Delivered From Stage to Screen

In the late ‘80s, the playwright A.R. Gurney was asked to give a speech at the New York Public Library, but instead he decided to try out his latest play, the romantic two-character drama “Love Letters.” He got his good friend actress Holland Taylor to fly in from Los Angeles to do the reading with him.

Gurney had a couple of chairs set up--one for himself, one for Taylor--and told the audience he had a bit of a surprise for them. Then Gurney and Taylor began to read. One letter. Then another. A correspondence. A conversation. Before night’s end, it was Gurney who was surprised.

“I broke it into two acts because I was only supposed to speak 50 minutes,” Gurney recalls. After the first act ended, Gurney told the audience that they were under no obligation to stay for the second half. But no one left. “I thought, ‘Maybe we have got something here,’ ” he says.

Now, more than a decade after “Love Letters” premiered, ABC hopes audiences will stick around for the TV-movie version of the play, which airs Monday evening. Directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, “Love Letters” stars Laura Linney and Steven Weber as the star-crossed lovers, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Ladd.

Susan Lyne, executive vice president in charge of movies and miniseries for ABC Entertainment, says when she joined the network last year she began looking for material that would attract a female audience. “Love Letters” fit the bill.

“[ABC’s] movies were skewing more male,” says Lyne. “I was also looking for movies that would have some name recognition. ‘Love Letters’ has been performed so many places and by so many different actors over the years that even if people don’t know exactly what it is, they know they’ve heard about it.”

“Love Letters” is probably Gurney’s best known and loved play. That “Love Letters” evolved into a play was as much as a surprise as the way audiences have embraced it over the years. Gurney, who also penned the hits “The Dining Room,” “The Middle Ages” and “Sylvia,” initially thought of the piece, which consists of letters written over a 40-year period between the level-headed Andrew and the beautiful, lively and insecure Melissa, as more of an essay.

“I didn’t think it was performable,” Gurney recalls. So his agent sent it to the New Yorker, which quickly returned the manuscript, informing Gurney that the magazine didn’t publish plays.

“So it made me look at it again,” he says. “My agent said, ‘Maybe it is a play.’ ”

After the unexpected New York Library debut, Gurney and Taylor performed it in other venues. Soon other actors began doing it. “But it took us a little while to realize you didn’t have to restrict [the characters] to one particular sort of age--somebody kind of in the middle,” says Gurney. “You could do it with older people and it seemed to work, and you could do it with younger people and it seemed to work.”

On stage, “Love Letters” as it was done by Charlton Heston and Jean Simmons at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, is the one that in Gurney’s mind lingers as the best.

“Even though we have had long conversations by mail about our political differences,” Gurney says of Heston, “I thought he was a wonderful actor in that.”

Transforming “Love Letters” into a movie, though, was as turbulent and bumpy as Melissa and Andrew’s bittersweet relationship.

About a decade ago, Gurney relates, producer Martin Starger bought the rights to the play. At first glance it seemed unadaptable as a movie because the play features the two actors sitting next to each other at desks and reading the letters to the audience. They never even look at each other until the finale.

Gurney wrote two drafts of the screenplay for Columbia. Then the studio dropped the project; Universal quickly snapped it up. “I did another polish for them, and that is when Stanley Donen became involved. He became enthusiastic for the script.”

But Universal ultimately wasn’t. It went through two more rewrites, in which Gurney wasn’t involved. When Starger sold it to ABC, Gurney went back to the drawing board. “Starger asked me in a sense to put the toothpaste back in the tube because the budget was much less,” says Gurney.

Final Script Went Back to Basics

As the playwright had envisioned the adaptation, “Love Letters” would take place and be shot all over the world. But because of budget constraints, the TV movie is set primarily in Andrew’s study. “We kind of had to really go back to the play,” Gurney says.

“Love Letters” is veteran director Donen’s first feature since the 1984 sex comedy “Blame It on Rio,” and is his first TV movie. Anyone familiar with Donen’s films can ascertain why “Love Letters” would appeal to him.

Over the past 50 years, he’s directed such classic love stories as “Indiscreet,” “Funny Face,” “Two for the Road” and even “Staircase,” which explored the relationship between two aging gay men, played by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton.

And just as in his brilliant “Two for the Road,” this film explores a relationship through flashbacks.

“When it was possible to do it for television at ABC, they asked if I was interested,” says Donen. “For some weird reason I had a good way of doing it for television, which means a good way of being surprised with what you see.”

Donen and Gurney discussed how to fashion the script for TV. “He certainly rewrote the script in a way we discussed,” says the director. “Maybe some of the ideas are mine and some are his. One can’t remember any more. You go through such changes. As a wise man said many years ago, nothing is ever written. It’s rewritten.”

“I admire Stanley,” says Gurney. “I admire his imaginative flair to give that room [the study] a little more flair.”

“See, everything in that room is not actually happening,” Donen says. “It is not happening in what we call reality. That was the excitement, to see what I could do to make that work, to make that not a negative but a positive way of doing it. That’s why I loved it. First I loved the material and then I loved Laura Linney. She’s terrific.”

Linney, who played Jim Carrey’s wife in “The Truman Show,” says that although she had never performed or seen “Love Letters,” she quickly agreed to do the film because she admires Gurney and Donen. Plus, she adds, she loves the character of Melissa.

“It’s a wonderful part,” Linney says. “Her needs are so great. She has so much to give, and she’s one of those people who were never surrounded by the right people. She never found her niche. These people are frustrated and they don’t have the resources to help themselves. It’s heartbreaking.”

“Love Letters” was shot in just 17 days. “It’s not even as much [time] as the normal television movie,” Donen says. “There was no overtime. We had a week rehearsal with the two of them and that was a godsend. Without that, I don’t think we’d have gotten through it.”

ABC’s Lyne acknowledges that because of its structure and tone, “Love Letters” is a risk for the network. “I think it will be interesting to see whether people stick with it. But it’s such a wonderful payoff if they watch this two-hour film. But you have to hang in there through the setup.”

After participating in “Love Letters,” Linney said she believes she knows why the story has such universal appeal.

“I think everyone has someone somewhere that has made an enormous impact in their life. They were a part of their life but at the same time, it didn’t work.”

“Love Letters” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).