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« Olivia Newton John (1948-2022) | Main | Monday Monologue: "Three kinds of pipe" in Moonstruck »
Monday
Aug082022

Tennessee Williams @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

Vivien Leigh accepts her second Oscar in 1952.

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1951 is coming at the end of the month, bringing with it a revisit to the first Tennessee Williams adaptation to catch the Academy's eye. Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire marked the start of a period when Hollywood couldn't get enough of the American playwright, bringing most of his celebrated texts to the screen in big studio productions that attracted the cream of the talent crop of filmmakers and actors. These projects were incredibly captivating for the latter, with their guarantee of juicy roles prone to critical acclaim. Over just fourteen years, 19 performances were Oscar-nominated, and five won. 

Let's explore the list of AMPAS-approved Williams adaptations, find out where one can watch them, and share some Oscar trivia along the way... 

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) 

  • Best Picture - Charles K. Feldman
  • Best Director – Elia Kazan
  • ★ Best Actress – Vivien Leigh
  • Best Actor – Marlon Brando
  • ★ Best Supporting Actress – Kim Hunter
  • ★ Best Supporting Actor – Karl Malden
  • Best Writing, Screenplay – Tennessee Williams
  • Best Cinematography, Black-and-White – Harry Stradling Sr.
  • ★ Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White – Richard Day & George James Hopkins
  • Best Costume Design, Black-and-White – Lucina Ballard
  • Best Music, Scoring for a Dramatic or Comedy Picture – Alex North
  • Best Sound, Recording – Nathan Levinson

A Streetcar Named Desire is streaming on HBO Max. It's also available to rent from most platforms.

 


THE ROSE TATTOO
(1955)
 

  • Best Picture – Hal B. Wallis
  • ★ Best Actress – Anna Magnani 
  • Best Supporting Actress – Marisa Pavan
  • Best Film Editing – Warren Low
  • ★ Best Cinematography, Black-and-White – James Wong Howe 
  • Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White – Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen, Sam Comer & Arthur Krams *winner*
  • Best Costume Design, Black-and-White – Edith Head
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture – Alex North

The Rose Tattoo is available on Apple, iTunes, Redbox, and AMC On Demand.

 


BABY DOLL
(1956)

  • Best Actress – Carroll Baker
  • Best Supporting Actress – Mildred Dunnock
  • Best Adapted Screenplay – Tennessee Williams
  • Best Cinematography, Black-and-White – Boris Kaufman

Baby Doll is available to rent on Amazon, Google Player, and Youtube.

 

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958)

  • Best Picture – Lawrence Weingarten
  • Best Director – Richard Brooks
  • Best Actress – Elizabeth Taylor
  • Best Actor – Paul Newman
  • Best Adapted Screenplay – Richard Brooks & James Poe
  • Best Cinematography, Color – William H. Daniels 

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is available to rent on Amazon, Google Player, and Youtube.

 

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959)

Suddenly, Last Summer is available to rent on Amazon, Google Player, and Youtube.

 

THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (1961)

  • Best Supporting Actress – Lotte Lenya

 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is available to rent on Amazon, Google Player, Youtube, and Vudu

 

SUMMER AND SMOKE (1961)

  • Best Actress – Geraldine Page
  • Best Supporting Actress – Una Merkel
  • Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color – Hal Pereira, Walter H. Tyler, Sam Comer & Arthur Krams
  • Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture – Elmer Bernstein

Summer and Smoke is streaming on Kanopy.

 


PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT
(1962)

  • Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White – George W. Davis, Edward C. Carfagno, Henry Grace & Richard Pfefferle

Period of Adjustment is streaming on HBO Max.

 

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1962)

  • Best Actress – Geraldine Page
  • Best Supporting Actress – Shirley Knight
  • ★ Best Supporting Actor – Ed Begley

 Sweet Bird of Youth is available to rent on various platforms like Amazon, Google Player, and Youtube.

 

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964)

  • Best Supporting Actress – Grayson Hall
  • Best Cinematography, Black-and-White – Gabriel Figueroa
  • Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White – Stephen B. Grimes
  • ★  Best Costume Design, Black-and-White – Dorothy Jeakins

The Night of the Iguana is available on various platforms like Amazon, Google Player, and Youtube.

 

Tennessee Williams himself was nominated twice for his screenplays, but the most popular categories for these films were naturally the acting categories. That, and art direction, surprisingly enough.


WHICH TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FILMS WERE IGNORED?

Another point of interest is to note which films didn't get any Oscar love despite being eligible. For example, the Academy doesn't seem to like The Glass Menagerie at all.

Back in 1950, Irving Rapper directed the first stage-to-screen Williams adaptation. Despite good reviews and a wildly overpromising poster, no one got any nominations. While I wouldn't argue it's as good as the following year's Streetcar, it's still an acting showcase in which theatre goddess Gertrude Lawrence delivers one of her few big screen performances and Kirk Douglas surprises in the role of Jim O'Connor. Despite a stupid happy ending, this mishandled adaptation deserved a pair of nods for Kirk Douglas and the Sound Design.

Decades later Paul Newman directed a version of The Glass Menagerie in 1987. It's a much more faithful interpretation of Williams' first success and features what might very well be the definitive portrayal of Laura Wingfield. Nick Taylor was right when he wrote about Karen Allen's stupendous, Oscar-worthy tour de force.

Other unheralded Williams adaptations include Sydney Pollack's This Property is Condemned with Natalie Wood in a Golden-Globe nominated star turn. Joseph Losey's Boom! was a panned disaster, but the minimalist sets and opulent costumes deserved consideration. Elizabeth Taylor's outfits in that movie are pure drag excellence designed by Karl Lagerfeld with Bulgari jewelry on top. In 1970, Sidney Lumet adapted Tennessee Williams' The Seven Descents of Myrtle into The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots with a screenplay by Gore Vidal. Then, long after Hollywood's Williams mania had subsided, Jodie Markell shot one of the writer's unproduced texts with 2008's The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond.

The oddest case of a snubbed Tennessee Williams movie is Lumet's first foray into the dramaturg's Southern fantasias. Released in 1960, The Fugitive Kind has a veritable smorgasbord of AMPAS-beloved actors in its cast, with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, and Maureen Stapleton giving it their all. Sometimes hammy, often beautiful in their despair, these performers make up an astounding quartet. Moreover, the film also features excellent set design, which, as we've seen, was a category where these theatrical adaptations regularly triumphed. Sure, The Fugitive Kind is no masterpiece, but it's better than some of the Oscar-nominated titles -- Looking at you, Summer and Smoke!

Have you seen these movies? Which are your favorites?

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Reader Comments (8)

My favorite from America’s greatest playwright is Suddenly Last Summer. I am fascinated by Katharine Hepburn’s performance as Violet Venable. Knowing the she accepted the role shortly before production began makes her achievement even more impressive. Vivien Leigh was originally cast but withdrew due to illness.

Once we dispense with the more sordid aspects of Suddenly Last Summer, we are left with another key piece of art that permits playwright Tennessee Williams to explore again the great tragedy of his life and his inability to reconcile his emotions to heal.

Williams and his older sister Rose spent their childhood in rural Mississippi with their mother. Cornelius Williams was an absent father, a traveling salesman. The children’s favorite pastime was playing phonograph records. Those who are familiar with The Glass Menagerie will recognize that the activity is a favorite of the character of Laura, the timid, impaired sister to Tom Wingfield.

In 1918, the family moved to St. Louis where Cornelius was employed at the shoe factory. The marriage did not thrive with the new abode and the family reunited. Edwina punished her husband by withholding sex, leading to long, violent arguments. Fans of The Glass Menagerie will recall Tom’s miserable employment at the factory.

The centerpiece of Williams’s first artistic success is an arranged date between Laura and Tom’s coworker, Jim O’Conner, a former classmate of Laura’s in high school. Jim had a nickname for Laura. He called her Blue Roses, an obvious reference to how his sister inspired the character. When the date is not successful, Tom leaves the family. He begs Laura to blow out her candles, an illusion of forgiveness for Tom’s failure to care for his sister.

During the time in St. Louis, Rose, according to her brother’s memoir, fought bitterly with her parents. She developed a state of anxiety when in male company that inclined her to hunch her shoulders so they looked even narrower. Rose developed digestive issues and saw a variety of physicians frequently. This led to lengthy hospitalizations where Rose made accusations against her father of sexual abuse. The family did not believe her.

That is not unlike what happens to Blanche DuBois after her brother in law, Stanley Kowalski, brutally rapes her. At the end of the play, a mild mannered physician comforts the distraught woman. She responds and utters the infamous line, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Here again we find Williams exploring his conflicted emotions in regards to his deeply troubled sister.

In 1943, doctors performed a frontal lobotomy on Rose following a period where her actions became more violent and her accusations about her father more forceful. Rose wrote her brother, “If I die you will know that I miss you twenty-four hours a day. I want some black coffee, ice-cream on a chocolate bar, a good picture of you, Your devoted sister, Xxx Rose. P.S. Send me one 1 dollar for ice cream.”

This leads to Suddenly Last Summer where the wealthy Violet Venable uses her money to buy off Catherine’s family and a private medical facility to authorize and execute a lobotomy to stop the distraught woman from making salacious claims about untoward behavior of her sadistic, homosexual son. At this point, the play’s attempt to exorcise Tennessee Williams’s demons is obvious. Williams wrote in his diary, “God must remember and have pity some day on one who loved as much as her little heart could hold—& more! Who should be there, little Rose? And me, here.”

Tennessee Williams died in 1983, leaving the bulk of his estate in a trust to provide for his incapacitated sister. Rose Williams died at age 86 of cardiac arrest, a resident of a psychiatric hospital in Tarrytown, New York.

August 8, 2022 | Registered CommenterFinbar McBride

Eli Wallach should have been nominated for Baby Doll and won in a walk. He's a hoot!

I also wonder how Judith Anderson failed to be nominated for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Perhaps she was submitted as a lead?

August 8, 2022 | Registered CommenterAmy Camus

I definitely think Ava Gardner deserved a nomination for 'The Night of the Iguana'.

August 8, 2022 | Registered CommenterTyler

Summer and Smoke is SO terrible. Those nominations are always alarming.
excited to revisit A STREETCAR but the links here are reminding me that we've written about SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER and A STREETCAR the most here already. Must find new angles on streetcar for this revisit.

I am alarmed to state that i've never seen THE FUGITIVE KIND so i must correct that.

August 8, 2022 | Registered CommenterNATHANIEL R

The amount of passion I have towards the film adaptation of Streetcar is equal the level of disdain I have for the film adaptation of Summer and Smoke. Truly a horrible adaptation and Page just doesn't do anything for me in the role.

While COAHTR received those leading nominations for Taylor and Newman i believed Anderson and Sherwood were good enough to warrent supporting actress nominations.

I will say the adaptations are a mixed bag with some really strong elements but no adaptation is as miraculous as Streetcar. Everything just came together with that film from both performance and production and I look forward to hearing what is said about that incredible film.

August 8, 2022 | Registered CommenterEoin Daly

As a big Williams fan, I loved this post - thanks! My favorite is Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, but there are aspects of Suddenly, Last Summer and Sweet Bird of Youth that I quite enjoy. Like Nathaniel I'll have to catch up with The Fugitive Kind. I've never seen that one, but given that cast I should fix that. I didn't realize The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond had been made, so I'll want to see that too, especially given its supporting cast.

August 9, 2022 | Registered CommenterScottC

Tyler--ITA. Ava is magnificent in that film! It's also one of Richard Burton's best performances..He was nominated that year for Becket, so he was having quite the year!

August 13, 2022 | Registered Commenterbrookesboy

Tyler--ITA. Ava is magnificent in that film! It's also one of Richard Burton's best performances..He was nominated that year for Becket, so he was having quite the year!

August 13, 2022 | Registered Commenterbrookesboy
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