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Elizabeth Taylor has never been sexier than as Tennessee Williams's hot-blooded Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt, prowling around her boudoir in a slinky white slip. That's how you know her alcoholic, ex-football-player husband, Brick (Paul Newman), must have more than just his leg in a cast. It's the 65th birthday of wealthy (but dying) southern patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives), and his sons Gooper (Jack Carter) and Brick have come to suck up to him for $10 million in inheritance money. Gooper is a family man and father to a brood of "no-neck monsters"; youngest boy Brick is papa's favorite (as if you couldn't tell from the fellow's names), but hasn't sired progeny. Maggie is definitely in heat, but Brick refuses to sleep with her because he suspects her her of being unfaithful with his best friend, who recent committed suicide. Although toned down for the movies,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is vintage Tennessee Williams. The film was directed by Richard Brooks (
In Cold Blood,
Blackboard Jungle,
Elmer Gantry).
--Jim Emerson
Review
Paul Newman's first big success came in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the 1958 film adaptation of playwright Tennessee Williams' claustrophobic drama. Newman got his first Oscar nomination, one of seven for the film, for his role as Brick Pollitt, the former football star, and Elizabeth Taylor was at her feline best as his dangerous wife, Maggie. Some of the more controversial elements of Williams' melodrama were downplayed in the film version so as not to ruffle the censors of the era. But it still remains a steamy, haunting piece of filmmaking under the direction of Richard Brooks. Remakes were executed for television in 1976 and 1984, the latter starring Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
