Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) - Thoughts on this film starring Liz Taylor, Kate Hepburn and Monty Clift

Love love love this scene

"LION'S VIEW! State Asylum, cut this HIDEOUS story out of her BRAIN!"

That line deserves to be more of a camp classic than it is. Same with this exchange:

MONTGOMERY CLIFT: (contemplating the lobotomy Katharine Hepburn has proposed for Elizabeth taylor): "She would always be--fundamentally --limited."

KATHARINE HEPBURN: "But what a blessing for her to be suddenly... free of all that horror, to look up and not see a sky filled with..." (voice becomes stricken) "... STRANGE and DEVOURING BIRDS!"

CLIFT: "'Strange and devouring birds'??"

HEPBURN (as if coming out of a trace): "Whaaat?"

CLIFT: "You said, 'Strange and devouring birds'!"

HEPBURN: "DID I????""

It was like a music... made of NOISE!

I like it. It captured Taylor at the peak of her physical beauty at 27. It was considered a quality movie of its time, as both Taylor and Heburn got Oscar nominations for Best Actress.

One more in color.

Hepburn supposedly didn't entire understand the story and was aghast when she was shot w/o filters. She wasn't quite in "Lucy as Mame" territory but her age was ccedntuated. Taylor was beautiful. Clift looks like hell and the idea of him, of all people, playing a psychiatrist is pretty funny.

I think everyone was shot w/o filters in this film, even Taylor and Cliff. The harsh camera work contributed to a visual bleakness that adds to the dark (melo)dramatic plot IMO.

Some of Williams' work is such shit. I'd say this play is in that category but it's camp perfection.

"My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer. "

How can you not love this?

South Bend. It sounds like dahn-cing.

Hepburn is terrible in this. Just insufferable. She's working from the cheesiest script possible and makes it worse. I hated this movie even as a boy who knew nothing. It seemed dated, histrionic yet pat and canned. Taylor is the spark of life in it - Hepburn, Clift, the horrible script - Mankiewicz's direction and Hepburn as subtle as Manischewitz wine and chopped liver.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is 1000x times better.

True, but 0 x 1,000 is still worthless shit.

Yes, Cat is the better film story and director wise, but I do prefer Suddenly because while melodramatic, the story is entertaining. Plus Taylor was even more beautiful here than in Cat.

Natasha Richardson did this and it was filmed--with Maggie Smith as Aunt Vi (!). I adore Liz--always will--but her overwrought performance in this overwrought play is not one of her best. Whereas Natasha Richardson, with her stage training, gives a controlled, marvelous performance.....When Liz starts stuttering at moments of intensity (which she often did), you know you're in trouble. Or she is.

But the final complicated smile is just so good as old movie performances goes.

[quote]Some of Williams' work is such shit. I'd say this play is in that category but it's camp perfection.

Williams detested the film, both Gore Vidal's screenplay which took extreme liberties with Williams' stage play and Manks' lurid direction.

I did not like it.

I did not like Heath Ledger in his role as “Joker”.

Loved the movie. The ending is rather bizarre.

Sublime camp. Unintentionally hilarious.

Costume aficionados. please note how Liz is dressed in a dark suit for her climactic scene but removes the jacket to reveal her white blouse when she is finally able to blurt out the TRUTH!

my mom told me once that she and my day went to this movie when it had its original release ( they lived in a small town in the midwest) and all thru the movie neither one of them could figure out sebastian was gay..........the basic plot point of the movie................ until near the end when my dad figured it out..............I cant imagine being that naive but I guess that was small town usa in the 50 s for you?

I thought the pic in OP’s post was Michael Jackson.

R23 not just small town. Many people all over the country were very naive to homosexuality. I mean the director had to just throw subtle hints that Sal Mineo was gay in Rebel Without A Cause, and they aren’t that subtle at all to me or my female friend but it was to the censors back then.

Great song!

Loved the movie. Liz, Kate...... real stars.

Taylor's performance was amateurish, but Oliver Messel was a design genius.

“See how she destroys with her tongue for a hatchet!” And a few other good lines.

Mercedes McAmbridge steals all of her scenes. She’s amazing in her part.

Debree, debree, debree!

For Elizabeth to have been nominated for an Oscar while winning the Golden Globes - while in the depths of the socially-condemned Fisher Scandal - means that her performance was what 1959-60 considered great acting.

I don’t think she was considered great, I think it was just like “wow, this major superstar actually attempted to have depth and do something different and actually ACT”

But Suddenly came right after Cat, which was already considered great acting by Taylor. She was even the top contender to win that year, but lost because scandal. Her acting great in Suddenly isn't a first for her.

Who else always pictures Monty Clift playing Sebastian even though he didn't?

[quote] Costume aficionados. please note how Liz is dressed in a dark suit for her climactic scene but removes the jacket to reveal her white blouse when she is finally able to blurt out the TRUTH!

You're ready to fly right out of here, aren't you, R22?

Montgomery Clift looked and talked through a haze, almost like a zombie. He had had that terrible accident and then all the drugs, pills, and booze he was taking threw a blanket over what was left of his acting abilities.

I think Charles Pierce does Kate better than Kate.

Old crazy rich lady insisting that the young sane beauty is nuts for her own motives. She has secrets she needs to keep re her son. It's always a legit crazy trying to drive someone else insane! Best part was the end when Vie finally cracks and To chill runs from the room saying "This bitch is crazy! " I found it to be rather boring.

I think Taylor was a great star, but a limited actress and had a thin voice. Nonetheless, I think this was one of her best performances and she nails the climactic monologue (granted, with the help of onside table editing).

But she IS great in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The perfect production of her beauty onscreen helps, of course. As Big Daddy is great too, Burl Ives, and her awful sister in law Madeleine Sherwood. Paul Newman is a little less great but it's such an artifact of a character.

****Foxhill runs

John Wayne was incensed over Suddenly Last Summer back in the day and stated that it was a forerunner to questionable liberal values. More than ever he wanted to make conservative themed movies.

R43 Hey John, I like your hat.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

And Cousin Sebastian really did resemble Cliff.

This is one of the few roles, if not the only one, in which Katharine Hepburn plays a villain.

Kate was great as Aunt Violet, but I think Vivien Leigh (original choice) would have done a even better job since Viv actually exuded man-trap vibes. Too bad Viv declined the role citing health issues.

Joseph Mankiewicz should have been loyal to his Margo Channing and hire Bette Davis to play Mrs. Venable.

Honestly, I think she would have been perfect.

[quote] Who else always pictures Monty Clift playing Sebastian even though he didn't?

I didn’t, but I can see how and why others did. I always pictured a young, manipulative twink until on another DL “Suddenly Last Summer” thread someone posted, like R46 did, what Sebastian was supposed to look like.

Thanks for posting that clip, R28. I’d forgotten Rob Lowe was in that.

[quote] I thought the pic in OP’s post was Michael Jackson.

Perhaps Liz died in 2009 and Michael replaced her, dying as an old white woman in 2011.

" Her screams gave me chills while watching." Sreams = Taylor's natural speaking voice.

That elevator! That ending!

"Oh, Sebastian...what a lovely summer it's been...just the two of us...Sebastian and Violet...Violet and Sebastian...the way it's always going to be...Oh, we are lucky, my darling, to have one another and need no one else ever."

As a 1980s gayling, the fact that I can still quote that (and I think it's pretty damn close) after 30 years means it did something right. Sophisticated gay camp perfection. Wish it had been Monty before the crash...but even that added to the gothic grotesqueness of it all.

This film is one of the reasons Katharine Hepburn will always be a greater star than Meryl Streep. Kate gave us gay heaven while Meryl continues to make frau catnip. The "Summertime" to "The Lion in Winter" years surpass everything Meryl's done since the 80s.

This 2018 DL thread on this film contains some of the most intelligent DL conversation/discussion, ever -

Can't wait to see Gaga in the remake.

I love everything about it, especially the cannibalism scene . . . Sebastian so truly earned his fate . . .

"Suddenly, Last Summer" is one of the great unintentional film comedies.

One of my favorites. I showed it to a friend of mine named Sebastian.

In late July, he was rushed to the hospital while overdosing. He claims to have been dead for a minute before being revived.

Now that he's alive and well, I can say "Suddenly, Last Summer Sebastian died."

When I was a little kid, me and my two older - straight - brothers discovered doing impressions with this movie. We would run around the house screaming ‘A lobotomy?’ and ‘baby sea turtles’ much to the consternation of our mother.

Whatever the rest of the world thinks, my family never took it seriously for a minute.

R62 That's so sweet. Your brothers obviously got the idea to do those lines from you.

Ah, memories. I saw this film for the first time in 1971. I was 11 years old, on holiday at my auntie’s in Scotland. There was nothing on TV because the BBC would shut off at certain times, which to me as an American kid was appalling. Anyway it was the only thing on, and it made quite an impression! Not that I understood it. I’m not sure I fully do, to this day.

i don't understand the cannibalism.

bur yes, beautifully filmed and taylor never looked better

Is Sebastian’s fate a metaphor for America and the third world, something like that? Or is that a more contemporary interpretation. I’ve heard it’s about the brutality of nature.

R55, thanks I just read that entire other thread, very entertaining. My favorite comment: “I always thought that would happen to George Clooney in Lake Como.”

It was one of Tennessee Williams' more stupid stories.

Ridiculously over-the-top.

And Elizabeth Taylor severed up some Community Theater realness.

Katharine Hepburn, was, as always, at least entertaining.

"Suddenly, Last Summer" is a great title for a bad play.

The comma after “suddenly” really makes it.

It is a great title. I always liked this old song too.

R70 Agree.

Williams had an aunt who placed her spirited daughter (Williams' cousin) into an asylum because she was ashamed by her.

When the play was first performed off-Broadway, Williams' aunt was his invited guest to opening night. He sat her first row center. He expected her to storm out during the play. But instead, she stayed and watched the whole thing, and complimented Tennessee when it was over.

Totally went over her head.

I like the line in Boys in the Band- they're serving lasagna for dinner. As he's dishing it out, one character announcers, "Ladies- tonight we dine on the remains of .Sebastian Venable." I think that line really sums up a certain type of gay gallows humor, and of course our obscure cultural references.

I think I was about 9 years old when I saw this as a late movie in Toronto.

The thing about the turtles threw me into a vegetarian depression for almost a year.

R66, to me it's always felt like self-loathing bullshit. Sebastian *is* Tennessee Williams, getting what he probably knew he deserved for preying on impoverished young third-world men, portrayed in luxuriously self-indulgent, self-abasing melodramatics.

The film version is a curio; it's bad, but enjoyably so. Taylor can't act her way out of her form-fitting swimsuit, but she's shrill and anguished and that was enough for tThe Academy. Hepburn is her mannered self, but (like Liz) she brings star quality to her role. Clift is a cipher in Suddenly, Last Summer; Robert Stack or William Shatner could have played the same role, and probably more believably.

Whoever mentioned that the editing made the film was correct. Also the cinematography; along with Carrie (1976) Suddenly, Last Summer is one of the few times split-screen works to perfection.

[quote] i don't understand the cannibalism.

Was it supposed to be literal cannibalism or a fevered metaphor? I can’t imagine even in the mid-20th century that a playwright would think a mob of young Spanish men would resort to vengeful cannibalism.

[quote] I always liked this old song too.

So did R26.

R76 but they were RAGEFUL- he tricked them, and abused them- for all we know killed some of their friends, abused their younger brothers. And they were starving.

Not saying it's realistic, or that it would ever happen like this in real life. But I think the way Williams' presents the story, it makes sense. It follows.

R58 that production starred that hysterical woman who freaked out when Geoffrey Rush touched her.

They didn't eat him. They DEVOURED him.

strange.

im a literal person, so i dont get it.

I thought it was a basic story of a teen-preying sex tourist getting killed by a gang of teenage rough trade in some 3rd World Country? Similar stories been played out time and again in places like Cuba and Thailand etc.

"....and this you won't believe. This NOBODY could believe..."

Tell me about Tennessee Williams' personal life. Did he like the young hustlers?

I suspect he did, I saw "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone", and all that maundering about wanting youth and something young! It seemed so odd, hearing the world view of a fucked-up eldergay coming out of a woman's mouth.

Well, there are women who like young boys. Look at the many female high school teachers preying on their students. There are documentaries of middle-aged women from first world countries going for underaged hustlers in Cuba. There are many female chicken hawks like Viv Film call them.

In a word - Camp

I didn't OP, but I saw the play recently and enjoyed it a lot more than I did the film, even though it is dated.

While in London filming S,LS Hepburn went to the theater and saw Peter O’Toole in a play. Then Mankiewicz and Sam Spiegel were having conniption fits about Clift’s erratic behavior and were looking for a possible replacement, and they tested O’Toole, who apparently tested badly.

O'Toole tested worse than Cliff in 59? No way!

Taylor also spotted some interested 60s style off screen while filming in Spain. I wish some of that had made it into the film.

One more with Cousin Sebastine

One of my favorite films, and one of the very few I can withstand Hepburn's performance. Love everything about it.

R10, do you always say that, too, when anyone mention South Bend?

R35 Yes, it feels like Monty Clift was playing Sebastian. In my memory at least. I guess that's what Mankiewicz was going for.

"There are documentaries of middle-aged women from first world countries going for underaged hustlers in Cuba."

Where do those exist - in your head?

Hepburn was awful in it.

R66 When I saw the play 2 years ago that's exactly what the text felt like. My favourite part of the play, too.

Williams was known to do what Sebastian did.

R90 Biggest Camel-Toe in History.

When I first saw the play, I imagined a very drunk/high Williams thinking, "No, no! I just thought of something even more over-the-top. THIS will SHOCK 'em!!!!"

It just seemed like a stupid plot point trying to shock rather than tell a story.

r94 "Where do those exist - in your head?"

Why, everything is just a click away unless one is willfully ignorant, like r94 apparently is.

Yeah, rich older women prey on young men using them as sex objects too, what a shock.

There's Santo Domingo’ lovers, available for free on youtube. Women Who Travel For SEX Sun, sea and gigolos Full Documentary is also there.

And also this article Women who travel for sex: Sun, sea and gigolos From UK Independent, and this quote:

But this holiday romance is not all it seems. The woman is white, in her late 50s; the man, black, 18 - and paid for his attentions. The scene - from the controversial new French film, Heading South, which opened this weekend, starring Charlotte Rampling, makes us confront uncomfortable truths about sexuality in a globalised world, and the legacy of colonialism.

There's at least a film about it, although in the film they are young but not minors.

The nerve of putting Rob Lowe in a movie with Maggie Smith. He undermines her every time he moves or opens his mouth. How do you end up with him in this production? Were bigger talents like Christopher Atkins and Greg Evigan not available?

"Yeah, rich older women prey on young men using them as sex objects too, what a shock."

ROFLMAO, the number of women who use prostitutes is tiny compared to the number of men who do.

Didn't Lana Turner and Hugh O'Brian make a movie about this a long time ago?

^ Are you referring to this piece of shit?

I think it's too over the top and unbelievable for me. I love Hepburn, one of my favourite actresses, but she gives one of her weakest performances here. It's the closest she ever came to full on histrionic camp. Also the cannibalism is just melodramatic twaddle. And i agree that its an almost homophobic story in that promiscuous gay sex is linked to death and mental illness. Would a straight man who loves younger women be treated in this lurid way??

r103 "ROFLMAO, the number of women who use prostitutes is tiny compared to the number of men who do." Doesn't mean it it isn't already in existence and a phenomenon. And when old 50+ hags pay to fuck 18 yr old boys they are fem versions of Cousin Sebastians, using power imbalance to get that young meat.

A phenomenon? LOL. No, a tiny number of women does not make a phenomenon. Sorry to burst your bubble but very few women pay for sex.

What's wrong with paying for sex? It's a transaction. The whore gets what they want and so does the client. That's life.

Who was the guy playing Sebastian? He was handsome

r109: "What's wrong with paying for sex?"

Yet r108 etc seems so truly ashamed that women are paying for sex with much younger males, and blindly insist the number is tiny despite people making documentaries and writing articles about this.

From "Thought it was just men who flew abroad for squalid sexual kicks? Meet the middle-aged, middle-class women who are Britain's female sex tourists" Each year, as many as 600,000 women from Western countries are said to engage in sex tourism. (Aug 25, 2013)

And these are just reported cases. Totally not a phenomenon at all.

And there are host clubs all over Japan and Asia were men are essentially straight male escorts. Their cliente are mostly the local women. Those count in high numbers too.

Besides Suddenly, Last Summer, Tennessee Williams clearly saw homosexuality as an illness and weakness as evidenced by Blanche's young husband and Brick and Skipper.'

"Each year, as many as 600,000 women from Western countries are said to engage in sex tourism"

Any evidence for these claims? Yeah, didn't think so. Here's a dare: post an ad on some adult services site claiming to be a male escort looking for female clients. See how many responses you get. The number will probably be zero. Then pretend to be a women looking for male clients. You will get tons of responses.

R113. You underestimate women. We do not live in the 1950s anymore. Women have their own cash and they are horny.

SlS is a depressing play from a time when homosexuality was seen as a sickness. No doubt Williams had internalized homophobia. His plays are littered with it.

R110, that was Julian Ugarte.

I wish they'd have shown his face a bit in SLS. Then the audience could see why the Doctor (Cliff) reminded the other characters of Sebastian.

^ Read between the lines, R117. It was because they were both homosexuals.

Kate was great in this, one of the top performances by any actress ever. Better than anything Streep, Davis or Stanwyck could do. She inhabits the role.

The problem is mostly the script. SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER is a one-act play. The BBC production is a perfect, inescapable spiral. The movie is a bloated, meandering mess. Leigh was wise to avoid it.

It got Hepburn an Oscar Nomination alongside Taylor though. Had Leigh done it perhaps she could have gotten another Oscar win since you know once she gets nominated she wins?

The tired old queen at the movies does an excellent imitation of Hepburn in this movie, in the video review he did of it.

Link please, R122.

[quote]The problem is mostly the script. SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER is a one-act play. The BBC production is a perfect, inescapable spiral. The movie is a bloated, meandering mess. Leigh was wise to avoid it.

Exactly, r120. I posted back near the beginning of the thread that Williams detested the film. He hated what Gore Vidal's screenplay had done to his stage script and Mank's highly lurid direction. Williams' only connection to the film version was the money he pocketed from the sale of the film rights.

thanks, r112, r115 and r118

now i get it.

Suddenly Last Summer and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof are not about homosexuality is an illness. They are about “medacity”, as Big Daddy puts it. They show the destructiveness of repression and denial. The real evil in SLS is Sebastian’s suffocating, possessive, unnatural mother, who can’t accept that her son was gay.

excellent, r126

I have to disagree about the script. Gore Vidal made something quotable and memorable from a one act that was not one of Williams' best.

Tennessee Williams probably hated it because some of the best dialogue wasn't his.

The play is a highly stylized and theatrically heightened one act. As melodramatic as the film is, the play is not realism as it was known in the 1950s. Very different material than the film.

That's the problem with transferring stage productions to screen: Audiences expect realism, not metaphor.

A big name newscaster and 2.presidential candidates (!) should have been more cautious. It just shows they are not very professional. Most people don't care that public figures are dumb.

oops

The mendacity, R131! The mendacity!

If you're saying that internalized homophobia isn't present at all in SLS and Cat, R126, not sure I agree, though certainly the destructiveness of denial and repression is a component.

The actor playing Sebastian in 1959 had BDF.

Tennessee Williams demanded a screenwriting credit (instead of just a "based on a work by..." credit)

Vidal was annoyed, and confronted him. Williams' answer was "Well, GOR-AH, after all, it IS MAH play!"

R136

Gore: "Well, darling, if you are willing to take all the blame, so be it . . . "

Some theater company ought to mount an all-male festival of the major Tennessee Williams plays, and let the drama play out between gay men as they author really intended.

Perhaps an exception could be made and Violet Venable could be played by a woman, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

Violet Venable could be played by DL Fave David Venable in the Festival, R138.

Taylor is very good at Williams. See the abysmal Natalie Wood in THIS PEOPERTY IS CONDEMNED for comparison.

[quote]Taylor is very good at Williams. See the abysmal Natalie Wood in THIS PEOPERTY IS CONDEMNED for comparison.

Oh, honey . . . that's like saying "[NAME] is very good at singing. See Rosanne Barr for comparison."

Taylor was so absolutely beautiful back then that she got extra points in the role of decoy.

R81 I'm literal too. I guess the scriptwriters had to say the street boys "devoured" Sebastian instead of castrating him.

R88 I'm highly sceptical of this anecdote. I bet this anecdote arose when O'Toole and Hepburn did 'Lion In Winter' in 1968.

O'Toole was an unknown, long-nosed, curly-haired nobody in 1959.

R143 in the play, it's MORE clear that they eat Sebastian. In the movie Catherine says "It looked as if they'd devoured parts of him.."

Here is how the play has it:

‘... my cousin Sebastian had disappeared in the flock of featherless little back sparrows... and this you won’t believe, nobody has believed it, nobody could believe it, nobody, nobody on earth could possibly believe it... They had devoured parts of him… Torn or cut parts oh him with their hands or knives or maybe those jagged tin cans they made music with... and stuffed them into those gobbling fierce little empty black mouths of theirs. There wasn’t a sound any more, there was nothing to see but Sebastian, what was left of him, that looked like a big white-paper-wrapped bunch of red roses... crushed! – against that blazing white wall’

Sebastian is cannibalized by the children he had abused. That's the story.

That can’t be good.

I wish Mankiewicz would have stopped Liz from repeatedly rubbing her forehead to show she is troubled. Unless - GASP - he told her to do it!

She's doing it here.

I remember when this came out, it was considered “very daring.” Movies with gay elements generally skirted the issue, but often hinted broadly, daring audiences to take a peek. SLS in its day was considered high drama, as was the guilt-fest, The Children’s Hour, two years later, or Advise and Consent, the year after that. Homophobic innuendo is used in all three to fill them with dread, the Unspoken Secret that everyone is afraid to discuss, usually leading to suicide, or, in the case of SLS, murder. A Truth so raw it will destroy.

Because these self-important films bent over backwards to avoid any mention, let alone open discussion, it’s now hard to see them as the daring dramas they tried to be. Historical perspective views their efforts as, at best, avoiding the subject, and, at worst, as in SLS, demonizing it.

But Sebastian died not because he was in a normal gay relationship. He's a wanton sex tourist who buy sex from underaged rough trade, and they murdered him. It was not demonizing gays, but rather those predatory johns with green like those white sex tourist of both genders in Cuba.

R149 nailed it. It was not demonizing gays.

R149 that nicety would be lost on the audience then. And on many people even now.

I love how FAKE the whole thing is, with old British slappers in the loony bin, and Kate not speaking with a New Orleans accent, and McCambridge's generic "Southern" accent, etc. etc.

What was daring art in 1959 now is campy in 2019.

60 years later ... wow this film is old.

R153 Oh, it was campy in 1959. From Dwight Macdonald's contemporary review:

"If there's one thing a Tennessee Williams play would seem not to need it's underlining. Yet perhaps Mr. Mankiewicz was well-advised to use the sledge-hammer, perhaps this approach best brings out the play's entertaining sensationalism. Katharine Hepburn camps around like an Oscar Wilde duchess played by Beatrice Lillie."

And KH still managed to get nominated for Oscar, alongside ET and at her age. ET then went on to win Golden Globes for Best Actress. So think camp or not, their performances were considered quality performances back in the day.

R152 - I knew a man who played one of the inmates who can be seen when Liz does her suicidal plank walk over the men's snake pit. He was always boasting about it as if it made him a star.

Oliver Messel: "I couldn't find anyone to make the garden, so I used this wonderful person, Hugh Skillen, who made all the head-dresses for the Margot Fonteyn productions, and he made the insect-eating plants and all sorts of exotic outsized plants. I myself made banana leaves with waxed crinkle-paper and then mixed them all in with real plants. I made all the vines from paper twisted round in coils and then covered in pale green flock."

Suicidal Cathy.

Publicity promo of the suicide scene.

One more Elizabeth behind-the-scenes candid from shooting in Spain.

Liz had a really big head and nowhere is it more in evidence than in this film.

She looked beautiful in this film.

Tennessee Williams did not want Elizabeth Taylor in his movies but she got them anyway because she was young, beautiful, and popular.

She was the biggest female star in the world besides Marilyn, only Marilyn wasn’t respected and abused.

She got any role she wanted probably.

"The ending is rather bizarre."

I liked the ending: Mrs Venable, her mind broken after hearing what happened to her son, disappearing as the lift that's carrying her rises and takes her away from reality.

Liz was wearing the big teased hair in SLS, but her face was really small. Her jaws were slender and never wider than her neck. Look at her wearing the shower cap. She was well-proportioned from face to neck to shoulder.

All tasteful people must agree that Audrey Hepburn would have been vastly superior to fat Liz. More beautiful, more sexual and those Spanish men would have gone wild for her skinny body.

^ Liz coveted the role of Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady." She told Eddie Fisher "GET ME "MY FAIR LADY!" I just can't see her in the role.

Ah, Audrey. Talk about someone with a big head and face, whose jaws are a lot widen than the neck.

But wouldn't the hungry young people just liken Audrey in 1959 to their own starving aunts?

Audrey at R170 = Rey from the Star Wars sequel trilogy

The beach boys are in for a treat!

[quote]Tennessee Williams did not want Elizabeth Taylor in his movies but she got them anyway because she was young, beautiful, and popular.

Later on, though, he praised [italic]Boom![/italic] as his favorite film adaptation of his plays.

It always stood out as the weirdest, least accessible Tennessee Williams movie. At least until I was aware of "Boom." Once Tennessee lost the touch, he became outrageously bad.

Where was the homosexual dynamic at play in "Boom?" Never saw it.

Williams has been criticized for giving his female characters his own intense (gay, male) sexuality. Taylor, though, is so earthy, so physical, that she really connects with this aspect of Williams' work. When her Maggie the Cat says she's going to kill herself unless Paul Newman fucks her, she's totally convincing.

I saw Boom once and don't remember anything gay about it. Weird and boring are all I remember.

^ Thank you. I only asked because this aspect is a part of each of his plays.

Barbara Bel Geddes (Miss Ellie on Dallas), who couldn't have been more different physically or temperamentally than Elizabeth Taylor, created the role of Maggie the Cat on Broadway (opposite hot young Ben Gazzara), so that casting may tell us that Tennessee didn't see Maggie as being a particularly beautiful woman, though clearly she's written as sexually voracious, at least for her husband..

Isn't Boom! based on his play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More? It starred DL faves Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter on Broadway. It wasn't a hit there either.

But Taylor's extraordinary beauty added to the drama of the film. How the hell could Newman pass that up, especially when she's begging for it every day? Even IF Skipper had her, he'd still be highly inclined to give her a good fucking, regardless. But he refuses her anyway.....

Noel Coward wasn't gay enough to remember, r177? Him and Liz' caftans.

A DLer must’ve written this:

[quote] Despite the Broadway failures of the 1963 play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" and its revival in 1964, it was thought that Elizabeth Taylor and Tennessee Williams were an irresistible combination, after the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), both of which won Taylor Oscar nominations as Best Actress. As it turned out, they weren't.

Oops here’s the link:

Taylor was a female drag queen in Boom. Note the character's name Sissy. She had the flamboyant drag personality perfect for the role. Had the script and Losey's direction been any less sucky, she'd get some recognition for her work.

Gif of Sissy (Taylor) in Boom!

R158 Oliver Messel was such a queen. He should have played Sebastian.

I also thing the film missed out with a facelss Sebastian. An actual queenie Sebastian could've upped the camp value even more.

Oliver Messel was first brought to Hollywood by Irving Thalberg to provide the art direction and costume design for MGM's extravaganza of Romeo and Juliet, starring Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard and John Barrymore, all of whom were several years too old for their roles.

Adrian, the studio's resident costume designer and head of the their wardrobe department, was not pleased, though Norma eventually begged him to redesign several of her costumes, which he did, of course.

R189 we don't hear enough about the queens behind the scenes.

Cecil and Oliver!

R150 Miss Taylor's head looks enormous.

[quote] An actual queenie Sebastian could've upped the camp value even more.

To 11?

Gowns by Adrian

Or not.

R162, R191 Does Liz really have a big head?

I'd give my eye-teeth to see Vivian and Liz side-by-side in this movie. It seems they were the same height but, of course, Vivien had tiny, pear-shaped breasts.

And Tennessee wrote the play for Vivien, not Katharine.

Violet (Vivien) and Catherine (Liz) were rivals for Sebastian's love,

Enomous head, you say?

BBG

Couldn't they at least give Barbara Bel Geddes a decent brassiere??

Now appearing at the Morosco.....

Anne Meacham, the first Catherine, who won an Obie for her performance.

ET's head to body ratio is proportional. Her face was never bigger than her neck.

r199 is the 1963 Broadway premiere of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (Boom!) with (L to R) Mildred Dunnock, Paul Roebling and Hermione Baddeley.

Tallulah and Tab were in the equally unsuccessful 1964 Broadway rewrite (I'll leave it to cleverer posters than I to post a photo).

R210 Did Liz and Mike visit a Hong Kong racing track?

r203 They visited HK while promoting 80Days. The thin older Chinese man standing behind Liz to the left of the picture is a legendary HK film mogul.

Her head was as big as Rock Hudson's: he was a foot taller.

Are you sure her head is as big? She was lifting her face, and he lowering his and with shading.

Below in a group shot.

I didn’t care for the film. Too overwrought and histrionic. Also too long. A real disappointment from Taylor who was amazing in Cat. I’d be willing to give it a chance on stage.

Even with Liz leaning forward, Rock's face looked a lot bigger to me.

We PROCURED for him!

R188 I guess we had to have a faceless Sebastian because we had a faceless Edward and a few faceless Jesuses.

Liz with Rock and Elvis. Her head looked smaller than both by far here.

Her head didn't get too big until around 1959-1960. I blame it on Eddie Fisher.

R208 that is a lovely dress.

Sure, R212, blame the Jew.

that giant head of hers and double set of eyelashes made that face so photogenic. never more so than in this film.

How and when did this occur?

Liz didn't have a particularly large head, enough!

Here's a small woman with a huge head, Scarlett Johansson. I mean look at her, look closely. Her head is so fucking huge that it makes her torso and arms look tiny and malproportioned. And it's not like she's underweight, like so many modern actresses.

"Suddenly, Last Summer" is certainly iconic, but it's a HUGE MESS!

What is it about? What ISN'T it about!?

Norma Shearer had a large head. In Gavin Lambert's biography of her he recounted the reminiscence of a woman who had lent one of her hats to Norma. She said that Norma's head was so big the hat was all stretched out of shape when she returned it.

[quote] all stretched out of shape

Just like her pussy!

Wasn't Joan Crawford also famous for her large head?

Leading ladies having a big head was a thing.

Bigger than Bowie's

Now, Ginger Rogers, she had a HUGE head. And she only accentuated it as she aged with all that ridiculous bleached blonde fried hair.

r224 Late 1970s and Liz's face was fatter than scrawny Bowie's cause she was heading towards obesity. Her skull wasn't really bigger though.

Standing ahead of Grace Kelly and still having a smaller face.

Together again in their early 50s. Fattened old Liz still had the smaller face.

late 70s bloating Liz with the Monaco royals. Her face looked small compared to Prince of Monaco.

Kelly was 5' 6"; Taylor was 5' 2": so, proportionately....

Well, let's see. r225. This is how big it was in 1969......

I get that Liz was short. But when her face don't look oversized against her neck and shoulders I don't see how it warrants calling her head big. It'd be like saying Joe Dallesandro had a big head despite his short but hot body.

....

Scary and beautiful

Way to derail this thread, R233.

Betty Boop had a big head.

Princess Grace looked like a lesbian gym teacher at R228.

Princess Grace looked like a lesbian gym teacher at R228.

Big headed women don't look good with long hair, yet Liz looked fine.

Another long, puffed hair look.

Liz had a huge head. Fact. Who cares? She'll always be a beauty for the ages.

R220, and SUCH tiny eyes!

The Venus Fly Trap—a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love!

Last head comparison pic. This one with Debbie Reynolds, also a petite beauty.

I knew the Venus Fly Trap was fake. I had no idea so many other plants in Sebastian's Garden were too...

[quote]those Spanish men would have gone wild for her skinny body.

Audrey's? The bloom was off the rose early for Audrey. She probably didn't consum3 enough nutrients for glowing skin.

Audrey demoed here how truly big-headed women should never wear their long hair loose. It made her thin neck and shoulders even smaller giving her the lolipop look.

I wanted to be Katherine Hepburn's hair in this movie. It has unbounded character.

Say what you will about Kate's looks in the way of superficial features. She had perfect bone structure and it allowed her to carry wild hair and fashion even in her late 40s. She was the perfect clothes horse, really, and her jaws were never wider than her neck making her so easy to style

R75: Shatner would have made it absolute camp; Stack's stiffness might have provided some authority.

If someone is to remake this film today, it'd be about the downfall of evil pedo Sebastian, with a functional gay couple (Dr. Sugar and the blond male nurse, perhaps?) added in just to avoid accusations of homophobia on the part of the creators. Oh, and Cathy would be played by some plus sized aka overweight model because fat I mean body positivity. It would be even more campy than the original.

Another Liz/Oliver Messell connection: Cleopatra began shooting in London in 1958 starring Joan Collins with sets and costumes by Messell. After numerous production problems and delays, the sets were lost in a fire. Rather than giving up and writing the film off as a loss, Daryl Zanuck hugely increased the budget, hired Manks to write and direct and moved the production to Rome starring Liz, Dick and Rex. There isn't any known footage from the first version but Collins' screen test is (or used be) on youtube.

Messell also designed the fabulous costumes and sets for the Technicolor mid-forties Caesar and Cleopatra with Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains.

[quote] It would be even more campy than the original.

It would be sad.

I didn't think Joan Collins got any further than a screen test for Cleopatra. Liz was cast in the film started in London.

Yes, wasn't it always Liz as Cleo but with Stephen Boyd as Marc Antony and .....maybe Peter Finch as Julius Caesar?

Four years later in 1963, Sam Fuller released Shock Corridor. A fascinating bit of psychosexual exploitation.

A journalist is investigating a murder, which prompts him to act insane to get admitted to a mental hospital where he can further investigate. Of course, after a time, the journalist starts to wonder if he himself is going insane.

There is one inmate who looks strikingly like Elizabeth Taylor. Her makeup and hair closely Taylor's from the asylum scenes in Suddenly, Last Summer. It seems as if Sam Fuller deliberately cast someone who resembled Taylor, and then made her up to make that more the case.

The man encounters her and a group of women in the day room of the mental hospital. They attack him, and the attack looks very much like the attack on Sebastian in Cabeza de Lobo. Click below to see the scene.

What was Fuller dong here? Was it an homage to Suddenly, Last Summer? Was it a parody of those scenes? Or was it unintentional, and Fuller subconsciously lifted those elements from a movie he'd seen three years before? Or, was it just a simple rip off?

Nymphos!

SLS has influence in the 60s I guess. Like the Boys in the Band Sebastian reference. And the immate did appear to be styled after Liz's Cathy Holly look.

Fuller was mostly a B-movie, exploitation director, so of course he borrowed from actors/actresses and films he'd never have a chance to direct.

From imdb trivia:

"Eddie Fisher, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time, appears uncredited as one of street urchins who beg Taylor for a morsel of bread."

Eddie in 1959 as starving street urchin?! Now THAT's high camp!

Also from IMDB trivia:

"This is one of only five films to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. In this instance, Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor were so nominated. The other four films were All About Eve (1950) for which Anne Baxter and Bette Davis were nominated, The Turning Point (1977) for which Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine were nominated, Terms of Endearment (1983) for which Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger were nominated and Thelma & Louise (1991) for which Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were nominated. Of the actresses in question, MacLaine is the only one to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for the relevant performance."

R252 That's a remarkable head-dress Vivien is wearing.

Is it composed of beads of black onyx, I wonder?

The early 40s Hollywood did have incredible style, yes.

I always found it odd that Katharine and Audrey Hepburn shared that rather unusual last name. People must’ve thought they were related when Audrey first came on the scene.

Who is the third pretty lady in R227 ‘s picture? Holding her own quite nicely with Grace and Liz.

God, the beauty of Grace and Liz in their 1950s prime. Hard to choose between them, like choosing between the most delicious chocolate and vanilla desserts.

[quote]Who is the third pretty lady in [R227] ‘s picture? Holding her own quite nicely with Grace and Liz.

Laraine Day

According to Charles Pearce as Hepburn, Sebastian was effete. Sebastian was effeminate. Sebastian was a large red sequin!

New book about TW, NYT review discusses Sebastian's death scene

r265

Grace had the perfect figure and Liz the perfect face. Really, really hard to choose between them. And the 1950s women's fashion style I think is more flattering to the female form than the three decades that came after it. So yeah, peak beauties, peak stylings.

Thanks to r268 and the link!

"Like so much of Williams’s work, the episode occupies that liminal zone in which, in the 1950s, what could not be spoken could be implied: in this case, that Sebastian Venable, like so many gay men of his time, regularly paid poor youths for sex, a form of sexual consumerism for which their literal consumption of him serves as a sort of inverse analogy."

But Grace Kelly was reportedly flat-chested. When she wore the gold gown for the party scene in To Catch a Thief, she wore falsies and Hitchcock quipped, "There's hills in them thar gold."

And of course today the world acknowledges the existences of frau-version Sebastians.

r271 "But Grace Kelly was reportedly flat-chested."

It's the flat-chested part, combined with the short waist and long legs, that allowed Grace to be such an outstanding clothes horse. I think clothes hang better on Grace than even Audrey Hepburn, whose waist was too long.

Liz was a petite hourglass when thin, but her curves and shorter legs means she was more difficult to dress.

One more Liz.

Liz is an icon. The film is camp gold.

When I was a kid I thought this movie was pure horror fiction. Now I know people exist who are exactly like the Hepburn character. Unfortunately, not too many are like the Clift character. Increase of wisdom is indeed increase of misery. I now know so much about life that even camp movies remind me of too much reality.

^^remind me too much of reality.