"It was the cotton bowl, sister woman."
Not the sugar bowl, rose bowl, punch bowl or salad bowl!
Stray cat notes...
When MTC Artistic Director Roger Hodgman directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1990, the company had two associate directors: Simon Phillips and Gale Edwards. Now Simon is AD and Gale is his hot shot guest director.
In 1955, MGM bought the film rights of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play... for Grace Kelly! (Dear God, what were they thinking?!) Names bandied about, at the time, as her possible co-star included Elvis Presley!!
When the film came to be made, references to Maggie's sexual frustration and Skipper's homosexuality had to be removed. So, Brick's drinking was downgraded to hero-worship... and vaguely attributed to him having an undemonstrative dad! Anyone remember the terrific scene in the film where Burl Ives (reprising his role from the Broadway production) bangs on about his hobo dad? Hobo, this time, not homo. [Sorry.]
If memory serves, Ken Tynan saw the original production and wrote about some bits sounding as out of place as a kazoo in a string quartet. He eventually discovered that the kazoo was, in fact, a Kazan! Director Elia Kazan pressured Williams into changing the ending to make Brick, er, a bit less of a prick.
Gale Edwards' production goes for the ending as originally written. (Williams revised the ending a second time which attempted to splice the hardness of version one with the wussiness of the Kazan rewrite.)
Funnily enough, v. 1 ends with Brick (almost) echoing Big Daddy's words:
Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?
v. 3 ends with an exact echo of Big Daddy's words:
Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?
I quite like the slightly false note of v.1 with Big Daddy getting the subjunctive case thing right and Brick, the jock, not.
v.2 ends with the icky Hollywood line, spoken by Maggie: "nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof -- is there? Is there, Baby?" [puke!]
And god bless Gale Edwards for not turning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof into a modern-day parable of drug-abusing, retired (and/or 'closeted') athletes!
One final thought/challenge... Liz Taylor (a radiant, unforgettable Maggie in the film) played another Maggie a few years back... if you read my Herald Sun rant about stunt casting, the answer will be obvious! What was the show, and what did she say? Verbatim answers only!
Stray cat notes...
When MTC Artistic Director Roger Hodgman directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1990, the company had two associate directors: Simon Phillips and Gale Edwards. Now Simon is AD and Gale is his hot shot guest director.
In 1955, MGM bought the film rights of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play... for Grace Kelly! (Dear God, what were they thinking?!) Names bandied about, at the time, as her possible co-star included Elvis Presley!!
When the film came to be made, references to Maggie's sexual frustration and Skipper's homosexuality had to be removed. So, Brick's drinking was downgraded to hero-worship... and vaguely attributed to him having an undemonstrative dad! Anyone remember the terrific scene in the film where Burl Ives (reprising his role from the Broadway production) bangs on about his hobo dad? Hobo, this time, not homo. [Sorry.]
If memory serves, Ken Tynan saw the original production and wrote about some bits sounding as out of place as a kazoo in a string quartet. He eventually discovered that the kazoo was, in fact, a Kazan! Director Elia Kazan pressured Williams into changing the ending to make Brick, er, a bit less of a prick.
Gale Edwards' production goes for the ending as originally written. (Williams revised the ending a second time which attempted to splice the hardness of version one with the wussiness of the Kazan rewrite.)
Funnily enough, v. 1 ends with Brick (almost) echoing Big Daddy's words:
Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?
v. 3 ends with an exact echo of Big Daddy's words:
Wouldn't it be funny if that were true?
I quite like the slightly false note of v.1 with Big Daddy getting the subjunctive case thing right and Brick, the jock, not.
v.2 ends with the icky Hollywood line, spoken by Maggie: "nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof -- is there? Is there, Baby?" [puke!]
And god bless Gale Edwards for not turning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof into a modern-day parable of drug-abusing, retired (and/or 'closeted') athletes!
One final thought/challenge... Liz Taylor (a radiant, unforgettable Maggie in the film) played another Maggie a few years back... if you read my Herald Sun rant about stunt casting, the answer will be obvious! What was the show, and what did she say? Verbatim answers only!
posted by Chris Boyd at 6:28 AM
15 Comments:
This better come to Sydney, argh! Cos I have had it up to here with being frustrated every time I read that the homosexuality references were cut from the film which is the only version I know ... waaahhhh!
Slight tangent: why the hell would they cut the references in this one when the homosexuality is so blatant in Suddenly Last Summer? Or, wait, would that be because the gay boy got torn to pieces in that one and hence met a justifiable end? *eyetwitch*
Whoops, sorry ... spoilers.
Out of curiosity, Chris, I was wondering if you happened to recall who played Maggie in the last MTC production? (I think Nicholas Eadie played Brick.)
I remembered on the way home, Abe. It was Victoria Longley. (Belinda Davey, as Mae, took a bit longer!)
Hey, dri, Martin Henderson is prettier than Paul Newman, with biceps to die for. His very special r/s with his little buddy Skipper (holy Gilligan's Island, Batman) is all there. The bit that is rarely emphasised is the pissabolity that Big Daddy might've chased some tail as well. (Hence his bowel cancer... Yikes! No-one lies about his sexuality in Tennessee without dying of it.)
(That said, in Australian and NZ films, if a youngie loses his or her virginity, a loved one tends to die. LOL)
Incidentally, rumours abound that Newman himself won't see his next birthday thanks to cancer. Chemo abandoned, gone home to die.
These are all unsubstantiated, I hasten to add. Only Reuters and dodgy newspapers/scandal sheets have touched the story. All "a close personal friend of Newman's said"...
Thanks Chris.
It's probably a measure of how little impression that production left on me that I had no recollection of Victoria Longley's presence (or perhaps a measure of my failing memory).
Kind of disappointed you actually remembered. I was hoping to send you obsessively fossicking Krapp-like through your archives for at least a couple of hours.
Sadly, Abe, I took the Krapp's Last tape challenge at 16:55 and had the actual 1990 programme in my hand at 16:56. (If I'd been looking for one from 2005, it might have taken quite a bit longer!) I can now tell you, for example, that one of the no-neck monsters was Martina Murray, now a stage designer.
I can tell you (rather embarrassingly) that I sat two rows behind where I was sitting last night (D-11 instead of B-11), that Len Radic hailed Roger's production as "a powerful study of Southern family life", that Rosemary Neill -- rather like yourself -- thought it "rather pallid and underpowered".
I wrote (in my remarkably legible notes) that "little mama shits me" and an incomprehensible doodle about "Rinso the Cat". Maybe another of my proto comic strip characters... like Ampersand Duck ten years earlier. (Damn "&D" for stealing my moniker!)
I can also add the following correction. While Gale in fact an associate artistic director at the time of this production, Janis Balodis was the other. Gale replaced Simon at the start of 1990. D'oh!
Elvis Presley as Brick, that can't possibly be true. One for the money, two for the D'oh, three to get poontang, now go Cat go!! Don't you, step on my blue suede plaster cast...
See?! Just doesn't work.
Hey, NOBODY'S prettier than Paul Newman! *bristles on behalf of Aquarians everywhere*
Martin Henderson, eh? Hmmm ... all right, I'll consider that pissabolity. And yay for his special relationship!
Damn, I hope those rumours are just rumours. I'm sad enough about Patrick Swayze and he's definitely nowhere as pretty as Ice Blue Eyes Newman.
How bizarre, I was just eyeing the original Thomas Crown Affair at the video store yesterday but threw it over for (more, ahem) Lemmon instead. I have got to see that one day soon.
Blue suede plaster cat ... *shakes head* ... you're TERRIBLE, Muriel!
The Simpsons....."daddy"
And a bunch of flowers and a picnic hamper to you, Wanderer!
I wonder how deliberate the casting of Liz as Maggie Simpson was? Certainly both Maggie the Cat and young Margaret Simpson both had Big Daddies. LOL. (Or Big Daddy-in-law in the Cat's case.) Wouldn't put it past Matt Groening and the team to put in a sly wink like that.
I'm really a small 'w' wanderer, but thanks for the compliment.
I would think it very deliberate.
Her best line ever has to be "What a dumpp!"
I think Tynan compared it to Jazz, not kazoos "A magnificent play; but modern jazz, to pursue the metaphor, calls for much greater technical virtuosity than Dixieland. Williams' quasi-tragedy needs superlative soloists, superlatively directed"
PS, did you have a good memory of the late, great Irene Inescourt as Big Momma back in 1990?
Yeah, very fond memory of Inescort, Michael. Eclipsed, though, by the memory of her performance as Melanie Klein in Nicholas Wright's play Mrs Klein. Must have been the end of 1989. Best thing I saw her do. (She played a tyrant.) I confess, I didn't know she was 'late'.
Wanderer, I had you picked as a Wotan in disguise. With or without a capital letter. What a dump... that reminds me (inexplicably) of Bette Davis.
Inescourt died back in 1992, she should have lived to play Claire in "The Visit of of the Old Lady". She was an excellent Clytamestra too>
PS, I was looking for Tynan reviews of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" for the kazoo reference which is, of course, not in a review but in Tynan's profile of Williams.
Hey, MLC... I haven't heard the Pines of Rome since Neville Marriner (?) conducted the Minnesota Symphony (?) at the Concert Hall in Melbourne in 1985 (?)
PS are your comments off for any reason?
The no-neck monster isn't a designer, she's a stage manager. And now assisting the MTC's AD.
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