I’ve always been a sucker for playwright Tennessee Williams’ overheated southern gothics.
By the time most of the films adapted from his plays began airing regularly on late-night TV, Williams’ trademark psychoanalytic, sweat ‘n’ lust domestic melodramas—so popular in the '40s and '50s—had long gone out of fashion. But watching these movies as a kid gave me the impression of adulthood as this distant, mysterious wonderland where one’s life would be ruled by fiery passions and profound emotions. Where where the simplest, most unassuming countenances concealed deep wellsprings of poetic sensitivity. Ah, youth.
Admittedly, I couldn’t always distinguish actual Tennessee Williams movies from look-alike works from William Inge (Come Back Little Sheba), Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms), Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding), Lonnie Coleman (Hot Spell), or William Faulkner (The Long Hot Summer). But as each film seemed to reinforce similar themes ("Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you. Like something golden you let go of."); they might well have sprung from the same imagination.
When I was young and my entire world not much larger than the size of my family, I responded to the way Williams’ domestic dramas gave the mundane conflicts of the American household the scope and grandeur of Greek tragedy. In my adolescence, I related to his characters’ flawed humanity and struggle with self-forgiveness. When I was a teenager and became more aware of the hormonal drives propelling Williams’ narratives, I was excited by his introduction of implicit and codified homosexual longing—inevitably tortured—through characters seen (Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); unseen (Blanche’s husband in A Streetcar Named Desire); male (Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer); and female (Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone).
Young adulthood brought forth in me both a heretofore untapped propensity for supercilious scoffing and an appreciation of camp; two dubious talents put to ample use when confronted by some of the more outdated aspects of Williams’ oeuvre, and '50s-era Hollywood's quaint notions of what constituted "steamy." I also suspect that the development of my snide cynicism during this time was at least in part due to my having fallen in love with those brutally trenchant “Family” skits on The Carol Burnett Show. Those hilariously acerbic episodes of familial discord were so well-written, yet so exaggerated, they forever altered my ability to take the southern gothic genre nearly as seriously as I had in my youth.
By the time most of the films adapted from his plays began airing regularly on late-night TV, Williams’ trademark psychoanalytic, sweat ‘n’ lust domestic melodramas—so popular in the '40s and '50s—had long gone out of fashion. But watching these movies as a kid gave me the impression of adulthood as this distant, mysterious wonderland where one’s life would be ruled by fiery passions and profound emotions. Where where the simplest, most unassuming countenances concealed deep wellsprings of poetic sensitivity. Ah, youth.
Admittedly, I couldn’t always distinguish actual Tennessee Williams movies from look-alike works from William Inge (Come Back Little Sheba), Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms), Carson McCullers (The Member of the Wedding), Lonnie Coleman (Hot Spell), or William Faulkner (The Long Hot Summer). But as each film seemed to reinforce similar themes ("Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you. Like something golden you let go of."); they might well have sprung from the same imagination.
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| The Emotionally Unavailable Man |
When I was young and my entire world not much larger than the size of my family, I responded to the way Williams’ domestic dramas gave the mundane conflicts of the American household the scope and grandeur of Greek tragedy. In my adolescence, I related to his characters’ flawed humanity and struggle with self-forgiveness. When I was a teenager and became more aware of the hormonal drives propelling Williams’ narratives, I was excited by his introduction of implicit and codified homosexual longing—inevitably tortured—through characters seen (Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof); unseen (Blanche’s husband in A Streetcar Named Desire); male (Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer); and female (Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone).
Young adulthood brought forth in me both a heretofore untapped propensity for supercilious scoffing and an appreciation of camp; two dubious talents put to ample use when confronted by some of the more outdated aspects of Williams’ oeuvre, and '50s-era Hollywood's quaint notions of what constituted "steamy." I also suspect that the development of my snide cynicism during this time was at least in part due to my having fallen in love with those brutally trenchant “Family” skits on The Carol Burnett Show. Those hilariously acerbic episodes of familial discord were so well-written, yet so exaggerated, they forever altered my ability to take the southern gothic genre nearly as seriously as I had in my youth.
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| Elizabeth Taylor as Margaret (Maggie) Pollitt |
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| Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt |
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| Burl Ives as Big Daddy |
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| Judith Anderson as Ida "Big Momma" Pollitt |
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| Jack Carson as Gooper "Brother-Man" Pollitt |
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| Madeleine Sherwood as Mae "Sister-Woman" Pollitt |
Life experience and changing times have sapped many Tennessee Williams film adaptations of much of their initial profundity for me, leaving in its place a kind of winsome nostalgia for a time when Williams’ ennobling of the outcast and defense of the delicate-of-spirit proved the perfect balm for my adolescent insecurities. But the richness of his characters, poetry of language, and finely-observed details of familial tension, still have the power to engross. And if every so often his movies lapse into campiness…well, these days that only serves to sweeten the experience.
One of Williams’ more accessible films is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, his 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play adapted for the screen (Williams would say bowdlerized) in 1958 by director Richard Brooks (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) and screenwriter James Poe (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). Parodied, imitated, and discussed to a fare-thee-well, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the saga of the Mississippi Pollitts—a family of epic dysfunction long before such a term existed—is too familiar to warrant a summary, save to say family patriarch Big Daddy is dying, and the kinfolk tie themselves in knots trying to avoid any number of truths the finality of death makes necessary to confront.
Maggie the Cat, Brick, Big Momma, Big Daddy, Gooper & Mae and their troop of little no-neck monsters, occupy a short list of Williams characters so colorfully drawn and finely realized onscreen; just their names alone evoke images of real-life, flesh-and-blood beings with lives which extend beyond the celluloid frame. Not all of Williams’ characters strike me this way, but to this list, I’d add Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, and Sebastian Venable; the latter of whom I've always been able to picture, plain as day, in spite of his never being shown.
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| "They've brought the whole bunch here like animals to display at a county fair." Monster of Fertility Mae Pollitt (nee Flynn) and Her Brood of No-Necks |
I think Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the very first Tennessee Williams film I ever saw. Certainly, coming as I do from an extended family arguably as dysfunctional and just a shade more Machiavellian, it’s the first Tennessee Williams movie I actually “got.” Which is to say, at my young age. I was able to follow it. Not necessarily grasp with insight any of what the film had to say about things like, the duality of lying—how people use lies to both protect and to harm; the crippling, self-destructiveness of guilt; the relativity of love and truth; and the indomitability of the self-preservation instinct, aka that cat staying on the tin roof as long it can.
Like those shiny shells the surf leaves on the beach that require minimal effort to spot and pick up, the things that most entertained me about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were primarily on its surface. I loved the setup: over the course of a long, hot summer day (I learned early that there's no such thing as winter in southern gothic), a family estranged and at odds is forced to interact and put on a good face on the occasion of Big Daddy's 65th birthday. Possibly his last.
Beautifully shot, well-cast, and finely acted, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a finger-lickin', family-size, southern-fried fracas with overlays of Freudian psychology. As often as not, the characters lie to each other with the same alacrity with which they lie to themselves, and when not repressing some deep, dark secret, are pressing forth some hidden agenda. Resentments, revelations, and epiphanies flow as freely as the bourbon from Brick's bottomless booze bottle, while unsure southern accents clash musically in the background. It's great stuff that I've come to appreciate more as I've grown older.
Unaware as I was at the time of the Production Code-mandated excision of all references to homosexuality from Williams’ original play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof came across like every other overly-coy, repressed-yet-sex-obsessed '50s-era movie: it wouldn’t stop talking about what it couldn’t speak aloud. I thought the entire hubbub in the movie surrounded Brick's belief that Maggie slept with his football buddy, Skipper, a man that Brick, love-starved from Big Daddy's inattention, held up as a hero. That's it. I never picked up on any homosexual subtext beyond the fact that Paul Newman was impossibly gorgeous. A sizable chunk of my early memories of watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on TV are scene after scene of characters proffering endless variations on: “Don’t say it, Maggie!”; “I’m gonna talk about it!”; “Tell him! Go on, tell him the truth!”; "It’s got to be told!”; "First, you've got to tell me!"
Yeesh! Just say it already!
I also remember being distracted by Paul Newman’s largely immobile, insanely photogenic face. Easy on the eyes as he is, he goes through the entire film with but a single, all-purpose expression: smoldering insouciance. Sure, he's playing a character all-bottled up and cut-off, and perhaps my biggest complaint is rooted in how the character is conceived in the first place; but even those cool blue eyes fail to register much. Every close up looks like the same GQ Magazine cover. I guess they didn't call him "Brick" for nothing.
Like those shiny shells the surf leaves on the beach that require minimal effort to spot and pick up, the things that most entertained me about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were primarily on its surface. I loved the setup: over the course of a long, hot summer day (I learned early that there's no such thing as winter in southern gothic), a family estranged and at odds is forced to interact and put on a good face on the occasion of Big Daddy's 65th birthday. Possibly his last.
Beautifully shot, well-cast, and finely acted, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a finger-lickin', family-size, southern-fried fracas with overlays of Freudian psychology. As often as not, the characters lie to each other with the same alacrity with which they lie to themselves, and when not repressing some deep, dark secret, are pressing forth some hidden agenda. Resentments, revelations, and epiphanies flow as freely as the bourbon from Brick's bottomless booze bottle, while unsure southern accents clash musically in the background. It's great stuff that I've come to appreciate more as I've grown older.
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| Mendacity Manor |
Yeesh! Just say it already!
"When a marriage goes on the rocks...the rocks are there, right there!"
The anthology TV program, Love, American Style was still on the air the first time I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. An identical brass bed was featured in several of the comedy show's episodes and black-out skits (above) contributing to my feeling that sections of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof played out like an episode titled "Love and the Deep Dark Secret"
I also remember being distracted by Paul Newman’s largely immobile, insanely photogenic face. Easy on the eyes as he is, he goes through the entire film with but a single, all-purpose expression: smoldering insouciance. Sure, he's playing a character all-bottled up and cut-off, and perhaps my biggest complaint is rooted in how the character is conceived in the first place; but even those cool blue eyes fail to register much. Every close up looks like the same GQ Magazine cover. I guess they didn't call him "Brick" for nothing.
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| Winner of the Keanu Reeves/Kristen Stewart/Sean Combs one-face-fits-all Sphinx Award |
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Over the years, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been restored to Williams’ preferred version in any number of permutations (two are linked in the Bonus Materials section below). But, as gratifying as it is to finally see the entire play as it was originally intended, the film version remains my favorite.
Why?
Because even at its most frank, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a seriously closeted play. Nearly 2½ hours are devoted to a man turning himself inside out over the shameful prospect that he might be gay. Another man kills himself over the fact. I recognize that as the work of a repressed playwright in a repressed era, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is daring and groundbreaking as hell; but contemporary actors tackling this material today always seem forced and false. They over-emote and practically burst blood vessels portraying characters who are motivated by pretense and a need to play things close to their vest.
My feeling is that if I’m going to enjoy a work of closeted art, there’s something to be said for seeing it with all its repression intact.
The movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof feels every inch a product of the 1950s. It’s an uptight, skirting-the-issue kind of movie that was made and takes place within the very era that created the closet-case Bricks and Skippers of our society. In some odd, meta kind of way, there is something perfect about Paul Newman starring in a movie dealing with latent homosexuality, which, in its telling, leaps through hoops and fire in an effort to avoid even mentioning the word. The drastic alterations Cat on a Hot Tin Roof underwent to make it to the screen communicate not only Williams' themes, but the whispered-about side of Hollywood and those impossibly long marriages of gossiped about stars like Newman and Woodward.
PERFORMANCES
What makes Cat on a Hot Tin Roof so re-watchable for me are the performances, all of which are standouts. Everybody is in fine form (even Newman as the immovable Brick, has his moments). The feel of a great ensemble cast is captured in the easy, familiar way in which the characters interact and, happily, Williams' play and the screenplay affords each with at least one big moment to shine.
Madeleine Sherwood and Jack Carson are letter-perfect and a lot of fun. I particularly find Sherwood's southern accent and single-minded, Lady Macbeth-ish maneuvering to be a constant delight.
Burl Ives is perhaps my all-time favorite Big Daddy, although I suspect the effect of his performance was undermined somewhat in 1958 by his giving an almost identical one in Desire Under the Elms earlier the same year. And while my vote for favorite Big Momma has to be split evenly between Maureen Stapleton and Kim Stanley (in the 1976 and 1984 TV-movie versions, respectively), Judith Anderson's atypically refined take on the role is surprisingly moving.
And then we come to Elizabeth Taylor. Given how many of her films have made their way onto this blog, it should come as no surprise that her Maggie the Cat is the central reason why Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been a favorite of mine for all these years and only gets better with time. For me it really isn’t a matter of how well she embodies the character Tennessee Williams created (the screen Maggie is less tense, catty, and consumed with a clawed-her-way-up-from-nothing fear of poverty), it's that she succeeds in making Maggie both the heat and life force of the film.
Taylor is so celestially beautiful and appealing in the role, Brick doesn't come off troubled so much as having rocks in his head. Ironically, as rumors of Paul Newman's probable bisexuality began circulating after his death, this filmed version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reclaimed all the gay subtext it fought so hard to lose.
Even with that questionable southern accent of hers (“I caint! I caint!") no one (at least no one I've seen in the role so far) can touch Taylor's Maggie. In this film she's more than a jewel; she’s the entire crown.
THE STUFF OF DREAMSOver the years, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been restored to Williams’ preferred version in any number of permutations (two are linked in the Bonus Materials section below). But, as gratifying as it is to finally see the entire play as it was originally intended, the film version remains my favorite.
Why?
Because even at its most frank, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a seriously closeted play. Nearly 2½ hours are devoted to a man turning himself inside out over the shameful prospect that he might be gay. Another man kills himself over the fact. I recognize that as the work of a repressed playwright in a repressed era, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is daring and groundbreaking as hell; but contemporary actors tackling this material today always seem forced and false. They over-emote and practically burst blood vessels portraying characters who are motivated by pretense and a need to play things close to their vest.
My feeling is that if I’m going to enjoy a work of closeted art, there’s something to be said for seeing it with all its repression intact.
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| Madeleine Sherwood (who I only knew as Reverend Mother on The Flying Nun) and Burl Ives (who will always be Sam the Snowman from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) recreated the roles they originated on Broadway |
PERFORMANCES
What makes Cat on a Hot Tin Roof so re-watchable for me are the performances, all of which are standouts. Everybody is in fine form (even Newman as the immovable Brick, has his moments). The feel of a great ensemble cast is captured in the easy, familiar way in which the characters interact and, happily, Williams' play and the screenplay affords each with at least one big moment to shine.
Madeleine Sherwood and Jack Carson are letter-perfect and a lot of fun. I particularly find Sherwood's southern accent and single-minded, Lady Macbeth-ish maneuvering to be a constant delight.
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| "One more crack, Queenie..." |
Taylor is so celestially beautiful and appealing in the role, Brick doesn't come off troubled so much as having rocks in his head. Ironically, as rumors of Paul Newman's probable bisexuality began circulating after his death, this filmed version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reclaimed all the gay subtext it fought so hard to lose.
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| Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash three weeks into the film's production |
It’s no secret that Tennessee Williams didn't care for the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But Williams, like a lot of artists conflicted by a desire for legitimacy and popular success, tended to hedge his bets after the fact. Williams had a habit of willingly complying with suggestions put forth by directors (Elia Kazan, most explosively) with a history of knowing what appealed to popular tastes. Williams did so with open eyes, but once a show proved successful due in part to the implementation of these suggestions, feelings of self-betrayal and selling out poisoned the pleasure of his many trips to the bank. This would result in Williams ultimately making a great show of giving self-serving statements to the press about how he had to compromise his principles in order to satisfy provincial sensibilities. (John Lahr’s exceptional biography Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh recounts this pattern of behavior in delicious detail.)
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| Virtually the entire third act was rewritten for the film. Among the changes: a sentimental backstory for Big Daddy, and a father and son reconciliation |
Certainly, the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof thoroughly subverts the entire theme of Williams’ play, but given his run-ins with the censors and Hollywood Production Code during the making of A Streetcar Named Desire six years earlier, one wonders what he possibly could have expected. Exactly what he got, it seems, for the half-million dollars he accepted from MGM for the rights to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof proved to be his guilt-ridden deal with the devil.
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| "I do love you Brick. I do!" |
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| "Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?" |
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2015
