Joan of Lorraine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joan of Lorraine is a 1946 play-within-a-play by Maxwell Anderson. The play is about an acting company who stages a dramatization of the story of Joan of Arc and the effect that the story has on them. As in the musical Man of La Mancha, every actor in the drama plays two or more roles. Ingrid Bergman was the star of the original production, playing both Joan and Mary Grey, the star actress in the play-within-a-play. Bergman won a Tony Award for this performance — one of the first such awards ever given. Other notable actors who appeared in this production were Joseph Wiseman and Sam Wanamaker.

In 1948, an adaptation of Joan of Lorraine was filmed in Technicolor as Joan of Arc. This film also starred Ingrid Bergman, but it did not use the play-within-a-play setup. Instead, it made the story a straightforward account of Joan's life. Anderson's dialogue for the story of Joan remains intact in the film, and he even expanded the scenes involving Joan and added additional historical characters during his collaboration with Andrew Solt on the screenplay. For her performance, Ingrid Bergman was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost out to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda.