Jon Krampner

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So....you think you knew Kim? Take this challenge quiz and find out how much of the arcana of her career and life you really know!
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1) How many William Inge plays did Kim appear in?

A) One
B) Two
C) Three
D) Four

2) How many times was she married?

A) Once
B) Twice
C) Three times
D) Four times

3) Which of these great actresses did she never perform with on stage?

A) Julie Harris
B) Lillian Gish
C) Helen Hayes
D) Geraldine Page

4) Kim Stanley was born and raised in what state?

A) Texas
B) Arizona
C) New Mexico
D) New York

5) Before achieving success on Broadway, Kim was associated with community theaters in all of these communities except for:

A) Louisville, Kentucky
B) Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
C) Pasadena, California
D) Pompton Lakes, New Jersey

6) Kim was the uncredited narrator for what film?

A) "Titanic"
B) "From Here to Eternity"
C) "To Kill a Mockingbird"
D) "Splendor in the Grass"

7) Kim first caught the attention of New York critics when she appeared in the Off-Broadway version of:

A) "Too Many Thumbs" by Robert Hivnor
B) "him" by e.e. cummings
C) "Saint Joan" by George Bernard Shaw
D) "Yes Is For A Very Young Man" by Gertrude Stein

8) All of these actors appeared in that play except for:

A) Bea Arthur
B) Lee J. Cobb
C) Tony Franciosa
D) Gene Saks

9) Which of these films did Kim turn down?

A) "Summer and Smoke"
B) "The Pawnbroker"
C) "Atlantic City"
D) All of them

10) In 1959, a scandal from Kim's personal life made Page One of the New York Daily News. What was it?

A) She had a child by director Roberto Rossellini while married to another man.

B) She drove the getaway car in an audacious robbery of a Brinks truck in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight.

C) She was involved in a drunken, screaming, hair-pulling brawl with Elizabeth Taylor at Sardi's restaurant in Times Square

D) She admitted that her younger daughter, Laurie Rachel, had been fathered by her third husband, Alfred Ryder, and not her second, Curt Conway, as she had previously claimed.

11) Kim was the leading lady of live television drama during the 1950's. Which of these classic live TV dramas did she appear in?

A) "Marty" by Paddy Chayefsky
B) "Patterns" by Rod Serling
C) "A Young Lady of Property" by Horton Foote
D) "Twelve Angry Men" by Reginald Rose

12) In the late 1970's, Kim returned to New York City after six years in New Mexico. The purpose of her return was:

A) To make a comeback on Broadway and re-start her television acting career

B) To teach acting and start her own repertory acting company

C) To work on the film "Atlantic City" and renew acquaintances with old friends on Broadway

D) To buy a house in the country and dedicate herself to her vegetable garden

13) What honor was bestowed upon Kim by the Playwrights Company during the brief 1954 Broadway run of Horton Foote's "The Traveling Lady"?

A) She was the only actress it raised to above-the-title billing after the play had already opened.

B) It re-named the building its offices were in after her.

C) It tripled her salary

D) It took out a full-page ad in Variety touting her for a Tony Award

14) Speaking of Tonys, how many did Kim win?

A) None
B) One
C) Two
D) Three

15) And while we're on the subject of awards, how many Oscar nominations did Kim earn for the four films she appeared in?

A) None
B) One
C) Two
D) Three

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ANSWERS:
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1) C: Three

Kim appeared in three plays by Inge: "Picnic" (1953-54), in which she played Millie Owens, the artistic, angst-ridden younger sister of Janice Rule; "Bus Stop" (1955-56), in which she played Cherie, the "chantoosie" kidnapped by rambunctious cowboy Bo Decker (Albert Salmi); and "Natural Affection" (1963), in which she played Sue Barker, a Midwestern single mother torn between her lover (Harry Guardino) and her juvenile delinquent son (Gregory Rozakis).

2) D: Four

Kim's four husbands were:

First: Actor Bruce Hall (ca. 1946- ca. 1948; if you are the person who indicated 1945-46 in her Wikipedia entry, please get in touch with me),

Second: Actor/director/teacher Curt Conway (1951-1957),

Third: Actor/director Alfred Ryder (1958-ca.1964)

Fourth: Attorney Joe Siegel (1964-ca. 1967)

3) A: Julie Harris

Kim appeared with Lillian Gish in a road version of "The Trip to Bountiful" that played in Evanston, Illinois, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the summer of 1954; she appeared with Helen Hayes in "A Touch of the Poet" (1958-59), and with Page in "The Three Sisters" (1964).

Kim was offered the role of Catherine Reardon in "And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little" (1971), in which Julie Harris played sister Anna Reardon, but she turned it down, saying that Harris always showed up for the first rehearsal with the part all worked out in her head, leaving no room for growth or change during rehearsals. Kim refused to work with Ms. Harris on that basis.

4) C: New Mexico

Although Kim was born in Tularosa, New Mexico, and raised in Albuquerque, she almost always claimed that she was from Texas, possibly because she wanted to be a Lone Star native like her father, whose approval she always sought and rarely attained.

5) B: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Kim appeared in at least two shows staged at the National Theater in downtown Louisville by Bill Hodapp's Bluegrass Theatre (where she used the stage name Kim Stanley for the first time) in the spring of 1946; she studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1945; and she appeared in several shows with The Pompton Lakes Summer Theater in 1946, but was fired when she told the head of the theater that she didn't feel like showing up for a performance one day.

6) C: "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Kim was in Hollywood at the time to do a two-part episode of "Ben Casey" (for which she won the first of her two Emmies) and did it as a favor to friend Horton Foote. Except for a girl's voice heard humming over the opening credits, Kim's is the first voice you hear in the film, and the last.

7) D: "Yes is For a Very Young Man"

The play was staged at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1949. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote, "In Kim Stanley, as a young French mother, the Off Broadway people have a talented actress with temperament, craft, and, if there is any justice on Broadway, a future."

8) B: Lee J. Cobb

All three others, along with Kim, were members of a troupe called Off-Broadway, Inc. The Greenwich Village summer season of 1949 was acclaimed by Theatre Arts Magazine as the most important since the Provincetown Players had staged the premieres of works by Eugene O'Neill and Theodore Dreiser a generation earlier.

9) D: All of them.

Hal Wallis wanted her to appear in "Summer and Smoke" as Alma Winemiller. When Kim passed on it, she was replaced by Geraldine Page. While Kim was sailing back from England on the Leonardo da Vinci after completing "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," her agent Lucy Kroll cabled her to ask if she was interested in the role of Marilyn Birchfield in "The Pawnbroker," directed by Sidney Lumet, with whom Kim worked in live television drama. Apparently, Kim wasn't. And John Guare and Louis Malle wanted her to play the aging mobster's widow, Grace, in "Atlantic City". When Kim showed no interest, the part was given to Kate Reid.

10) D

Kim's filing for a new birth certificate for her younger daughter, Laurie Rachel, was not supposed to be made public, but somehow word got out.

11) C: "A Young Lady of Property" by Horton Foote

"A Young Lady of Property," which aired on Fred Coe's "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse" in 1953, was one of the few roles in which the relentless perfectionist Kim felt that she had achieved what she set out to do.

12) B: Teach acting and start her own repertory company

Although she was drinking and her classes were somewhat irregular, Kim was immensely popular with her students. She lacked the organizational capacity to set up a repertory theater, though, and her vision of one remained a pipe dream

13) A: Kim was raised to above-the-title billing after the play opened

A picture of her painting her name in above the title of the play, with a workman holding the bucket of paint for her, is in the book.

14) A: None

Although Kim was twice nominated for a Tony (in 1959, for "A Touch of the Poet" and in 1962, for "A Far Country"), she never won one, not even for her tour de force as Cherie in "Bus Stop." In 1955, plays were eligible for Tonys if they opened before March 1. "Bus Stop" opened on March 2.

15) C: Two

Kim was Oscar-nominated for her roles as medium Myra Savage in "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" (1964) and Lillian Farmer in "Frances" (1982). She was a strong candidate for nomination for her performance in "The Goddess", but may have lost out because she refused to do much publicity for the film. If true, this means her only film performance for which she wasn't actively considered for a nomination is "The Right Stuff" (1983), in which her on-screen time is two minutes and forty seconds.