst into the auditorium... a great opportunity for a regular kid from Bridgeport! That was my first film! From 8th grade to age 48 years old when I received a second opportunity to be in a film "6 NIGG*! In A Cadillac" filmed in my then hometown of Middletown...I play the impound officer! Regrets on the passing of Mr. Paul Newman and I thank you for your personal encouragement. Sincerely

Joanne Woodward's performance as a maudlin, melodramatic and drunk widow and mother of two young daughters is certainly telling. The film depicts dysfunctionality, a sense of closure rather than opportunity in life and emotional abuse with many comedic touches and records the 'feel' of '71-72 that greyest of hippie years so well. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's young daughter, Nell Potts plays the blonde thoughtful 'Matilda' who shows a keen interest in biology and astrophysics: hence the film's title. Wallach (daughter of Eli Wallach - he was in Leone's ''The Good the Bad & The Ugly'' (1966)) plays the swarthy, lively but epileptic 'Jessica'. Woodward won the Best Actress Award at the '73 Cannes Film Festival. 1972 was an interesting year for Paul Newman: the excellent modern-day western ''Pocket Money'' and revisionist western ''The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean'' were shown in cinemas that year.

'The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds'(1972)is the story of a secluded, alcoholic mother( Joanne Woodward) and her two eccentric daughters,( Nell Potts, Roberta Wallach) based upon the Pulitzer Prize award- winning play by Paul Zindel. Paul Newman did a wonderful job directing this somewhat depressing, yet fascinating character study movie. Filmed in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Joanne Woodward gives the performance of a lifetime in this gritty, realistic film. The subtle way it presents both child and elderly abuse ( I don't see other reviewers mentioning the grandmother ) is more than memorable - it is totally realistic.

This film has real staying power. I saw it when it was released, and I've never forgotten the story, nor the powerful performances given by the cast. I thought it was a very "heavy" film, but there were also several moments of hilarity. To be fair, I believe that "the human condition" should be rendered in all of its complicated forms, both sunny and tragic, and this film really "imitates life".

Both heartbreaking and heroic, only a handful of other films have succeeded in touching me in the profound way that this cinematic experience did. "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", What's Eating Gilbert Grape", and "Inside Moves" all come to mind as vividly and personally as this film did. I was also very impressed with the fact that Paul Neuman, directing his own wife and daughter, could achieve such stunning performances, without familial emotions muddling the final product. I've been waiting for years to catch this movie on late night TV, since it does not seem to have been released for resale!

I was privileged to see the original off-Broadway production starring acclaimed actress Sada Thompson, and I also saw her immediate replacement in the role of Beatrice, Joan Blondell. I also caught a touring company a few years later in which Shelley Winters played Beatrice (not my favorite actress by a long shot) and she was just fine in the part. After viewing Ms. Winters in the role, I was convinced that this was so perfectly written a piece that nobody could ever mess it up. Then the movie came out. I have always had a great deal of respect for both Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and was eagerly looking forward to what they could do with so meaty a drama. I saw the film as soon as it opened, and was mystified and extremely disappointed when I saw how totally they destroyed what on stage was a piece of pure poetry and made it into a shallow, dreary soap opera. The allegory between the title and the situation of the characters was completely removed, as was a good deal of the best dialogue. The fragile, heartbreaking relationship between Beatrice and her daughters became something ugly, morbid and downright depressing. The original play ended on a very hopeful note, as the observer realized that Tilly, if no one else, would survive her bleak surroundings to become a fully nuanced and interesting person. The dismal tone of the film left me drained and actually quite annoyed that this beautiful, very real and poetically written play could be transformed into such a depressing and altogether banal film. All I kept thinking as I left the theatre was, "Why did they have to change it so much? It's been ruined". The only positive note for me was the retention of the wonderful character actress Judith Lowry (who must have been over 90 when the film was made) as Nanny. Ms. Lowry was the original Nanny in the off-Broadway production and, although her character had virtually no lines, her wonderful presence alone was enough to bring a smile to the faces of the audience. Again, as a fan of both Newman and Woodward, this was a total disappointment.

Number one on my list of favorites. An exceptional drama, based on the metaphor of society's role on human condition and the effect of radiation on life.

Joanne Woodward plays an unemployed eccentric divorcee Beatrice Hunsdorfer, who is raising two young daughters. For income, she takes in boarders (in this case, a neglected elderly women).

One daughter Ruth, a rebellious adolescence, and an epileptic, is heading into the same footsteps as her mother (a downward spiral into society's misfits). She mocks her mother after she overhears some teachers discussing her mother's past zany antics.

Matilda, the younger daughter is an introvert, smart and a loner. She seeks refuge in her school work, mainly her science projects. Matilda for the most part is the only character in the film who has any redeeming social graces.

I've looked for this video to purchase, but its out of print. If anyone happens to know when or where I can get one, please email me the details. I have a copy that I recorded many years ago when it played one night on a late movie show, so I have that to fall back on. But I would really like to get this movie on DVD.

Joanne Woodward is an eccentric mother to two daughters in this film about a dysfunctional family. Her real-life daughter, Nell Potts, plays her youngest daughter and is the one concerned with the environment and the effect of gamma rays on marigolds. Joanne has been deserted by her husband and has had to fend for herself and her children. We see, as the film opens that she is far from the sweet doting mother type. In fact, she is so flip and sarcastically blasé in her way that I laughed almost nonstop in the first 30 minutes due to her blunt matter-of-fact delivery of her lines. She also had a meanness to them, which was caused by the bitterness she felt towards her husband. I thought was going to be a very serious film, but this had an very odd sense of humor to it, as she is critical of things and people while at the same time being funny. She also doesn't accept responsibility for her actions and blames others for her situation and lot in life. While I say it was funny in the beginning, it does become tragically somber in tone, due to the reality we see that she has to come to terms with, whether she decides to or not. The ending is surprisingly ambiguous and a little abrupt. This definitely requires another viewing and frankly Joanne Woodward's performance blew me away. Director/actor Paul Newman said he thought this was her best performance of her career and I agree. This is required viewing for Joanne Woodward fans. Period.

Love this film ..... it is a tender and poignant piece of work sensitively directed by Paul Newman and starring his real life Wife Joanne Woodward that has stood the test of time an is as relevant today as it was back in the early seventies when it was made.

Woodward is completely convincing as an ageing, frustrated, poorly educated single mother struggling against poverty and a drinking habit to raise two young daughters - one in her early teens keen to spread her wings, and her youngest, a delightfully bright and optimistic child around whom the title of the film is based.

The film is centres around Woodward's struggles to keep her eldest daughter on the straight and level, and to provide a secure and stable home for both daughters despite her alcohol addiction. Haven't seen the film for the best part of 30 years but I remember it vividly for it's study of a family in turmoil and all the disappointment felt by the eldest daughter of her mother's parenting. Nells Potts is truly delightful as the youngest daughter Nell, who is the beacon of hope and optimism from which the film draws its strength. A beautiful film for it's time .... one I would love to show to my own children.