Early in Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, director Shoshannah Stern gives Marlee Matlin the copy someone at Paramount wrote for the movie Children Of A Lesser God. Of her Deaf character Sarah swimming by herself in the pool, the writer had described her as “Lost in her own silent world.” Matlin retorts that whoever wrote that “knew nothing about deaf culture or language” or an actual Deaf person’s thoughts or attitudes. “I’m very loud. And within myself, my mind is never silent.” It’s a telling, illuminating moment in the truly compelling documentary about the actress and advocate for disability rights.
When Matlin won for Best Actress in 1987 for Children, it was life-altering. It launched her career as an actress and spokesperson for the Deaf. But more critically, Matlin and Stern (who is also a Deaf actress, and making her directorial debut), make abundantly clear that her victory was thrilling for the Deaf community and a seismic, far-one for both the Hearing and Deaf worlds.
Matlin lost her hearing as a toddler due to illness and was the only non-hearing person in her family. Her parents and two older brothers were never fluent with signing and she became increasingly frustrated and angry, explaining, “I’ve always been cut off by a lot of people growing up. Blocked off, ignored.” She was, however, fortunate to live in the Chicago suburbs, which had a synagogue for the Deaf (where she learned Hebrew phonetically for her Bat Mitzvah) and the International Center Of Deafness And The Arts.
In her first role at age 7, Matlin played Dorothy in their children’s theatre production of The Wizard Of Oz. Henry Winkler, who features heavily in her life and in the documentary (also interviewed are Aaron Sorkin, Deaf actress Lauren Ridloff, Deaf actor and Oscar winner Troy Kotsur, and Matlin’s long-time interpreter Jack Jason), saw her in a show there when she was 12, which led to her audition for Children while still a teenager. Picking up the Oscar for her film debut, she remains the youngest Best Actress winner.
As a history-making acting veteran with nearly 40 years in television and movies (and a resume that includes four Emmy nominations and two Oscar-winning films), Matlin has enough Hollywood sheen to be a pretty interesting subject. There are also the uglier parts of her showbiz life, such as her drug addiction and relationship with her much older Children co-star William Hurt, whom she accused of being physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. Both the drugs and the relationship came to an end after rehab, and Winkler’s family took her in, giving her a home for two years. But what makes the documentary a must-watch is what happened after that triumphant night at the Academy Awards. As she explains, “Children Of A Lesser God was when I was born; as a Deaf person who had a Deaf identity…I became an advocate (for the disability community). I was thrust into it, but that was okay.”
At just 22, Matlin, always charming and likable, became a powerful voice on behalf of the Deaf, who had long been treated as a silent, lost population. She jumped into the political fray when students were protesting at Gallaudet University (for the Deaf) over the board’s choice to pick a hearing person over Deaf candidates (in its then 124-year history, the university had never had a Deaf president). Matlin went on Nightline, along with the newly selected president, and vehemently argued against the board’s decision. Days after the show aired, the president resigned, and the school got its first Deaf president.
A more significant issue for Matlin, not surprisingly, was raising awareness among the hearing population, especial in media and government, about communication and education that Closed Captioning services would provide. She worked with the National Captioning Institute and strategically used her platform in interviews to illustrate the cause, remarking that her favorite childhood movie, The Wizard of Oz, would soon be celebrating its 50th anniversary. The movie, which she had seen hundreds of times, and inspired her to become an actor, had never had captioning. She recalled that every time she watched it, she had to make up what the characters were saying. Along with the Institute, Matlin appeared before Congress and as a result, a Federal law passed requiring that going forward, all television sets would have to be equipped for Closed Captioning. Today we take it completely for granted, but it was absolutely revolutionary.
Married for three decades and with four adult children, Matlin is, she says, “still hustling after 37 years.” And still fighting, for herself and for other Deaf performers to have more access in the Arts. The studio wanted a big name, hearing actor to play her husband in CODA, and Matlin threatened to walk if they didn’t cast a Deaf co-star. The movie, which featured Kotsur, sold at Sundance for a then-record breaking $25 million and earned three Academy Awards. And if not for Matlin’s pioneering efforts, Ridloff, who played Sarah in the recent Broadway revival of Children (because all Deaf actresses, as Stern points out, play Sarah at some point because there are few plays for Deaf actors, something she and Matlin want to see change) would not have become the first Deaf superhero when she was cast in Marvel’s The Eternals.
Notably, Stern and Matlin mostly sign rather than speak in the documentary (as does her interpreter and all the other Deaf people interviewed), which uses color-coded subtitles when people are signing so that hearing audiences can follow along, and “normalizes” Deaf people communicating. There’s an extraordinary scene with Matlin and her extended in which subtitles are used to show exactly what it’s like for her (and any other Deaf person) to be in a room where everyone else is talking around her, not with her. It brilliantly captures what Matlin’s 50 plus years as a Deaf person have been like and how Deaf people are operating, or attempting to in a hearing world. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is a stirring, instructive, and powerful piece of art that shows audiences how much Matlin has accomplished, the ways she has helped to raised awareness of and create change for the more than 11 million Deaf people in the US (3.6% of the population) and that there’s a long way to go to achieve inclusion.
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore will be available On Demand (across all major platforms including iTunes, Amazon and Google Play) August 12th, and is at the Mariemont Theatre on July 17.
