Baby Doll

Baby Doll is not the kind of movie a major studio would green-light in 1956. Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams apparently decided to do a ribald tale without the benefit of studio interference or Production Code oversight, and turned out a Christmas attraction that made news ... of the wrong kind. A shocked Cardinal Spellman declared that Baby Doll was Condemned for Catholics ... seeing it was an official sin in the eyes of the church. Distributor Warners ended up pulling Kazan's film from theaters soon afterwards. It was considered the dirtiest picture "Hollywood" ever made, and it ignited a conservative counterattack against smut in the movies that confused producers, artists and audiences until the Ratings system took over in 1968. Apart from the censorship issue Baby Doll is a delightfully wicked comedy that does indeed spring from an idea that sounds like a dirty joke. Tennessee Williams thought of combining four of his one-act plays (including This Property is Condemned) but ended up with just two. All we need to know is that, "There once was this lecherous cotton gin owner married to a young girl. But he'd promised her father he wouldn't sleep with her until her 20th birthday ..." Synopsis: Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) is a desperate man. A newer outfit has displaced his cotton gin, and the resulting poverty in his household has his wife Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) threatening to leave him. Her twentieth birthday is only two days away; Archie has promised not to consummate their marriage until then. To keep her, he burns down the competing gin owned by Sicilian immigrant Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach). Silva turns up at Archie's plant the next day with trucks of cotton to be processed and a very Old-World idea of how to solve his problem: He'll take revenge on Archie through his "innocent" and vulnerable wife. Despite their protests of innocence, the makers of Baby Doll knew very well that they'd made a Mississippi version of a story suited for Boccaccio's Decameron. The movie has no star power, although future luminaries Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach make their screen debuts -- along with Rip Torn, who gets one scene as a grinning dentist. The main draw is a salacious graphic of Baker in a baby doll pajama lying in a baby's crib. Kazan claimed his movie was about arrested development, not sex. But the image conjures an ad for Jail Bait Quarterly magazine; there are even a pair of Coke bottles in the foreground as visual aids for further fantasies. Cardinal Spellman must have choked when he saw the giant Times Square billboard ... Sodom and Gomorrah had won a foothold on Broadway. Baby Doll is a special film for all concerned. As it has no wide social issue it's not one of Elia Kazan's later "America" trilogy A Face in the Crowd, Wild River and Splendor in the Grass, but he said he like it better than A Streetcar Named Desire. It's not one of Tennessee Williams' plays, so there are fewer poetic speeches. In a way, it's sort of a black comedy left turn from the world of William Faulkner. The Meighan house is a parody of Southern decay with garbage in the yard, rooms left empty by the furniture re-possessors and a dotty old woman (a Williams fixture, this time played by Mildred Dunnock) trying to cook in the crumbling kitchen. She likes to visit old people in the hospital, so she can eat all of their candy! Karl Malden's Archie is a cowardly, over-aged cradle robber. What hair he has left is usually flung upward, like a clown's. He can't help but broadcast his impotent whining to his unemployed gin workers, who hang around the property laughing at him. He's practically boiling over with lust, like Wile E. Coyote waving a contract giving him the right to finally catch the Road Runner. Archie's dirty dream falls apart just as it should be coming together -- Baby Doll has no intention of sleeping with him. With Baby Doll humiliating him in public and talking about nullifying their marriage contract, Archie takes drastic measures to improve his financial standing. Eli Wallach bursts onto the screen as the acting equal of anyone in the Kazan theatrical camp. His Silva Vaccaro is a slick, optimistic Sicilian who understands corruption and is accustomed to making his own justice. In a matter of minutes he has Archie completely on the defensive and in an hour he has a clear field to start working on Baby Doll, to extract an admission of Archie's guilt. Carroll Baker's Baby Doll is the focus of the film and the characterization that had the Cardinal seeing red. The original poster child for white trash decay, she brings to mind the specter of twelve year-old brides, shotgun weddings and other inbred southern stereotypes. Baby Doll is a technical virgin just learning how powerful sex can be as a tool to manipulate an impatient husband. The image of her in a crib, first seen from a Peeping Tom point of view, is indeed shockingly adult. She's even sucking her thumb, a "baby" function that doesn't make us think of babies. Kazan and company break all the rules when Archie barges uninvited into her bath. Although the action is off-screen, it's not what we expect to see in a 1956 movie. Tennessee Williams uses the issue of the burned cotton gin to put these three characters in conflict. The business dispute could very well be settled in a short fight but Williams has Silva toy with Baby Doll to bring out the truth. We think first about the impropriety of it all, and then ponder the meaning of seduction. Who is in control, and who is taking advantage of whom? Silva "seduces" Baby Doll in the back seat of a ruined car and on a run-down lawn swing. The sexual excitement of the scene is both funny and disturbing. Again, Baby Doll isn't a minor but the story frames the whole encounter like a statutory rape. The action upstairs has Silva and Baby Doll playing a lusty game of tease and dazzle, hide and seek (Hide and Seek is said to have been a working title). Silva naps in the baby's crib and it's apparent that nothing happens between them. He obtains the signed statement that Archie's is an arsonist, so the seduction games were only a smart Sicilian ruse ... perhaps. In a later dinner scene right out of a standard "farmer's daughter" tale, Silva remarks that Baby Doll has changed, that she's no longer a child. The exchange makes us think perhaps something did happen earlier in the nursery. They share a serious kiss, just out of eyeshot of the apoplectic Archie. Baby Doll ends with its story up in the air, but its characters have each moved to a new level. Kazan's total ease with the camera and the Mississippi location are nothing short of remarkable. The script sketches the reality of life in the town without dodging reality. Nobody is shocked at Archie's indiscriminate use of the "N" word, least of all the blacks that laugh openly at his idiocy. Silva is honored by a politician but despised by the local cotton gin owners his modern facility has displaced. Because he's an outsider the local sheriff has no intention of investigating the arson. The law intervenes at the end only in response to Archie's erratic behavior. Warner's DVD of Baby Doll is actually a Castle Hill presentation not quite up to the quality of the other titles in the set. The non-enhanced 1:33 image is an acceptable but not terrific transfer of an element that shows signs of wear. Dirt and scratches mostly disappear after the first reel. The audio is quite good, with all dialogue clear and Kenyon Hopkins' score heard only sporadically. Kazan peppers the soundtrack with source music, all of it by black performers. A woman sings a few nicely placed bars of "We Shall Not Be Moved," and Baby Doll's phonograph record plays a pre-Elvis rock tune performed by a black musician. The trailer certainly sells Baby Doll as a sex sensation, and a newsreel clip promoting a block-long New York billboard display shows just how big it is ... the camera can't get back far enough to see it all in one shot. Kazan claims that he thought of it just to annoy the Catholic Legion of Decency. The main featurette See No Evil scores interviews with all three of the film's stars. Ninety-three year-old Karl Malden remembers how much fun the film was and shares his thoughts about its disastrous reception. Carroll Baker remembers the film with pride but regrets the way its notoriety overshadowed her acting career. She was billed as Carroll "Baby Doll" Baker for years to come. Both she and Eli Wallach claim they were surprised when it was branded as immoral. They also remember how cold it was on location -- note how many of the extras are bundled up tightly even in the daylight. They also assure us that Eli Wallach's unseen hands in the notorious swing scene were down hovering over a space heater, not doing anything to arouse Ms. Baker. Baby Doll caught the full force of the Catholic Legion of Decency ire and became a milestone film for anyone charting the history of censorship in Hollywood. The next sacrificial victim would come nine years later with Billy Wilder's major miscalculation Kiss Me, Stupid. Some enterprising producer should rush out a sequel, Baby Doll: Fifty Years Later and get these fine actors together again. Maybe the whole thing could take place in a retirement community! This title is currently unavailable. Explore more Karl Malden titles here. by Glenn Erickson

The Tennessee Williams Film Collection -- an eight-disc DVD set containing the acclaimed film adaptations of one of America's greatest playwrights - debuts April 11 from Warner Home Video. The collection features the long-awaited DVD debuts of Sweet Bird of Youth, Night of the Iguana, Baby Doll and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone along with a newly remastered two-disc Special Edition of A Streetcar Named Desire and single disc Deluxe Edition of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Also included is a bonus disc, the rarely seen feature-length documentary, Tennessee Williams' South. Bonus materials in this collection include new making-of documentaries for each film, plus expert commentaries, never before seen outtakes, rare screen tests with Brando, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page, a radio broadcast with Brando from 1947 and vintage featurettes. Exclusive to the collection is a special bonus disc, Tennessee Williams' South, a feature-length vintage documentary that includes remarkable interviews with Williams in and around New Orleans, plus great scenes from Williams' plays especially filmed for this documentary, including rare footage of Jessica Tandy as Blanche (the role she created in A Streetcar Named Desire) and Maureen Stapleton as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. Williams -- from whose pen came stunning unforgettable characters, powerful portraits of the human condition and an incredible vision of life in the South -- stands with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as one of the three quintessentially eminent American playwrights. Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911 and his southern upbringing was reflected in the subjects, often based on family members, that he chose to write about. He published his first short story at the age of sixteen and his first great Broadway success was The Glass Menagerie, starring Laurette Taylor that won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award in 1945 as the best play of the season. Williams himself often commented on the violence in his own work, which to him seemed part of the human condition; he was conscious, also, of the violence in his plays. Critics who attacked the "excesses" of Williams' work often were making thinly veiled assaults on his sexuality. Homosexuality was not discussed openly at that time but in Williams' plays the themes of desire and isolation show, among other things, the influence of having grown up gay in a homophobic world. A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire: 2-Disc Special Edition is a celebration of what is, perhaps, Williams' greatest masterpiece. This edition features three minutes of footage that was deleted from the final release version ( and thought lost until its rediscovery in the early 1990s) that underscores, among other things, the sexual tension between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), and Stella Kowalski's (Kim Hunter) passion for husband Stanley. The Legion of Decency required these scenes be cut in order for the film to be released. A Streetcar Named Desire depicts a culture clash between Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a pretentious, fading relic of the Old South, and Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), a rising member of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class. Blanche is a Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her nymphomania and alcoholism. Arriving at the house of her sister Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), Stella fears Blanche's arrival will upset the balance of her relationship with her husband Stanley, a primal, rough-hewn, brutish and sensual force of nature. He dominates Stella in every way, and she tolerates his offensive crudeness and lack of gentility largely because of her sexual need for him. Stanley's friend and Blanche's would-be suitor Mitch (Karl Malden) is similarly trampled along Blanche and Stanley's collision course. Their final, inevitable confrontation results in Blanche's mental annihilation. The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Karl Malden), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Vivien Leigh) , Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Kim Hunter), and Best Art Direction -- Set Decoration, Black-and-White. It was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Marlon Brando), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, Best Director, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, Best Picture, Best Sound Recording and Best Writing, Screenplay. In 1999 the film was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. Special Features Disc One: - Commentary by Karl Malden and film historian Rudy Behlmer - Elia Kazan movie trailer gallery - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only) Special Features Disc Two: - Movie and audio outtakes - Marlon Brando screen test - Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey documentary - 5 new insightful documentaries: o A Streetcar on Broadway o A Streetcar in Hollywood o Desire and Censorship o North and the South o An Actor Named Brando Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: REMASTERED DELUXE EDITION The raw emotions and crackling dialogue of Tennessee Williams' 1955 Pulitzer Prize play rumble like a thunderstorm in this film version whose fiery performances and grown-up themes made it one of 1958's top box-office hits. Paul Newman earned his first Oscar® nomination as troubled ex-sports hero Brick. In a performance that marked a transition to richer adult roles, Elizabeth Taylor snagged her second. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture. Also starring Burl Ives (repeating his Broadway triumph as mendacity-loathing Big Daddy), Judith Anderson and Jack Carson, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sizzles. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship between Maggie the Cat (Elizabeth Taylor) and Brick (Paul Newman), and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of a weekend gathering at the family estate. Brick, an aging football hero, has neglected his wife and further infuriates her by ignoring his brother's attempts to gain control of the family fortune. Although Big Daddy (Burl Ives) has cancer and will not celebrate another birthday, his doctors and his family have conspired to keep this information from him and his wife. His relatives are in attendance and attempt to present themselves in the best possible light, hoping to receive the definitive share of Big Daddy's enormous wealth. Oscar® nominations were for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Newman); Best Actress (Taylor), Best Director (Richard Brooks) and Best Cinematography. Special Features: - Commentary by biographer Donald Spoto, author of The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams - New featurette Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Somebody Up There Likes Him - Theatrical trailer - Languages: English & Francais - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only) Sweet Bird of Youth Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Madeleine Sherwood and Ed Begley recreated their stage roles in this bravura film version which featured Shirley Knight. Begley won Best Supporting Oscar® and Page and Knight were nominated. Sex, money, hypocrisy, financial and emotional blackmail are familiar elements in Williams' literary realm and combine powerfully in Sweet Bird of Youth as Chance (Newman) battles his private demons in a desperate bid to redeem his wasted life and recapture his lost sweet bird of youth. Handsome Chance Wayne (Newman) never found the Hollywood stardom he craved, but he's always been a star with the ladies. Now, back in his sleepy, sweaty Gulf Coast hometown, he's involved with two of them: a washed-up, drug-and-vodka-addled movie queen. And the girl he left behind…and in trouble. Special Features: - New featurette Sweet Bird of Youth: Broken Dreams and Damaged People - Never-before-seen Geraldine Page and Rip Torn screen test - Theatrical trailer - Languages: English & Francais - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only) Night of the Iguana With an outstanding cast headed by Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr, direction by legendary John Huston and a steamy screenplay, Night of the Iguana pulses with conflicting passions and a surprising edge of knowing humor. Winner of one Academy Award and nominated for three more, the film explores the dark night of one man's soul - and illuminates the difference between dreams and the bittersweet surrender to reality. In a remote Mexican seacoast town, a defrocked Episcopal priest (Richard Burton), ruined by alcoholism and insanity, struggles to pull his shattered life together. And the three women in his life - an earthy hotel owner (Ava Gardner), an ethereal artist (Deborah Kerr) and a hot-eyed, willful teenager (Sue Lyons) - can help save him. Or destroy him. Shot just south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the tension-filled shoot put that small city on the map. Due in no small part to the presence of non-cast member Elizabeth Taylor, the shooting of the film during 1963 attracted large numbers of paparazzi, made international headlines, and in turn made Puerto Vallarta world-famous. Special Features: - Commentary by John Huston - New featurette The Night of the Iguana: Dangerous Creatures - Vintage featurette On the Trail of the Iguana - 1964 premiere highlights - Theatrical trailers - Languages: English & Francais - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only) Baby Doll With Baby Doll, as with A Streetcar Named Desire, director Elia Kazan and writer Tennessee Williams broke new ground in depicting sexual situations - incorporating themes of lust, sexual repression, seduction, and the corruption of the human soul. Time magazine called the film "just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited." The film caused a sensation in 1956, also earning condemnation by the then-powerful Legion of Decency and causing Cardinal Spellman to denounce Doll from his pulpit. Baby Doll earned laurels too: four Academy Award nominations, Golden Globe Awards for Baker and Kazan and a British Academy Award for Wallace. Watch this funny, steamy classic that, as Leonard Martin's Movie Guide proclaims, "still sizzles." The film centers around cotton-mill owner Archie (Karl Malden) who's going through tough times but at least has his luscious, child-bride (Carroll Baker) with whom he'll be allowed to consummate when she's 20. Rival Silva Vaccaro (Eli Wallach) thinks Archie may have set fire to his mill and takes an erotic form of Sicilian vengeance. Special Features: - New featurette Baby Doll: See No Evil - Baby Doll trailer gallery - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only) The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone Widow Karen Stone is wealthy and beautiful. Her acting successes are a memory. She lives alone in a luxury apartment overlooking the Roman steps where romantic liaisons take place. And waits. She soon starts an affair with the young and expensive Paolo. Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty are lady and lover in this tender adaptation of a Tennessee Williams novella directed by Broadway veteran Jose Quintero. Leigh won her second Oscar® for Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire; their reteaming creates a similar spell - at once romantic, sinister and nearly explosive. Adding spice to the combustion of the two leads are Best Supporting Actress Oscar® nominee Lotte Lenya as a Contessa who "arranges” romances in which she has a financial stake and Coral Browne as Karen's savvy best friend. Special Features: - New featurette The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone: I Can't Imagine Tomorrow - Theatrical trailer - Languages: English & Francais - Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol (feature film only)

Elia Kazan, one of the modern greats of American film and stage, and whose tremendous artistry in both mediums were overshadowed by his testimony to HUAC during the '50s, died on September 28 of natural causes at his home in New York City. He was 94. Kazan was born Elias Kazanjoglou in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) on September 7, 1909. In 1913, he immigrated with his parents to New York City, where his father sold rugs for a living. At age 17, Kazan enrolled in Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. After graduation, he went to Yale University's School of Drama, where he studied musical theater and began acting and directing plays. In 1932, Kazan joined New York's socialist minded Group Theatre as an actor and assistant manager. At the time, the Group Theatre was the epicenter for radical thought and activity in the arts. Kazan befriended such notable theater personalities as Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, Stella Adler and Clifford Odets. Kazan even joined the Communist party for two years (1934-36), before resigning because of his disillusionment with its leadership. After his stint in New York, Kazan went to Hollywood, where he found work as an actor in two Warner Brothers films: City for Conquest (1940) and Blues in the Night (1941). He made his Broadway debut in 1942, directing Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth with Tallulah Bankhead; Fredric March and Montgomery Clift. It was a huge hit. After that success, it was back to Hollywood, this time as a director for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox. Kazan's directorial film debut was the poignant A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), based on Betty Smith's bestseller about tenement life. From the beginning, Kazan proved his talent for enticing natural performances from his actors; James Dunn and Peggy Ann Garner both won deserved Oscars for their work in this film. 1947 would prove to be a breakthrough year for Kazan. He notched two huge hits on Broadway: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's All My Sons; co-founded the Actors Studio with Lee Strasburg, a leading proponent of "Method" acting that is still widely practiced today; and two potent treatise on anti-Semitism Boomerang and Gentleman's Agreement, the latter earning Kazan his first Oscar. Kazan's next few films were not among his best, but they were well crafted and interesting: Pinky (1949), the story of a light-skinned black woman who passes for white (hampered by Jeanne Crain in the lead); and Panic in the Streets (1950), a taut thriller about efforts to contain a burgeoning epidemic which was shot entirely on the streets of New Orleans. It wasn't until he brought Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire to the big screen that Kazan had a major impact on American cinema. Featuring an explosive Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski, the films' raw sensuality brought a stark and galvanizing realism to cinema that simply hadn't happened before. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) not only earned Kazan another Oscar nod for Best Director, but it made a star out of Brando and earned best acting honors for the rest of the cast: Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter. It was around this time that Kazan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). On April 10, 1952, he informed on former associates from the Group Theater, including Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, John Garfield, and Lee and Paula Strasberg. Despite formal protests from many acquaintances from his past, including Odets and Arthur Miller, Kazan remained unapologetic to the end for his actions, and he would remain questioned by social critics for the remainder of his life. Kazan continued his association with Brando in Viva Zapata! (1952), and then in the powerful On the Waterfront (1954), which took eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and a second Best Director Oscar for Kazan. Budd Schulberg's incisive drama about the corruption of longshoremen's unions was the perfect subject matter for Kazan's ever trenchant approach to social consciousness and cinematic naturalism. Kazan's next effort, based on John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955) featured James Dean in his first major role. Kazan's continued ability to draw such raw, vulnerable performances out of his actors (as exemplified by Dean) drew critical praise from all quarters, and the film still stands today as one of the most searing looks of a family in conflict. After East of Eden, Kazan would never quite scale the artistic heights of his previous movies, yet he still came up with some first-rate cinema: the steamy, boldly suggestive Baby Doll (1956), with a thumb sucking Carol Baker as a provocative child bride; an early, superior look at populist demagoguery A Face in the Crowd (1957) with Andy Griffith giving the performance of his career as a corrupt media darling; the moving coming-of-age drama Splendor in the Grass (1961) starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty; the evocative America, America (1963), based on the experiences of Kazan's own uncle's immigration experience; and his final film The Last Tycoon (1976) an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, which starred Robert De Niro. Kazan was in retirement for several years, but he made a notorious return to the limelight when in 1999, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' decided to give Kazan an honorary Oscar® for lifetime achievement. It was a decision met with vocal protests from aging blacklisted artists as well as younger activists. At the time of the presentation, several audience members would not stand up as a form of protest. Still, Kazan attended the ceremonies, thanked friends and family, avoided political discussion, and went home, a most dignified handling of a very controversial moment. Besides his widow, Frances Rudge, Kazan is survived by his sons, Leo, Marco, and Nicholas, a screenwriter who was nominated for an Oscar for Reversal of Fortune (1990); daughters Judy and Katharine; and several grandchildren. by Michael T. Toole