In 1947, upon news of her death, Harold Clurman wrote, ” The death of our finest actress…should not go without comment. The perfunctory tributes of the press were dismaying. Perhaps little more could be expected from a theater which has lost all sense of tradition and all ambition beyond that of profit-and consequently all dignity.

Underneath it all is a warning to a society mad for profit, which spawns a mindless money-grubbing entertainment industry, an industry cut off from art, from the depth of humanity, and from the deeper social and cultural functions of the theater.

Laurette Taylor’s life was tragic. Her appearances in the past fifteen years were so infrequent that when she arrived in The Glass Menagerie most people spoke of her as a discovery. She had made a ‘comeback’. But Laurette Taylor’s fate in this regard is very similar to that of many other players-particularly actresses-beaten by the brutal anarchy of our stage. It would be dolefully instructive to draw up a list of the really talented actresses-living and dead- who have been unconscious sacrifices to our mindless theater.”