Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Tom Williams, better known as Tennessee, lived in Key West from 1949 to his death in 1983. One of America’s three greatest playwrights, he wrote the final draft of “A Streetcar Named Desire” while staying at the La Concha Hotel in in 1947. A few years later, he bought the house at 1431 Duncan Street.

So, it’s not surprising that we celebrate the birthday (March 26, 1911) of the late Thomas Lanier Williams III – a hometown boy, so to speak.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – playing at the Tropic Cinema next week – is the first film being screened as a part of the Tennessee Williams Birthday Celebration. Movie versions of “The Rose Tattoo” and “Sweet Bird of Youth” also will follow during the month.

Tennessee Williams wrote “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” between 1953 and 1955. It was based on his earlier short story, “Three Players of a Summer Game.” His personal favorite, the play won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955.

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was made into a movie in 1958. Directed by Richard Brooks, this is the story of an ex-football player who drinks too much, rejects the affections of his wife, and spars with his overbearing father. It stars Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Burl Ives as Brick, Maggie the Cat, and Big Daddy, respectively.

The film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Tennessee Williams’s play was the “Another Medium.” Williams did not like the film. He was unhappy with the screenplay, which removed almost all homosexual themes and revised the third act to include a lengthy reconciliation scene between Brick and Big Daddy.

He so disliked the adaptation that he told people waiting in line to see the film, “This movie will set the industry back 50 years. Go home!”

Producer Lawrence Weingarten told Variety while planning the film, “Our biggest problem is finding a substitute for the homosexual angle, but I’m sure we’ll be able to lick it (sic).”

Ben Gazzara had played Brick on Broadway but refused to do the film with its censored script. Joshua Logan had been set to direct the film, but left the project over a disagreement over how gay themes were going to be addressed in the script.

When Richard Brooks took over, he rewrote the script, saying, “I didn’t feel the subject of latent or even overt homosexuality was necessary for this particular story. Also, you have a conditioned audience in a theatre, but if you go to the movies and there’s a man on the screen who keeps saying, no, he doesn’t want to go to bed with Elizabeth Taylor, then the audience will begin to whistle and hoot ….”

Paul Newman expressed his disappointment when he discovered that the screenplay deviated wildly from Wiliams’s original script.

Richard Brooks was annoyed by Tennessee Williams’s criticism of the movie, pointing out that Williams had made well over a million and a half dollars out of the film.

Nonetheless, critics loved it. The New York Times called it “a ferocious and fascinating show.” Variety called it “a powerful, well-seasoned film produced within the bounds of good, if ‘adults only,’ taste…” And The Washington Post wrote that the play “has been transposed to the screen with almost astonishing skill ….”

Despite those on-line admonitions by Tennessee Williams, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was successful with audiences, grossing more than $1 million over the Labor Day weekend. It was number one at the box office for five consecutive weeks.

Film critic Ken Anderson observed, “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.”

Maybe. But Tennessee Williams was openly – and proudly – gay.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com