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February 9, 2001/Shevet 16, 5761, Vol. 53, No.19
Richardson plays Gruber with eyes wide open
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
TOM TUGEND
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
When Natasha Richardson starred in Paul Schrader's 1988 biographical film, "Patty Hearst," she drew inspiration from a Holocaust-themed tome plucked off a shelf in her father's Los Angeles home.
The book was "If This Is A Man," Primo Levi's account of his time in Auschwitz, and in its pages the 25-year-old Brit gleaned crucial insights into the psyche of her brutalized character.
"There are enormous differences between life in a concentration camp and living in a closet," the tall, willowy actress says. "But I found certain similarities I could use - the trauma of just trying to stay alive, moment to moment, one day at a time. In all my work since, I've been very affected by the writings of the Holocaust."
Memoirs like Levi's have helped her tap into the despair of protagonists braving "extreme adversity, oppression and fear:" a woman incarcerated in the sexist dystopia of "The Handmaid's Tale," for example, or the doomed chanteuse Sally Bowles of "Cabaret." They have fueled the urgency she conveys as a Holocaust rescuer in the upcoming CBS mini-series, "Haven," based on a true story from World War II.
Richardson plays Ruth Gruber, a Jewish-American journalist who fought U.S anti-Semitism to escort nearly 1,000 Holocaust survivors from war-torn Europe to America.
She accepted the role with eyes open. She knew there would be the inevitable comparisons with her husband, actor Liam Neeson, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler in "Schindler's List."
"And then I thought there might be quite a few people wondering, 'Why on earth did they want this English gentile to play Ruth Gruber?' " Richardson says. "But after reading the script, I felt compelled to do the movie. I'm fairly well read on the subject of World War II, yet I had absolutely no idea that the U.S. government went out of its way to keep Jewish refugees out of this country during the Holocaust. I was deeply shocked by that."
As she prepared to play Gruber, Richardson recalled her trip to Auschwitz while visiting Neeson on the set of "Schindler's List."
"I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I was furious to learn that the camp's commandant had been merely hanged to death," she said. "I thought, 'The inmates had to endure agony for months and years, and he died so easily?' I would have liked to have done to him what he did to all those people."
Though Richardson was born in 1963, World War II was a presence in her early life. She grew up hearing her family's war stories and watching the World War II-themed films ("The Dam Busters," "The Captive Heart") starring her grandfather, actor Sir Michael Redgrave. During the blitz, her mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, and her uncle, Corin Redgrave, then children, were whisked out of London to an elderly aunt's home in the country.
"I learned about the rationing, and being separated from parents, and my mother's recollection, as very little girl, of seeing an entire town obliterated by bombs," Richardson said.
When Natasha was a teenager, Vanessa starved herself and bloodied her scalp to portray an Auschwitz inmate in the Arthur Miller film teleplay, "Playing for Time." But the teen was even more disturbed by the media controversy that ensued when some Jewish groups insisted the virulently anti-Zionistic Redgrave had no right to play a Holocaust victim.
"It was - and is - deeply hurtful to me that anyone could construe my mother is anti-Semitic," says Richardson, who grew up in her mother's radical circles. "I learned more personally about the Holocaust and what happened to the Jewish people from her than from anyone else."
The film is based on the experiences of Gruber-no relation to JTA correspondent Ruth E. Gruber-and her book "Haven." Gruber, now a vigorous 89, has lived a fascinating life. She received her doctorate at age 20, did stints as an arctic explorer and foreign correspondent, and became special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.
In June 1944, Ickes asked Gruber to fly to Naples and escort the predominantly Jewish refugees, who were being admitted to the United States as a one-time gesture by Washington.
The first part of the miniseries chronicles the refugees' 13-day voyage. The voyage was threatened by Nazi air and submarine attacks, and it was marked by friction among the Jews from 18 different countries - and between the Jews and the wounded GIs sharing the ship.
The second part shows the refugees after their arrival in a former army camp in Oswego, N.Y., where they were held for 18 months. Gruber fights doggedly with the Washington bureaucrats to grant more freedom to the refugees and allow them to stay in the United States after the war.
Richardson's screen mother, played by Anne Bancroft, is the stereotypical Jewish mother, always worried about her daughter's travel and eating habits and wondering aloud when she'll get married.
Martin Landau plays Gruber's father, a quiet man and devoted husband and friend to his daughter. Hal Holbrook is Ickes.
"Haven" airs 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11, and Wednesday, Feb. 14, on KPHO-Channel 5.
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