Peer Gynt figure quite so exuberant, outrageous, vitalistic as Peer Gynt. He merely "seems" initially to be an unlikely candidate for such eminence: "What is he", we say, "except a kind of Norwegian roaring boy?" – marvelously attractive to women, a kind of bogus poet, a narcissist, absurd self-idolator, a liar, seducer, bombastic self-deceiver. But this is paltry moralizing – all too much like the scholarly chorus that rants against Falstaff. True, Peer, unlike Falstaff, is not a great wit. But in the Yahwistic, biblical sense, Peer the scamp bears the blessing: More life. On 5 January 1867 Ibsen wrote to Frederik
Peer Gynt the Button Molder. In 1951, John Garfield fulfilled his wish to star in a Broadway production, featuring Mildred Dunnock as Åse. Sadly, this production was not a success, and is said by some to have contributed to Garfield's death at age 39. On film, years before he became a superstar, the seventeen-year-old Charlton Heston starred as Peer in a silent, student-made, low-budget film version of the play produced in 1941. "Peer Gynt", however, has never been given a full-blown treatment as a sound film in English on the motion picture screen, although there have been several television productions, and a