Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Jessica Lange Review
An incomplete history of True cat on a Hot Tin Roof: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
True cat on a Hot Tin Roof—Tennessee Williams' sultry southern storm of a play about greed, deceit, self-mirage, sexual want and repression, homophobia, sexism, and the looming specter of decease—has had a curious life. Indeed, you could argue that True cathas really had three different lives since Williams dreamt it up in the early 1950s: Williams' original text (initially buried but afterward revived), Elia Kazan'due south original Broadway production (which won Williams the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955), and the Paul Newman- and Elizabeth Taylor-starring movie adaptation (which, despite its Hays Code neutering, was possibly the most sexually-charged mainstream American picture of the 1950s and an Oscar-nominated phenomenon dorsum in 1958). If you're a Tennessee Williams fan (and how could you lot not be), chances are you've seen the moving-picture show and/or some version of the original text (which Williams tinkered with and restored for the outset Broadway revival in 1974, and which has been used for nearly revivals since).
Since this year marks the 65thanniversary of the play'south Broadway premiere, I idea I'd track down some fun, and not-so-fun, facts most the many incarnations of Williams' masterpiece.
Simply first things first, a brief recap of the story:
Ready in the Mississippi plantation home of Big Daddy Pollit, a domineering cotton tycoon and patriarch of a viperous family in turmoil, on the dual occasion of his 65thbirthday and (declared) clean bill of health, True cat on a Hot Tin can Rooffocuses on the tempestuous relationship betwixt his grieving, alcoholic, probably closeted former star athlete son, Brick, and Brick'due south fiery, outspoken, unapologetically sexual married woman, "Maggie the True cat"; his scheming elder son and daughter-in-law and their weaponized brood of "no-cervix monsters"; and the terminal cancer diagnosis of which all in the Pollit clan but Big Daddy and Big Mama have been made aware.
Now, on to the Fun and Not-So-Fun Facts:
Not-Then-Fun Fact #1:Despite having already conquered Broadway with The Glass Menagerie (1944) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), by 1955 Williams' reputation had been dented by the failure of his most recent play, Camino Real, and the playwright was desperate for another win. Kazan, on the other hand, was coming off the runaway success of On the Waterfront (which won eight Oscars in 1954, including Best Moving picture and Best Director for Kazan). Kazan wanted a reluctant Williams to change the tertiary act to i in which Maggie was shown more sympathetically, the dying Large Daddy reappeared, and Brick underwent some form of moral enkindling. As Williams' (pretty humbling) note on the text indicates, it was the managing director's vision that ultimately won out.
It was but the third of these suggestions that I embraced wholeheartedly from the showtime, considering it so happened that Maggie the Cat had go steadily more charming to me as I worked on her label. I didn't desire Big Daddy to reappear in Deed Three and I felt that the moral paralysis of Brick was a root thing in his tragedy, and to show a dramatic progression would obscure the meaning of that tragedy in him and because I don't believe that a conversation, however revelatory, ever furnishings so immediate a modify in the eye or even carry of a person in Brick'south state of spiritual disrepair.
Withal, I wanted Kazan to direct the play, and though these suggestions were not made in the form of an ultimatum, I was fearful that I would lose his interest if I didn't re-examine the script from his betoken of view. I did. And y'all will find included in this published script the new third act that resulted from his creative influence on the play. The reception of the playing-script has more than than justified, in my opinion, the adjustments made to that influence. A failure reaches fewer people, and touches fewer, than does a play that succeeds.
Fun Fact #1: Williams' original character descriptions and stage directions are literary gems in and of themselves:
Non-And then-Fun Fact #2:In March 1958, during the outset calendar week of shooting the Richard Brooks-directed picture show accommodation, Elizabeth Taylor contracted a virus, causing her to cancel plans to fly to New York with her and then-husband, the producer Mike Todd. Todd's plane crashed, killing everyone on board.
Fun Fact #2:Both Tennessee Williams and Paul Newman were incensed past the film's screenplay, which removed nearly all of the play'due south homosexual themes and revised the third act department to include a lengthy scene of reconciliation between Brick and Big Daddy. Allegedly, Williams so disliked the toned-downwardly film accommodation of his what he considered to be his greatest play that he showed up at a movie house and told people in the queue, "This movie volition set the manufacture dorsum 50 years. Go home!"
Fun Fact #3:The iconic affiche fine art for the flick was created by American realist artist, and giant of the 1950s Hollywood monster motion-picture show poster game, Reynold Chocolate-brown.
Not-And then-Fun Fact #3:In a 1976 television version of the play, Brick and Maggie were played past the existent-life hubby and married woman team of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood…😬
Fun Fact #4:On stage and screen, Jessica Lange, Ashley Judd, Kathleen Turner, Mary Stuart Masterson, Anika Noni Rose, and Scarlett Johansson have all played Maggie; Tommy Lee Jones, Ian Charleson, Brendan Fraser, Jason Patric, Terrence Howard, and Benjamin Walker have all played Brick; and Burl Ives, John Carradine, Ned Beatty, James Earl Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Rip Torn, and Laurence Olivier have all played Big Daddy.
Source: https://lithub.com/an-incomplete-history-of-cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
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