"Cocktails with George and Martha" by Philip Gefter

Talks on movies, the culture of cinema, and filmmaking.

Philip Gefter, Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

An award-winning writer reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the provocative play, the groundbreaking film it became, and how two iconic stars changed the image of marriage forever.

From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn't be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.

Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee's sophisticated play-and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic-surviving censorship attempts, its director's inexperience, and its stars' own tumultuous marriage-is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema.

Now, acclaimed author Philip Gefter tells that story in full for the first time, tracing Woolf from its hushed origins in Greenwich Village's bohemian enclave, through its tormented production process, to its explosion onto screens across America and a permanent place in the canon of cinematic marriages. This deliciously entertaining book explores how two couples-one fictional, one all too real-forced a nation to confront its most deeply held myths about relationships, sex, family, and, against all odds, love.

Philip Gefter is the author of Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Bloomsbury, 2024), which was included on The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2024;” What Becomes a Legend Most: The Biography of Richard Avedon (Harper, 2020);  Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe (Liveright, 2014), which received the 2014 Marfield Prize for national arts writing; and a collection of essays, Photography After Frank (Aperture 2009).  He was on staff at The New York Times for over fifteen years, serving as the Page One Picture Editor from 1999 – 2003, and as photography critic from 2003-2010. He was the photography critic for the Daily Beast in its early years and contributed frequently to The New Yorker: Photobooth and Aperture, the quarterly of photography. He produced the award-winning 2011 documentary, Bill Cunningham New York.  In the 1970s, he was active in the Gay Rights Movement as a member of the Gay Activists’ Alliance; the Gay Academic Union; and the Gay Media Coalition. He was one of the founding members of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1981, and, a founding member of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s New York Chapter, serving as the chapter president from 1993-1995.

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Scott Adlerberg is  the author of the novels Spiders and Flies, Jungle Horses, Graveyard Love, Jack Waters, and The Screaming Child. He has written many short stories and contributes pieces regularly to sites such as CrimeReads, Mystery Tribune, and Criminal Element.  Every summer, he hosts the Reel Talks film commentary series in Bryant Park in Manhattan.