Play It As It Lays ** (1972, Tuesday Weld, Anthony Perkins, Tammy Grimes, Adam Roarke) – Classic Movie Review 7,795

Frank Perry’s 1972 interesting and sincere but depressing drama film Play It As It Lays is based on Joan Didion’s novel, and stars Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld and Tammy Grimes.

Director Frank Perry’s 1972 interesting and sincere but depressing and ultimately disappointing American drama film Play It As It Lays is based on Joan Didion’s novel, and stars Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld and Tammy Grimes. Deception, divorce, despair, abortion, breakdown and suicide are all on the wrist-slitting menu. Good acting redeems it.

Weld stars as successful Hollywood B-movie actress Maria Wyeth, who is chronically depressed, has a breakdown and ends up in a mental hospital, in Perry’s downbeat, too-jazzily filmed version of Didion’s 1970 novel of despair. The above-par acting by the always underrated Weld and Perkins as Maria’s closest friend B Z Mendenhall, an unhappy world-weary gay movie producer, keeps it eminently watchable.

But the screenplay by Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne and the direction by Frank Perry unfortunately let them down, conscientious though their work is. Depicting the nihilism and illusory glamour of Hollywood works better on the page. Joan Didion’s novel is considered an instant classic of modern American fiction.

Perry directs his movie frenziedly, as though to compensate for being worried that the public would reject the film, which, unsurprisingly, they did anyway.

Tammy Grimes plays Helene and Adam Roarke plays Maria’s unfaithful husband Carter Lane, a temperamental, self-engrossed film producer/ director, still married to Maria but separated.

Also in the cast are Ruth Ford, Eddie Firestone, Tyne Daly, Diana Ewing as Susannah, Paul Lambert, Chuck McCann, Severn Darden, Tony Young, Richard Anderson, Roger Ewing as Nelson, John Finnegan, Mitzi Hoag, Elizabeth Claman and Tracy Morgan.

Play It As It Lays is directed by Frank Perry, runs 98 minutes, is made by F P Productions and Universal Pictures, released by Universal Pictures, is written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, based on Joan Didion’s novel, is shot in Technicolor by Jordan Cronenweth, is produced by Frank Perry and Dominick Dunne, and is designed by Pato Guzman.

Release date: October 19, 1972.

The costumes by future director, Joel Schumacher.

Weld was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama in 1972

Sam Peckinpah’s plan to direct a film of Didion’s novel did not materialise.

Weld and Perkins previously also made Pretty Poison (1968) together.

By 2018, Weld’s most recent film was made in 2001.

Roger Ewing (January 12, 1942 – December 18, 2025) 

Roger Ewing retired from acting in 1972 after appearing in Play It as It Lays and became a professional photographer. He died in Morro Bay, California, on December 18, 2025, aged 83. His first screen appearance was in 1964 in Ensign Pulver. He acted in 65 episodes of the Western TV series Gunsmoke (1965–1967).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,795

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