The Effects Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds (1972) DVD

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The Effects Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds (1972)

Director
- Paul Newman
Writers
- Paul Zindel(play)
- Alvin Sargent(screenplay)
Stars
- Joanne Woodward
- Nell Potts
- Roberta Wallach
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paul Zindel, this is a joint effort of husband and wife team Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. Produced and directed by Newman, Woodward portrays the eccentric young widow who is raising her two disparate daughters in an atmosphere of bitterness, hatred and over-protection that threatens their very growth and development. Embittered and misandristic, she raises her daughters in an atmosphere of hate that leaves them as depressed and neurotic as she is. The title of the movie comes from her anger at her daughter's science teacher for encouraging her to expose marigolds to gamma rays as a science project. Her experiment shows how radiation sometimes kills growing marigolds, but sometimes it causes them to grow even more beautiful. This experiment becomes a metaphor for her own life, as she struggles to bloom in a household deadened by her mother's alcoholism and her sister's lethargy.

Don't overlook Paul Newman's THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS

Posted by Kenneth Orme on Jan 28th 2026

Well-acted under the direction of Paul Newman, the 1972 film adaptation of Paul Zindel's Pulitzer Prize winning play THE EFFECTS OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS offers a raft of fine performances film afficionados won't want to neglect. Notably Joanne Woodward as dysfunctioning mother Beatrice, Nell Potts and Roberta Wallach as her introspective and extrovert daughters respectively, Judith Lowry as mute witnesss Nanny, Ellen Dano as a fiendishly glib anatomist Janice Vickery and Roger Serbagi in the role of a flu-ridden brother-in-law to obtrusively hectoring Beatrice. Art direction by Gene Callahan and set decoration by Richard Merrell are also standouts.