Sweet Bird Of Youth - 1962

I also like this film, but casting Page was a mistake. She and Newman were the same age, and Alexandra is supposed to be a good 15-25 years older than Chance. Someone like Davis, Crawford, Leigh or de Havilland should have played the aging film star.

Williams came up with some great titles for his plays.

Damn, Miss Newman was fabulous. Too pretty for words. Sex on toast points. Would loved to have boned that gorgeous hunk of man meat.

Fun fact: Diana Hyland played Heavenly on Broadway.

Yes indeed , in the posted video clip the "stuff" that Geraldine demanded and Paul pulled out from under the mattress is marijuana. She munches on some of the leaves and then Paul rolls them some joints to smoke.

Did Tennessee have a single likeable (and I don’t mean pitiable) character in any of his stuff?

Some of the characters in his comedies (27 Wagons Full of Cotton/Baby Doll; Period of Adjustment; The Palooka) are likable enough.

Frankly, I prefer the 1978 Broadway musical adaptation SONGBIRD!

I thought it was hashish, not marijuana, she had with her and they smoked.

R1 Paul and Geraldine both originated the roles on Broadway and Geraldine was hand picked by Tennessee so I don't think she's 'miscast', perhaps not to your taste but not miscast.

I see me...and I like what I see!

She's really just an aging gay with some rough trade, right?

R12 who?

R10, I knew of Page being Williams' choice for the role on stage. On film it doesn't work as well to create the age difference between the characters through a combination of makeup, artifice, and artistry. At least for me it doesn't. Obviously actors still carry it off, as Page does magnificently. I'd still rather have seen Davis as Alexandra in the film version, just as I'd like to have seen Davis or Uta Hagen as Martha in the film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

I saw it on stage at The Palace Theatre in Manchester, UK in 1985 (prior to it's run at Theatre Royal, Haymarket,). Lauren Bacall was amazing as Princess Kosmonopolis/Alexandra Del Lago.

I think the production ran as a bit of a World tour afterwards.

That ending.... ugh

Geraldine Page might have agreed with you on the age aspect, R1. She said that, onstage, she was free to make Alexandra as old as she wanted, but for the film she had to look as conventionally attractive as possible. The makeup artist would spend hours just doing her eyes, prompting her to say, "I've never looked this good before and I never will again."

Let it out, Joni!!

^(The icy click of those fingernails on that guitar...)

This, like The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, is Williams creating an older female character based on an older gay man in real life.

Clift would've made a good Alex Del Lago.

Ah was born to play Miss Del Lago!

I like the opening scene of the movie. The three stars of the film, Paul, Geraldine, and her 1961 Cadillac Series 62 convertible on the road.

[R20] Very perceptive. I believe many of Williams older neurotic female characters were based on his experiences as a gay man with gay men. Since an older gay man character would not be commercially viable, he switched it to a woman in his stories.

I heard they were casting a horse and carriage for the revival... oh, no that was the rumor about Sarah and Timothee. My mistake.

His damaged, dramatic women characters definitely were versions of gay men.

[R9] Thank you for pointing that out. DL members are some of the smartest and well read on the Internet. I had to review the difference and found this: "At its simplest, weed is the dried, unprocessed flowers of the female cannabis plant, while hash (or hashish) is the resin of the female cannabis plant that’s been separated from the plant itself via mechanical or chemical means." I've never smoked hashish so I suppose it would be small chunks of resin that you put in the joint wrapper?

Kim Cattrall was amazing in the last London revival with Seth Numrich and Brid Brennan, but some reviews focused more on her terrible wig. The script was a hybrid of a few different versions by Williams.

Love that Cadillac convertible. Here are some great pictures of one just like it. Maybe it's the same car. I think they got the exterior and interior color descriptions switched. It should be a Laredo Tan exterior and a Cream White interior. What a cruiser!

[R17] Thank you for the quote from Geraldine on her makeup. Hard to imagine working on the eyes for "hours" but I guess they wanted it to be just right. They did make her plain Jane features looked very alluring and the auburn hair coloring and styling was just right.

I love her hair. That wig is flawless.

Good lawdy it's gaudy! Richard Brooks water-downed, over-produced, overly long film drags the material out and leaves the Princess (Page) out of the picture for too long as a dull Newman and Shirley Knight and the supporting Southern monsters take over. Warren Beatty played a character similar to Newman's in All Fall Down (1962) and Beatty would have been more effective and believable.

Page won the Golden Globe for Best Actress Drama over Lee Remick, Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Anne Bancroft .

[quote]Warren Beatty played a character similar to Newman's in All Fall Down (1962)

Beatty also played a beautiful whore kept by an older woman in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, another TW story.

Newman was a skilled and incisive actor, while Beatty flounders in a sea of Method mannerisms.

R35 True, but if you ever saw The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone or All Fall Down Beatty is more convincing as a sly, self-absorbed hustler/ gigolo than Newman is in SBOY. Sometimes good casting trumps talent and Newman was better as the self-absorbed bastard Hud (1963)

I tried re-watching this the other night and got about halfway through before I got bored and turned it off. I'd rather see it performed on a stage anyway.

R37 It's elaborately misconceived and opening it up has further diluted the already watered-down screenplay with its contrived 'happy ending'

I've got to see this film in its entirety finally, maybe this long weekend. Love them both. Her outfit is beautiful in that bedroom scene with Newman. And he...I would've just wanted even to sleep in the same bed with him for a day and night--so self-assuredly sexy! Both fantastic actors and talents.

Newman didn't look his age but was still a bit too old for the part. Page was perfect---she looked older than him (and it wasn't just makeup) and her hammy, ticky mannerisms were perfect for the part.

This film has one memorable scene: Madelaine Sherwood's yowl when Ed Begley shuts the jewelry box on her fingers!

There's a bad TV version with Elizabeth Taylor as Alexandra and dull Mark Harmon as Chance.

I really wish someone else had been cast as Alexandra. I just can’t get into Geraldine Page.

Love the film and play, probably one of Tennessee's last hits. Chance is probably Ten's best male character.

R24 Most of Tennessee's older neurotic female characters came from his own crazy ass family.

As usual with anything after 1945, Williams's characters have the most hilariously insane names. It's part of his charm, but it's also undeniably ludicrous:

Alexandra del Lago (aka the Princess Kosmopolis)

Chance Wayne

Heavenly Finley

R32 glad I’m not the only one who finds Newman dull

[quote]Paul Newman as the gigolo Chance Wayne was still gorgeous at age 36

Still gorgeous? STILL?

Newman was gorgeous for at least the next 20 years. Definitely still handsome 11 years later in The Sting in 1973, as well as Absence of Malice in 1981.

For me, Alexandra de Lago clearly seems based on a combo of Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner.

I winder if either lady were approached for the film? I know Page created the role on Broadway but it's surprising that Hollywood producers would have cared. Perhaps Newman, who also create his role on Broadway, said he wouldn't do the film without her?

Madeleine Sherwood is such an odd looking woman

Williams wrote the part of Alexandra del Lago for his friend Tallulah Bankhead, who clearly was the main inspiration for the part (given her use of hashish and other drugs, her blackouts, her hedonism, her obsession with having frequent sex with younger people). I think he also said that the character owed something as well to Joan Crawford--or at least to his perception of her at the time.

Page is indeed miscast. A plain, stage actor can not fake movie star charisma. You can't bluff your way through a movie star close up. You either got it or you ain't.

Geraldine was an average looking woman but the studio hair stylist and makeup artist made her look very attractive. It took work [R17] but I was impressed.

I just realized that her friend and fellow Actors Studio member Marilyn Monroe adapted the same hair style for her famous "Happy Birthday" song to JFK at his 45th birthday party in May1962 at Madison Square Garden. "Sweet Bird" was filmed from July through October 1961 and released in March 1962. Marilyn must have told her stylist in her breathy voice "I want my hair to look just like Gerry's in her new movie".