Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
The fifth Tennessee Williams play to reach the screen, wealthy Mississippi plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt, unaware that he's dying of cancer and disturbed by the strained and childless marriage of his favored alcoholic son Brick and his other son, Gooper, whose wife is about to bring forth another in the endless line of little "no-neck monsters," celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday with his family. Brick's wife, Maggie, beautiful and desirable, tries unsuccessfully to coax her husband away from the bottle, while alternately enticing him and taunting him about his obsession with his deceased best friend and the guilt about their relationship. The seamy tensions reach a climax when the truth of Big Daddy's health is revealed, and he and Brick manage to resolve their differences.
Written by alfiehitchie
This film was originally to be filmed in black and white, as was the standard practice with "artistic" films in the 1950s. (Virtually all film adaptations of the plays of Tennessee Williams had been in B&W up to that time.) However, once Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor were cast in the leads, director Richard Brooks insisted on shooting in color, in deference to the public's well known enthusiasm for Taylor's violet and Newman's strikingly blue eyes.
See more »
Goofs
Continuity:
Maggie removes the gift card from the envelope twice.
See more »
Quotes
Mae Pollitt:
Gooper?
[calling his name inquisitively]
Mae Pollitt:
What have all the chil'ens been shot for? Gooper Pollitt:
Everything 'cept shootin' chickens, I guess. See more »