I know this is pure speculation but wouldn't it be grandious? I mean, Warner owns A Streetcar named Desire (coming out next year on a 2xDVD), Cat on a hot tin roof (already out on DVD), Baby Doll, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth (all three coming out next year on DVD), so it would make all the sense in the world to release them together, right?

You see, I more than crave this to happen - I NEED it for the life of me! Tennessee Williams is GOD!

I only wish that Suddenly Last Summer and Boom! were also Warner properties - that way the set would be close to perfection!

It's not a Warner title but you are overlooking the unintentionally hilarious Suddenly Last Summer (poor Joe M) with desperate Liz facing lobotomy, Kate in the elevator chair, shell-shocked Monty trying to keep a straight face and some barely visible queen in a white suit whose face you never see playing "The Other". Side Splitting
(Of course made two years before Preminger effectively broke the no gays code provision with the alternately lurid and suburban gay bar, with Sinatra singing, plus wildly abreacting Don Murray in the superb Advise and Consent.

Aren't the Annie titles a real mixed bag though. (This no argument against a box set however.)

Baby Doll and Cat seem the best to me, even despite the huge gaps in Brick's story and dialogue, or maybe because of the extraordinary lengths the screenplay goes to avoid ANY mention of "The Other". Again. Viv plays a sublime faghag in Streetcar too, and Marlon always knew what he was doing in these Southern Gothic affairs - indeed Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye from the Carson McCullers (which IS Warner) deserves a spot in here with dirty mouthed fishwife Liz, neurotic Julie Harris, psychotic Zorro David and still hot Marlon cruising even hotter Robert Forster both of whom made me really horny when I was 17. And still do!

The funniest thing about Annie's titles is the code-induced side-stepping around queerness in most of these movies which DOES make them so interesting -when clearly people like Joe Manciewicz, Newman, Brando, Liz etc knew exactly what they weren't allowed to be doing .

Boom! must be the major exception, teetering straight into high Camp.

For inclusion in Annie's Warner titles - Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. And Has anyone ever made a movie of the short story "Hard Candy"?

Is it just me or is Williams one of those guys that was really controversial 50 years ago and today his work is not only tame but borderline trashy (I can't go on a complete rant agaist him because I deeply admire Marlon Brando).

I always thought Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was the great Tennessee Williams play he never wrote.

I am trying to imagine Tura Satana in a remake of Streetcar!
This speculation could go on for pages.. Annie what have you started!

I recall a stage performance of The Seven Descents of Myrtle produced for the Adelaide Festival in 1976 (this possibly one of the very few productions it ever received anywhere in the world) in which, at the blowjob under the table scene with Myrtle and the rough trade, the rear of the set turned into a gigantic flood bursting through the flats. The joint broke up completely. (The then Premier of the State and his wife were drenched, sitting in Row B.)

Of course everyone hated it, and the short story on which it was based ("The Kingdom of Earth") reads/plays much better but it was one of the happiest nights of my life in "live" theatre.

The second happiest was Lyndsay Kemp's meta queer company (fans of Derek Jarman should recognize Lyndsay) doing a part mime/part dance/ part spoken "interpretation" of Oscar Wilde's Salome in Sydney in the early 80s. Kemp had unfortunately given dialogue to the performer playing Herod ("bring me the head of Jokanon.." etc) who, most distressingly lisped like a steam room. My friends and I who were - frankly - stoned at the time started to laugh uproariously and couldn't stop for fifteen minutes, until we were finally escorted from the theatre by security.

I LOVE southern Gothic and all its spinoffs!

I thought I had included Suddenly... on the directly previous post to yours.

Can you tell me a little bit about Boom! and Roman Spring...? Those are two titles I've yet to watch and I am curious about what you have to say about the former...

Annie I posted the Suddenly post on a crossed line.

Boom which I haven't seen for years is the last of Losey's Liz and Richard period when they seemed to have "adpopted him". I don't care for it much. NOel Coward plays the witch of Capri and everyone behaves archly - nice scenery. Another adpatation, I think from "The Milk Train doesn't stop Here anymore." I probably need to see it again but I remember it as unfunny, unlike say Modesty Blaise.

Roman Spring directed by the undistinguished Jose Quintero. Ageing Viv Leigh (again) as a faghaggy sex starved spinster taken on by nasty gigolo Warren Beatty. Screenplay by Gavin Lambert. AGain I never liked it much, feeeling it misogynist in a way most people think Tenessee's women are, (but I don't.) Again needs re-vewing. It has a distinctly gay subtone and poor Viv seems to be standing in for a desperate older queen.


EDIT: Vaguely OT: After Boom, Losey did a very fine job with Liz in Secret Ceremony. Both she and the movie (indeed Mitchum and Farrow) are marvellous and this title badly needs releasing by Universal.

Interestingly Roman Spring is Warner (and Boom is Universal, but no sign of this or Secret Ceremony. Are they watiing for Liz to die, or just not interested?)

I notice Roman Spring was remade for TV in 2003 with Helen Mirren and Anne Bancroft.

Now TOTALLY OT I was looking up Assassination of Trotsky with Burton excellent in it and another overlooked, fine Losey, and had completely forgotten the outstanding cast - Delon, Valentina Cortese, Romy Schneider among others! Who has the rights for THIS??

So, to sum it up, so far we have:

The Glass Menagerie (1950)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0042509/

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0044081/

Baby Doll (1956)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0048973/

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0051459/

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0055382/

Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0056541/

The Night of the Iguana (1964)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0058404/


7 titles in total and if it does materialize, a serious candidate for boxset of the year 2006!

Now off I go to see a docu about Williams I taped from TV a few years ago - this thread really opened my appetite for davidhare's above mentioned "Southern Gothic"!

I'm a big fan of Southern Gothic literature. Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote are among my favorite writers. In fact, I had just finished reading Capote's first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms for the hundredth time. It truly is sublime. The prose is perfect and hallucinatory. The idea that a 24-year old wrote it is almost terrifying. If you haven't read anything by O'Connor, then all I have to say: "what the @#!% are you waiting for?". Jim Grimsley wrote an absolutely beautiful short novel called Dream Boy some years ago. An intoxicating piece of the new Southern Gothic I must say. Any more examples?

Anyway back to the films, I really like A Streetcar Named Desire very much - the best of the Tennesee Williams lot. Mainly for Marlon Brando's sexy, visceral performance. Suddenly, Last Summer is my next favorite. It's a hoot. It must be seen to believe. Loads of craziness and best of all, it has Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.

I'm trying to think of other Southern Gothic films. How about Sling Blade? There has to be more but right now my mind is bustling with other things.

SO am I

Some more recent examples are aforemnentioned Reflections in a Golden Eye (also Warner) which definitely deserves my reinspection;
Angel Heart (a very underrated movie);
The Big Easy, which teeters into Noir -including a perf by the late Charles Ludlum, one of his only two screen appearances. His fabulous Ridiculous Theatrical Company was one of the prime reasons for visiting New York back in the 80s and early 90s - lost to AIDS;

I also like (but nobody else does) Clint's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - undoubtedly the only movie in which Kevin Spacey will ever play a fag. Both book and movie really operate almost as commentary or an observation on Southern Gothic.

and at a totally camp level, Butterfly, a vanity project for the sublime Pia Zadora with Stacey Keach and Orson Welles in support. Mayhem, incest and white trash.

Ditto the Kyle Onstott drek novel adaptation Mandingo with Mason hamming it to the rafters. Plantations, cotton pickers, black studs and white nymphos, miscegenation and a whipping scene. Fabbo!

Well, how about The Fugitive Kind from a Tennessee Williams play (Orpheus Descending) with Southern Gothic just sweating out of everyone and Marlon Brando like a mumbling force of nature, with a guitar given to him by Ledbelly, trying to save up enough money to get the hell out. And it's got one of Mr. Williams' favorite actresses (and my great-aunt) Anna Magnani, giving a typically impassioned performance. Apparently, Brando and Magnani really disliked each other, but negative chemistry is still chemistry, and the scenes they share burn a hole through the celluloid.
Incidentally, if you ever wondered how Wong Kar-Wai came up with his recurring motif of a bird that only lands when it dies, it comes from this play/film. It is a lovely image.

Eugene Magnani

Wow - a big fan. Certainly Lumet was always a fine actor's director and he is probably due a lot of credit for the chemistry.

I would love to see a lot more Magnani titles released to DVD including Rose Tattoo, Cukor's excellent Wild is the Wind, Belissima (Nick are you listening?). etc. LOVE her in Mamma Roma!

Pssst...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002E ... ance&n=130

It's been over a year...

Merci Madame!

Uh, have you not seen L.A. Confidential?

You're right, but I a rivetted by the Oz cutie who plays the "available" number who gets killed/busted , and Kevin is kinda left on the outside. I think "pas evident" as the French say.

You could also say he plays a psycho fag in Seven, I suppose. (and he is superb in this.)

But you're right.

(now beyond the valley of red wine...)

Tennessee Williams Film Collection
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Special Edition
Streetcar Named Desire - Special Edition
Night of the Iguana
Sweet Bird Of Youth
Baby Doll
Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

No...fucking...way...! The DVD gods were listening...!

Ok, guys - now I can officially be christened "The Criterionforum.org's Resident Sybilla".

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am ecstatic at this news!

(make this an official thread on the Warner section now!)

Great news on the boxset.

One title we look to have forgotten, and I haven't seen it in years, is Pollack's adaption of This Property is Condemned (script by Coppola). Natalie Wood gave a great and very sexy performance, who was teamed well with a young Redford. Yet the production as a whole seemed very flat, jaded. I should try and seek it out to refresh the memory.

What an A+ prediction!!!!!!!

Now Annie, do you see Ken Russell in the future?

Yes!

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vie ... 8390#48390

Annie, I love you - as long as you don't turn into Lilith!

And MANDATORY reading for everyone who followed this thread, "Bird's" autobiography, in whatever form is available these days, and all the short stories. He is just so neglected. (Annie did you ever see the corny David Frost TV program when he came out with the "I cover the waterfront" answer to Frost's "are you gay" question?)

I haven't actually seen the TV program but I managed to catch that bit on a docu about Williams that I taped from The Biography Channel, I think. And it was pretty hilarious, I must admit! Plus, he was pissed drunk on that one!

Love you back but what Lilith? The Robert Rossen one?