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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 film)
1951 film by Elia Kazan
For other uses, see A Streetcar Named Desire (disambiguation).
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothicdrama film adapted from Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Directed by Elia Kazan, it stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. The film tells the story of a MississippiSouthern belle, Blanche DuBois (Leigh), who, after encountering a series of personal losses, seeks refuge with her sister (Hunter) and brother-in-law (Brando) in a dilapidated New Orleans apartment building. The original Broadway production and cast was converted to film, albeit with several changes and sanitizations related to censorship.
Tennessee Williams collaborated with Oscar Saul and Elia Kazan on the screenplay. Kazan, who directed the Broadway stage production, also directed the black-and-white film. Brando, Hunter, and Malden all reprised their original Broadway roles. Although Jessica Tandy originated the role of Blanche DuBois on Broadway, Vivien Leigh, who had appeared in the London theatre production, was cast in the film adaptation for her star power. The film brought Brando, previously virtually unknown, to prominence as a major Hollywood film star, and earned him the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actor; Leigh won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Blanche. It received Oscar nominations in ten other categories (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and won Best Supporting Actor (Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Hunter), and Best Art Direction (Richard Day, George James Hopkins), making it the first film to win in three of the acting categories.
The film earned an estimated $4,250,000 at the US and Canadian box office in 1951, making it the fifth biggest hit of the year. In 1999, A Streetcar Named Desire was selected for Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams’ renowned work reflects his two decades of coming of age in St. Louis, and his creations range from the famed classics, to adaptations for film and opera, to dozens of newly discovered plays and writings that have been continuously documented, performed and studied around the world. Considered by many to be America’s greatest playwright, Williams is best known for his award-winning powerful plays, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “The Glass Menagerie.” His beloved and enduring characters throughout his more than 30 full-length plays -- Stanley Kowalski and Blanche DuBois, Amanda and Laura, Maggie the Cat, to name a few -- represent the loneliness, depression and uncertainty that were a part of his personal life. A product of a tumultuous marriage, his difficult and troubling childhood provided fodder for his art. In fact, his mother and sister became the models for the foolish but strong character of Amanda Wingfield, and the fragile daughter Laura, respectively, in “The Glass Menagerie,” while his abusive father represented the aggressive and verbally abusive Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” As for himself – the main character in “Night of the Iguana” -- struggled with depression and alcoholism just like Williams did. References to his time and coming of age in St. Louis are sprinkled throughout his work. Originally christened with the name Thomas Lanier Williams III, his family moved when he was seven from Columbus, Miss., to St. Louis in 1918. In St. Louis, he attended the Eugene Field School, Soldan High, University City High, the University of Missouri Columbia, University of Iowa, and Washington University. He also worked downtown at the International Shoe Company, where his father was an executive. The Tivoli Theater, Forest Park, the Muny and the Saint Louis Art Museum were all frequent stops for him, and many of 1947 play by Tennessee Williams For other uses, see A Streetcar Named Desire (disambiguation). A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley. A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most critically acclaimed plays of the 20th century and Williams's most popular work. It still ranks among his most performed plays, and has inspired many adaptations in other forms, notably a critically acclaimed film that was released in 1951. Blanche is mentioned in the play as arriving at Stella's apartment by riding in a streetcar on the Desire streetcar line. Tennessee Williams was living in an apartment on Toulouse Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire. The old Desire streetcar line ran only a half-block away. In the 1951 film Blanche is shown riding the car. In the interim between writing the play and shooting the film, though, the line was converted into a bus service (1948), and the production team had to seek permission from the authorities to hire out a streetcar with the "Desire" name on it. After the loss of her family home to creditors, Blanche DuBois travels from Laurel, Mississippi, to the New Orleans French Quarter to live with her younger married sister, Stella, and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski. She is in her thirties and, with no money, has nowhere else to go. Blanche tells Stella that she has taken a leave of absence from her English-teaching position because of her nerves (which is later revealed to be a lie). Blanche laments the shabbiness of her sister's two-r (1911-1983) After college, Tennessee Williams moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire much of his writing. On March 31, 1945, his play, The Glass Menagerie, opened on Broadway and two years later A Streetcar Named Desire earned Williams his first Pulitzer Prize. Many of Williams' plays have been adapted to film starring screen greats like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, the second of Cornelius and Edwina Williams' three children. Raised predominantly by his mother, Williams had a complicated relationship with his father, a demanding salesman who preferred work instead of parenting. Williams described his childhood in Mississippi as pleasant and happy. But life changed for him when his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. The carefree nature of his boyhood was stripped in his new urban home, and as a result, Williams turned inward and started to write. His parent's marriage certainly didn't help. Often strained, the Williams home could be a tense place to live. "It was just a wrong marriage," Williams later wrote. The family situation, however, did offer fuel for the playwright's art. His mother became the model for the foolish but strong Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, while his father represented the aggressive, driving Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1929, Williams enrolled at the University of Missouri to study journalism. But he was soon withdrawn from the school by his father, who became incensed when he learned that his son's girlfriend was also attending the university. Deeply despondent, Williams retreated home, and at his father's urging took a job as a sales clerk with a shoe company. The future playwright hated the position, and again he turned to his writing, crafting poems and stories after work. Eventually, however, the depression took its toll and Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
A Streetcar Named Desire
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