Tennessee 100: "Suddenly Last Summer"

Robert A. here (of Distant Relatives). When Nathaniel asked us to pick a Tennessee Williams based film and write about it, my first instinct was the pick something I’d seen again and again and thus could write with authority. Unfortunately all of those films were quickly scooped up and I thought, why not take the opportunity to explore one I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to. Why did I want to see Suddenly, Last Summer?

Well...

Of course, Tennessee Williams films are often saturated in dripping sexuality.

Cue the crotchety old man in me saying “In my day, when films couldn’t show two people hopping in the sack, they were sexier.”  But in the case of Williams, it’s true. Consider shirtless desperate Marlon Brando shouting out for his lover in Streetcar or Eli Wallach seducing Carrol Baker in Baby Doll. This wasn’t every day sexuality winkingly eluded to to get past the censors. This was dangerous stuff.

Which finally brings me to Suddenly, Last Summer which stars Montgomery Clift as a psychiatrist hired by Katharine Hepburn to analyze, diagnose (and lobotomize) Elizabeth Taylor who has been hopelessly manic since witnessing the sudden death of her cousin Sebastian (Hepburn’s loving son) "last summer".

death haunts those conversations about last summer.

Made just a year after Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had every suggestion of Brick’s homosexuality purged, and knowing writer Gore Vidal claimed the studios made him do much of the same I went in expecting no less. Perhaps the innocence of the 50’s was still in full swing but from Taylor’s blunt declaration that Sebastian used she and his mother as “decoys” to attract desperate men, to the production design which covered Sebastian’s study with pictures and sculptures of naked men, the “undertones” seemed more like overtones.

To be gay would be shocking enough for audiences in 1959. But Sebastian’s predatory nature and the details of his grizzly murder add up to a kind of vampire sexuality where characters are at the complete whims of their urges, easily seduced, uncontrollably impassioned, set in a world explicitly characterized as one where the chaos of nature has free reign and we’re all victims in the making waiting to be devoured. My introduction to Suddenly, Last Summer was also my initiation into the most shocking of Tennessee Williams.

not the kind of action Sebastian was looking for

Suddenly Last Summer is actually a one-act play and, as such was not a Broadway outing for Tennessee in it's original run, double billed with another one-act. The film version won 3 Oscar nominations (art direction and a double Best Actress for Taylor and Hepburn. They lost to Simone Signoret in Room at the Top) There are no other feature film versions though there was a televised BBC production in the 90s with Maggie Smith (Emmy nominated), Rob Lowe, Richard E Grant and Natasha Richardson. 

Tennessee 100: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)

Robert G from Sketchy Details here to discuss the real star of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for this Tennessee Williams Centennial Week. The beauty of the fifties screen adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not in the quality of the performances, set design, or cinematography. It comes from the tightly-wound dialog and plot structure adapted from Tennessee Williams' stage play.

Elizabeth Taylor and a No Neck Monster

For this one-day tale of adults acting as foolish as children, the true nature of the story is revealed when the characters pull away from the lines they learned by heart. The dialog is a mask used by the characters to hide their true feelings about everyone else. Even something as ridiculous as Maggie's (Oscar nominated Elizabeth Taylor) constant put-downs of the "no-neck monsters" is nothing but an act of misdirection.

Brick has major emotional hurdles to leap.Every major character in the film, regardless of age, is no more mature than the parade of children singing and dancing throughout the estate. The adults fire off sharp words at each other to draw attention away from their own insecurities. They all play into the roles defined for them by the family. If Brick (Oscar nominated Paul Newman) can't be the football star he once was, he will be the most dedicated alcoholic the family has ever gossiped about. The same goes for Big Daddy (Burl Ives) as the no-nonsense patriarch of an empire, Big Momma (Judith Anderson) as the unyielding caregiver, and even Mae and Maggie as the manipulative money-hungry wives. Talking about the roles they're playing only encourages each of them to act out the roles with more energy and commitment.

It is only when the constant talk of "Big Daddy," "cats," and "Skipper" gives way to the overbearing discussion of "mendacity" that the film comes into focus. Brick isn't the only person trying to escape the lies of the Pollitt Empire; they all are. Every single member of the family is sick of the roles, game play, and war of kind facades with bitter tongues. They don't want to play into it but they don't know how to escape it. Even the doctor plays into the game of lies when he tells everyone except for Big Momma and Big Daddy that Big Daddy's dying from cancer.

The constant repetition in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an effective device: Brick always plays with his glass in a certain way, Maggie wipes her hands and arms, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood) always conducts the children's songs in the same way, Big Daddy dismisses everyone with the same tone and arm wave. The repeated discussions of child rearing, marriage, Big Daddy's health, and the titular cat metaphor are just extra tools used to keep each member of the family in their respective role.

These words and actions are choreographed to create an artificial sense of normalcy that will eventually give way to more believable mannerisms, speaking patterns, and interactions when the lies stop.

The only thing that can break the pattern is to discuss the environment of lies itself: mendacity. Brick blames it for his drinking, but Big Daddy won't accept that as an answer because Brick is expected to play the role of a drunk. One by one, the lies that support the clan are torn apart until only the true nature of each character is left standing. There is no more glass spinning or arm waving; there is only a family transitioning into better fitting roles.


Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It lost the Tony Award to The Diary of Anne Frank in 1956. The film version was nominated for 6 Oscars losing Best Picture to Gigi. Burl Ives won the Supporting Actor that year but for The Big Country instead. "Big Daddy" surely had something to do with that.

My First (Three) Dean(s)

JA from MNPP here with my follow-up to last week's query regarding the fact that I'd never seen a James Dean film and how you all should tell me which one to watch first, by poll. And tell me you did - with 44% of the vote Rebel Without a Cause, his second film with his most iconic performance, came out on top, besting East of Eden (at 37%) and Giant (at 18%). I wasn't exactly surprised by these results.

Most likely when you think Dean, you think this:

That red jacket / white tee / jeans ensemble is Marilyn's white dress flying up on the subway grate; it's Elvis' bedazzled jumpsuit and Audrey Hepburn's little black dress eating a danish in front of Tiffanys. If you're gonna start somewhere with James Dean this seems like the likeliest place to start. Which... well knowing I'd thrown myself at having to write about something so iconic it's sold more stamps than my college education cost, probably squared, was a little intimidating. What is there left to say?

Thankfully the film, while dated, does remain a fascinating, loose, alive thing. Fifty-six years of rebellious teenagers later the movie that crafted the mold somehow manages to remain just enchantingly weird. There is an otherworldly sort of spell it casts over you - there's something very apt about the planetarium setting that the film uses repeatedly. It gives you this epic space - literally all of outer space - with the beginning and the ending of the world exploding around you. But it's a manufactured apocalypse at the same time - you're not under the night sky at all. You're enclosed in a tomb of sound and fury - an echo chamber of gee whizz bang. That sounds a lot like what most of my teenage dramas all turned out to be.

Not that these kids don't have real problems. But the melodramas they play out, coupled with the actors very serious performances, takes the film into a very odd space. It's as heightened as a Douglas Sirk film, only you swap out the acting style of Rock Hudson for James Dean, which... well that's a swap. Having only seen clips of Dean's films before but never a full from-start-to-finish performance from him until now, I've got to say it really and truly was a revelation. I'm sure he was astonishing to watch on stage as well but the man was made to be placed in front of a movie camera. His face is so alive! From every angle - shoot him from the back and you can feel what he is feeling, as if he's shooting pulses of emotion from his scalp.

It seems vulgar to just straight-up gush, but as some of you said would happen in the comments I was so enamored with Dean that as soon as Rebel was finished I put in East of Eden and as soon as East of Eden was finished I put in Giant. And I've now seen them all! (That's why it took me a couple extra days to get this to you - it took me two nights to finish Giant. That is a very long movie.) And now that I've seen them all Dean's legend makes complete sense to me.

I made a joke before having seen the films about the similarity of his characters names - Jim Stark, Cal Trask, and Jet Rink - what seems amazing now, having seen the films is how completely separate these three fellows are to me. It struck me about half-an-hour into East of Eden (what a marvelous film East of Eden is, and how ashamed I feel for having only just seen it) that the Dean I was watching didn't at all seem to be the icon of teenager rebellion that I'd just been confronted with in Rebel and I'd been expecting out of all of Dean's performances. And then you get to Giant and you're watching something completely different still, and yet no less hypnotic, pour out of him.

Oh sure there are the loose similarities that connect the three - young men who seem incapable of fitting in with their surroundings, battling against the forces they see closing in on them, the slights real and imagined, all while maintaining a glorious head of hair - but the details that Dean carves out with body language and with his voice, with Jet's easygoing horse-rider's strut or Jim's tendency to jump around like an extra in West Side Story or the seemingly unwitting cruelty that coils Cal up, it was a surreal and exhilarating experience, watching all in one fell swoop.

So whaddya know? Dean was no fluke, no false advertisement. And when his scenes in Giant came to an end I felt the shadow of sadness that audiences since 1956 must sense, knowing that's all there will ever be. Still, even though the thought of all that could've been is maddening, it feels as if there's so much I'll be able to wring from just these three in repeat viewings. It'll be a pleasure.