Classics from the heart of Tennessee

Tennessee Williams Collection

(Warner Home Video, $69)

A Streetcar Named Desire

THIS superlative two-disc package presents the multi-Oscar-winning 1951 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prizewinning drama about Blanche DuBois, a fragile, mentally unbalanced former teacher who visits her pregnant sister, Stella, in New Orleans and encounters her virile, uncouth husband, Stanley Kowalski.

Directed by Elia Kazan, who helmed the long-running Broadway production, the searing film features three members of the original Broadway cast -- a mesmerizing Marlon Brando as Stanley, Kim Hunter as Stella and Karl Malden as Mitch, Stanley’s friend, who falls for Blanche. Hunter and Malden won supporting Oscars; Vivien Leigh, who essayed the role of Blanche on the London stage, received best actress for her haunting portrayal.

Extras: The first disc features enthralling commentary with a spry, 94-year-old Malden and film historians Rudy Behlmer and Jeff Young. The second disc includes a feature length-documentary, “Elia Kazan: A Director’s Journey,” and five crackling good documentaries that explore the genesis of the play on Broadway, the challenges and difficulties of bringing “Streetcar” to the big screen, the censorship issues the film version encountered, an exploration of Alex North’s seminal score and a profile of Brando.

The disc also includes numerous outtakes from the production, as well as the newly unearthed 1947 screen test of a 23-year-old baby-faced Brando doing an on-screen interview and a scene from “Rebel Without a Cause” (judging from the test, this “Rebel” doesn’t seem to have any connection with the 1955 James Dean version).

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Baby Doll

Kazan and Williams reunited in 1956 for this delectably wicked tragi-comedy/drama shot in Benoit, Miss. Carroll Baker received a richly deserved Oscar nomination in the title role -- a 19-year-old child bride who sleeps in a crib (the scene of her sleeping while sucking her thumb is the decisive image of the film) in the decrepit old mansion owned by her much older husband (Karl Malden), a cotton gin owner who has fallen on hard times. When Baby Doll had married Malden’s Archie Lee at age 18, he agreed that he wouldn’t consummate the marriage until she was 20. As the film opens, it is just a few days before she must uphold her side of the bargain. Eli Wallach, in his film debut, plays the slick, manipulative Silva Vacarro, Archie Lee’s business rival who has taken most of his cotton gin business. After Archie Lee burns down Vacarro’s cotton gin, the Sicilian decides to seek revenge through the naive Baby Doll.

“Baby Doll” was exceedingly controversial when it was released before Christmas 1956. So much so that the Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency condemned it for its “carnal suggestiveness.” Francis Cardinal Spellman attacked it from the pulpit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York two days before its opening, saying it had been “responsibly judged to be evil in concept.”

The sermon led to the first Legion of Decency boycott of the film -- an estimated 20 million Catholics protested its release, and some 77% of the theaters scheduled to screen the film canceled its engagement. Even Time magazine got involved by calling it the dirtiest American-made movie ever released.

The academy, though, didn’t seem fazed by the controversy. Besides Baker’s best actress nomination, the film received Oscar nominations for supporting actress (Mildred Dunnock), cinematography and Williams’ screenplay; Kazan won the Golden Globe for best director.

Extras: A retrospective featuring interviews with Malden, Wallach and Baker.

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Richard Brooks adapted and directed this superbly acted though watered-down -- all references to homosexuality were deleted -- 1958 version of Williams’ popular 1955 play about the troubled marriage of an alcoholic former athlete named Brick (Paul Newman, in his first Oscar-nominated performance) and his sexually frustrated wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor, who picked up her second Academy Award nomination for best actress), who tells her husband that her pent-up affections make her feel like a “cat on hot tin roof.”

Burl Ives re-creates his Broadway triumph as Big Daddy, Brick’s larger-than-life, plantation-owner father, who is dying of cancer.

Extras: Fact-filled commentary from Williams’ biographer, Donald Spoto, and a new featurette.

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The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

This florid 1961 adaptation of Williams’ novel was widely panned when it was first released, though it has garnered a more solid reputation over the decades. Vivien Leigh stars as Karen Stone, an aging actress whose husband dies from a heart attack on the plane taking them to Rome for a holiday. After his demise, Mrs. Stone decides to stay in Rome and becomes friends with an ambitious, oily contessa (Lotte Lenya in an Oscar-nominated performance) who makes a living introducing handsome gigolos to lonely and wealthy American widows. Warren Beatty, who struggles mightily with his Italian accent, plays a gigolo named Paolo who sweeps Mrs. Stone off her feet.

Extras: A retrospective on the production.

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Sweet Bird of Youth

Newman returned to Broadway in 1959 in Williams’ mesmerizing melodrama. Three years later, he and co-star Geraldine Page reprised their stage roles for the equally compelling film version adapted and directed by Brooks. Newman plays Chance Wayne, a drifter looking for a career in Hollywood, who picks up an aging, alcoholic film star named Alexandra Del Lago (Page) and takes her back to his small Southern hometown.

Just as with “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Brooks had to soften the more salacious aspects of the Broadway play, including Chance’s castration. Ed Begley won the Oscar for supporting actor as the town’s volatile boss.

Extras: A retrospective and Page and costar Rip Torn’s screen test.

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The Night of the Iguana

John Huston directed this spellbinding 1964 adaptation of Williams’ last major Broadway success. Richard Burton gives a gritty performance as a defrocked clergyman -- he had had a dalliance with a teenager -- now working as a bus tour guide in Mexico. His latest assignment is to ferry a group of strait-laced schoolteachers through the country. Accompanying the teachers is an 18-year-old nymphet (Sue Lyon) who has her sights set on Burton. Ava Gardner plays a colorful hotel owner who was recently made a widow, Deborah Kerr is an old-maid artist who travels the globe with her poet grandfather, and Grayson Hall (who received an Oscar nomination) is a stern, unyielding teacher.

Extras: A retrospective on the trials and tribulations of making the film with such a high-powered cast in a desolate area in Mexico and a vintage featurette.

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Tennessee Williams’ South

The collection’s bonus disc is a rarely seen documentary from the early ‘70s featuring candid interviews with Williams and excerpts from his plays.

-- Susan King