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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor are at the height of their glamor and performing prowess in this feverish adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play, with a subtext of sexual repression providing an electric undercurrent.

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Richard Brooks

Elizabeth Taylor

Maggie Pollitt

Paul Newman

Brick Pollitt

Harvey "Big Daddy" Pollitt

Jack Carson

Gooper Pollitt

Judith Anderson

Ida "Big Momma" Pollitt

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Cat on a hot tin roof, common sense media reviewers.

Classics-loving teens will appreciate family melodrama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Treatment of women typical of the period

Emotional violence.

Much of the plot revolves around Maggie's atte

Brick has a drinking problem.

Parents need to know that the characters in this movie lie to each other and keep secrets from each other. One of the characters is an alcoholic.

Positive Messages

Violence & scariness.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

Much of the plot revolves around Maggie's attempts to get Brick to sleep with her so she can get pregnant. Reference to infidelity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

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Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the characters in this movie lie to each other and keep secrets from each other. One of the characters is an alcoholic. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Big Daddy's (Burl Ives) family is celebrating both his 65th birthday and his medical report, which shows his health problems have proven to be minor. He has two grown sons, Brick (Paul Newman), an alcoholic former athlete, and Gooper (Jack Carson), who is constantly trying to replace Brick as Big Daddy's favorite. Gooper has five children, and Brick's wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor) knows that no matter how much Big Daddy loves Brick, he cannot inherit Big Daddy's property unless he provides an heir. Brick is angry at himself and at Maggie, and wants nothing more than to drink until he feels the "click" of peace when he is too drunk to feel anything else. But the "odor of mendacity" is too strong for Big Daddy, and all the lies come tumbling down like skeletons out of a closet.

Is It Any Good?

This classic, powerfully acted film, based on Tennessee Williams' play, is about a family that has been damaged more by lies than by greed. They lie to Big Daddy about the results of his tests. Brick lies to himself about what really went on with Skipper. Gooper and his wife lie about their feelings for Big Daddy. And Maggie lies about being pregnant. It is worth discussing the different kinds of lies and the different motivations behind them, and the impact the truth has on the characters, when they are finally confronted with it. Compare this family's method of accomplishing its goals with the methods of some other movie families, to see which interactions make families stronger and which tear them apart.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the lies that the characters tell each other. Why does Maggie compare herself to a cat on a hot tin roof? What is the roof, and what makes it hot? Why won't Brick agree to get Maggie pregnant? Who is he mad at? Why? Why does Brick have such contempt for himself? What does Skipper's death have to do with it? What makes Brick change his mind?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 20, 1958
On DVD or streaming : January 27, 2000
Cast : Burl Ives , Elizabeth Taylor , Paul Newman
Director : Richard Brooks
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Drama
Run time : 108 minutes
MPAA rating : NR
Last updated : June 3, 2023

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User reviews

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Brick is an alcoholic ex-football player who drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife. A reunion with his terminal father jogs a host of memories and revelations for both ... Read all Brick is an alcoholic ex-football player who drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife. A reunion with his terminal father jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son. Brick is an alcoholic ex-football player who drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife. A reunion with his terminal father jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Richard Brooks
Tennessee Williams
Elizabeth Taylor
Paul Newman
204 User reviews
91 Critic reviews
84 Metascore
3 wins & 16 nominations total

Maggie Pollitt

Brick Pollitt

Big Daddy Pollitt

Gooper Pollitt

Ida 'Big Mama' Pollitt

Mae Pollitt

Deacon Davis
(uncredited)

Pollitt Groom
Party Guest

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia When Paul Newman agreed to play the role of Brick Pollitt, he was under the impression this movie would simply adapt the original script into a screenplay. When the screenplay deviated wildly from the stage text over Tennessee Williams 's objections, Newman expressed his disappointment.
Goofs After Brick tries to drive away and gets stuck, Maggie goes out to him and helps him into the house through the pouring rain. Her hair is soaking wet, but the next time she is seen, it's perfectly dry and styled.

Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt : I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

Connections Edited into Hollywood: The Dream Factory (1972)
Soundtracks Lost in a Summer Night (uncredited) Composed by André Previn and Milton Raskin

User reviews 204

FiendishDramaturgy
Jan 6, 2009
How long is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Powered by Alexa
Is "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" based on a book?
What does the title mean?
Is "mendacity" a real word?
August 29, 1958 (United States)
United States
Die Katze auf dem heißen Blechdach
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios - 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA (studio: made in Hollywood, U.S.A. by)
Avon Productions (II)
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$3,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 48 minutes

More to explore

REVIEW: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”

After a relatively slow start to his career, playwright Tennessee Williams struck gold with a series of hits that captivated audiences on both stage and big screen. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is one of those hits. The film adaptation is loaded with Williams’ signature sizzling dialogue and rich, complex characters. A brilliant cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, and Jack Carson spark this story of fractured relationships, family dysfunction, and the word of the day mendacity. It’s sharp, edgy, and chock full of fiery energy.

Williams’ play first hit Broadway in 1955 and it would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The film opened in 1958 and was a big success. Richard Brooks co-wrote and directed the adaptation which (as was usually the case) slightly dulled the edges of the play in order to adhere to the Motion Picture Code. Williams didn’t like the changes, so much so that he often pointed people away from the film version. Many of his plays took from his own tumultuous and contentious life making them deeply personal but sometimes turgid and overblown. Judging the movie on its own merits, I find Brooks’ version to be overflowing with great scenes, a perfectly captured setting, and dialogue that pierces with shards of realism.

With the exception of two brief scenes the entire story takes place on a huge family estate in the Mississippi Delta. It places us with the Pollitt family, an assortment of deeply flawed and sometimes contemptible people each with more emotional baggage than any world traveler. The family patriarch is Big Daddy (Ives) who may be struggling with some life-threatening health issues. His two sons and potential heirs each have their own problems. Brick (Newman) is a raging alcoholic who hobbles around on a crutch after breaking his ankle pulling a drunken stunt. His relationship with his wife Maggie (Taylor) is as stormy as the Deep South weather. The other son Cooper (Carson in what turned out to be his final role) is more interested in his inheritance. Spurred on by his manipulative wife Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), Cooper is the quintessential brown-noser who hopes to be first in line for his daddy’s fortune.

There are so many complicated family dynamics at work. Brick and Maggie have a cold and bitter relationship that stems from harbored anger and pain. There is clear animosity between the brothers which is often fueled by their boisterous wives. There is also a disconnect between a wealthy and success-driven father and the two sons that simply wanted his love. All of these conflicts and others are woven together to create the stinging, vitriolic fabric that makes up the story. Amazingly the various family angles never conflict and there is almost a twisted poetic quality to the various contentions and quarrels.

The story is fantastic but it’s the cast who makes it simmer. Elizabeth Taylor was never more beautiful and her sultry natural beauty and Southern charm is ever-present. Paul Newman is perfect as the angry and closed-off Brick. Surprisingly he was not the first choice. Robert Mitchum, Montgomery Clift, and even Elvis Presley all turned down the role. Carson plays a character type that he was well known for and Sherwood is convincing as the hateful and conniving Mae. But I haven’t even mentioned Judith Anderson who plays Big Daddy’s wife Big Mamma (of course). She lives in a delusional bubble where she pretends everything with her family is okay. Anderson is wonderful and many times she is the glue that binds the various fits of dysfunction we see.

Brimming with Southern personality, big but fitting performances, and a script with a bite, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is as mesmerizing today as it was over 50 years ago. Perhaps some of the edge is missing from the Broadway production, but I found it to be a delight. It’s a beautiful cinematic creation that still proudly shows its stage show roots. And it only gets better when you consider the phenomenal cast lead by Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. For some it falls short of a more popular Tennessee Williams adaption “A Streetcar Named Desire”. For me this film stands right there with it.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

Share this:, 32 thoughts on “ review: “cat on a hot tin roof” ”.

I’m really glad you decided to feature this one. I must admit to not having watched it in years, but this film was my first exposure to both Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman and it was certainly one incredible introduction!

‘There aint nothing more powerful than the odour of mendacity’.

Thanks so much Paul! It’s funny, whenever I spotlight a classic my views and comments always go down in numbers. But I insist on it. I am such a huge fan of classic cinema and want to get the word out for those who haven’t seen these films. It’s also a lot of fun talking with fans of them.

What a superb cast! Taylor and Newman are magnetic. The movie was originally set to be shot in black-and-white, but when Newman & Taylor were cast the filmmakers knew it had to be in color in order to showcase their good looks. But it isn’t just a cast of pretty people. They pull so much out of their characters.

I’m not surprised they chose to film in colour to capitalize on Newman and Taylor, and their famous blue and violet eyes. Both are hugely charismatic but I seem to remember Burl Ives, growing increasingly sweaty and desperate over the duration of the film, being every bit as memorable. I do have a liking for movies that take place in one location for most of the duration (like Rear Window and Sleuth), and even though I’m aware they had to cut some crucial subtext because of The Hays Code, this movie worked for me.

Keep up the good work, if only one of your readers enjoys a classic having read your articles then you’ve done your job.

Thanks a lot!

You’re exactly right about Ives. His role really picks up in the second half and he knocks it out of the park. I love the whole cast. Jack Carson is great in a variation of a role that he has played many times. Sadly he passed away shortly after making the film.

Who, now a days uses the word mendacity? ! I’m gong to try 🙂

LOL! Definitely not a word I want used about me. 🙂

I’m a big fan of Tennessee and this one is right up there. Nothing beats that cast. Oh, how I miss Paul Newman! Nice review, Keith.

Thanks Cindy. Great cast indeed and doesn’t this script sizzle? It’s amazing how fluidly it moves from one scene of family dysfunction to another. It unfolds its layers with such poetic precision. It’s amazing thing to watch.

Are you one of those who think Paul Newman was a hunk? As my wife and I were watching this I made a comment about how beautiful Elizabeth Taylor was in the film. My wife said “Paul Newman is no wallflower himself”. 🙂

HA. Yesss, your wife is quite right! Talk about beautiful blue eyes. I don’t know who had better peeps, Elizabeth or Paul. 🙂 Now here’s a film that shows dysfunction in a classy way, so I reckon it makes it less realistic. I am thinking about (oh, shoot, I missed my opportunity for a really great post!) CHTR and August: Osage County. While the acting all around is solid and passionate, there’s something more elegant about CGTR. Maybe it’s the grand setting that makes it seem less crass.

Oh that’s a great contrast/comparison. Two films about two splintered and dysfunctional families. One of them I absolutely love and the other I really disliked. “August” hits the same note over and over. It seem like it constantly tried to trump one dysfunction with another. I found practically nothing redeeming about that story and I thought some of the acting (especially from Meryl Streep) was too loud and over-the-top.

CHTR was exactly the opposite. To be honest I felt it was more grounded in reality mainly because it had a much stronger focus.

I’m a fan of Williams’, and because he warned people off of this film that’s one reason I haven’t seen it. I’m sure it’s still a fine film, but I get why he would be mad as well. I think I read somewhere that once Newman was aware of all the thematic changes, he wanted to drop out of the film but couldn’t. I think with Streetcar they added some scenes back in later…. is that case here as well?

He did indeed add scenes back to “Streetcar” but I don’t think that’s the case here. Williams’ objections came after reading the original script and I don’t think any extra scenes outside of that were shot.

I definitely understand his creative pride, but I really think he overreacted on this one. Williams knew the Hays Code and how it worked. He had to have known some of the things he wanted simply wouldn’t fly. One omission that he was angry about is actually alluded to in a very crafty way that causes the audience to think more than if it had been tossed out there like Williams wanted. The only part that I do find intriguing is how Williams would’ve preferred the ending.

Obviously I think it’s a great film. For me it captures all of Williams’ strengths. It also features an incredible cast that handle the great script with ease. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to check it out sometimes. I would love to hear your reaction to it.

Oh I have seen this one and it’s excellent! I was drooling at Paul Newman the whole time, ehm, he’s soooo beautiful 😉 But then so was Elizabeth Taylor. Very impressed w/ Burl Ives here too, I first saw him in The Big Country and he was great there too. I still need to see “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Oh Ruth you sound like my wife the whole time we were watching it. I would make an observation about Elizabeth Taylor and she always had a good counter about Paul Newman! 😀

I actually have a review already written for “Streetcar”. I may post it this week as well. Not sure. It’s definitely one you should see.

Ahah but can you blame us? Newman is perhaps one of the most beautiful classic actors ever, well next to Gregory Peck of course 😉

To be honest, I was only curious to see ‘Streetcar’ to see young, hunky Brando, ahahaha

LOL!!!!! I guess I can see Brando as young and hunky. I’ll be honest, his performance in “Streetcar” is the one I point to whenever there is a discussion about Brando’s greatness. And the funny thing is he is the only one of that main cast that didn’t win an Oscar.

Not seen this Keith but it’s one of my mum’s favourites! Sure Paul Newman has something to do with that! Another classic I need to see!

Definitely search this one out. It’s a true classic and it is definitely one that deserves to be seen. I really think you would like it as a movie fan.

Love this movie. That cast, man. It doesn’t get better than that. Great review.

Great to hear someone else really loves it too. You’re exactly right. That cast is phenomenal. The script is brilliant and watching it in the hands of those great talents never gets old.

Excellent post, this is going on my watchlist this instant.

Oh that’s great to hear. These classic reviews don’t get a lot of looks but if I can introduce them to just one fellow movie fan it was well worth posting. This is a fantastic movie and I hope you’ll come back and share your thoughts after you see it.

One of those classics I have never seen…although I have marked off quite a lot these last couple of years this one is still on it.

Oh you really need to check this one out. Great cast, cool story, and one of the most clever production designs you’ll find. It’s my favorite of Hitch’s movies.

Are you a Hitchcock fan?

Yeah I really am, but I have to be honest and tell you that I actually did not know this was a Hitchcock movie. Now that I know it will quickly move up my list as one to check out soon 🙂

No, no, no! It isn’t! I was replying to comments from my phone app and thought you were replying to an entirely different post. My apologies.

No this film isn’t directed by Hitchcock. Still, it’s one you definitely need to see. Performances are top notch and the screenplay is just incredible. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to check it out soon.

I only watched this for the first time a couple of years back, a real classic. I haven’t actually seen many of Elizabeth Taylor’s performances but she is fantastic here. Nice review Keith!

That’s great to hear. I just love it when people enjoy the classics. Taylor absolutely owns her role. But then again the entire cast is brilliant and they handle the razor-sharp script perfectly.

Really glad to hear you loved it too.

Burl Ives is someone I enjoy watching too.

Yes indeed. I always remember Burl Ives as the voice of Sam the Snowman on the TV version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! This is a considerably different role.

Great review! Haven’t watched this in a long time.

Thanks! It’s a true classic in my book.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Review

20 Sep 1958

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams' steamy play of warring Southern families was transferred to the screen with its oppressive heat intact, but homosexual overtones snipped - not entirely surprisingly given the era in which it was made. However, the characters and the relationships between them still come across powerfully.

Liz Taylor now looks a touch campy as Maggie, but Paul Newman remains as fresh as ever in his performance as the damaged football hero Brick, unable to return his wife's advances, so wrapped up is he in his own problems.. Full marks also to Burl Ives' enduring, overbearing turn as "Big Daddy", an archetypal Southern patriarch and then some.

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West End Review: ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ With Sienna Miller

By Matt Trueman

Matt Trueman

London Theater Review: ‘A Very Expensive Poison’ 5 years ago
West End Review: ‘The Night of the Iguana’ With Clive Owen 5 years ago
U.K. Theater Review: ‘Invisible Cities’ 5 years ago

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof review Sienna Miller

Money can’t buy you class. Australian director Benedict Andrews gives Tennessee Williams’ inheritance drama “ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ” a twist for the Trump era: Gone are the cream suits and vintage petticoats of old; in come white dinner jackets, black satin sheets and more sequins than a RuPaul convention. Yet this glitzy, starry West End staging – the Young Vic ’s first foray straight into town, featuring Sienna Miller and Jack O’Connell – suffers from the same issue. Miller provides little more than pulling power and, for all the flash visuals, Andrews just can’t get the old “Cat” jumping.

It’s curious. The ideas are all there, and they’re couched in sharp visual metaphors; the play’s component parts – sex, drink and death – are mostly pushed to the max; a characterful cast is left to lock horns on an empty stage. And yet, the damn thing just won’t start. Even at his best, Williams can be a bit of a windbag, and when his plays aren’t wound tight, they tend to deflate. So it is here. Running more than two and a half hours — longer than the old Elizabeth Taylor/Paul Newman movie — there are points where it slows to a trudge. Maybe “Cat” is starting to creak a little: repetitive, overemphatic and, in the end, contrived.

Popular on Variety

Andrews does his all to modernize it. Magda Willi’s design strips out the setting – that old Southern comfort – and puts the play on a black velvet stage. Behind it, a vast vault-like gold wall stretches up out of sight, as if to entomb the play and its characters. There’s a whiff of Trump Tower and of Tutankhamun. Death seeps into everything: cut flowers and black sheets. At the front of the stage, a bag of ice melts. Big Daddy’s birthday candles burn themselves out. Fireworks flash-bang off metal like artillery fire. Children run riot with toy guns. Maybe it’s death that drags the play under. Maybe everyone’s too downbeat to fight for their life – let alone the family fortune.

That’s what “Cat” needs: an almighty clash of factions and forces. With Big Daddy at death’s door and $90 million up for grabs, his daughters-in-law should be at war, but Hayley Squires and Miller can only manage a few sassy squabbles. There’s no bullfight between father and son either: Colm Meaney’s cigar-chewing, slow-thinking Big Daddy seems strangely resigned to his alcoholic son’s fate.

Not without good reason: O’Connell gives an unflinching portrayal of drink dependency as Brick Pollitt, the golden boy gone to rot. He starts naked, slumped in a shower and sticking fingers down his throat and, over the night, chugs three bottles in search of the “click” that stops the thoughts in his head. This isn’t functional alcoholism. It’s messy and raw. When Maggie hides his drink, he launches at her, swinging his crutch like a caveman’s club.

Miller, sadly, is no match for him as Maggie the Cat – and it means the play’s opposing force, its sex drive, goes missing. She may strip down alongside Brick, she may crawl across the floor like a stock-footage seductress, but there’s no strategy to her sexuality. She’s simply not a strong enough actress. Her thoughts don’t run through. Each line sounds the same.

Andrews’ argument is that everyone here is out for themselves. Not only that, they treat others as mere means to an end. It’s in the see-through sucking up to keep Big Daddy sweet, and in Maggie clawing her way out of poverty by sticking with Brick. Women use their sexuality for security; mothers use their kids as bait; fathers want heirs and high achievers more than they want sons. Alice Babidge’s costumes are a constant delight – not just gauche, but gilt. She doesn’t so much dress women as gift wrap them, while Mae’s kids run around like mini Ferrero Rochers.

If the production shows people as objects, though, that’s also its downfall. There’s so little affection here, so few bonds between them, that there’s nothing to counterbalance the cutthroatery. For all that such family dynamics have a frisson right now, with political echoes, they’re so clearly a bunch of crooks, it’s difficult to care much for any of them

Apollo Theatre, London; 75 seats; £67 ($88) top. Opened, reviewed July 24, 2017. Running time: 2 HOURS, 40 MIN.

Production: A Young Vic production of a play in two acts by Tennessee Williams.
Crew: Directed by Benedict Andrews, Set design, Magda Willi; costumes, Alice Babidge; lighing, Jon Clark; music, Jed Kurzel; sound, Gareth Fry.
Cast: Brian Gleeson, Richard Hansell, Colm Meaney, Sienna Miller, Jack O’Connell, Lisa Palfrey, Michael J. Shannon, Hayley Squires.

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Latter-day Lear … Peter Forbes (Big Daddy) and Oliver Johnstone (Brick) in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof review – Big Daddy’s birthday party still blazes

Curve, Leicester An imaginative staging of Tennessee Williams’ classic foregrounds the southern drama’s roots in Greek tragedy

O ne of the catchiest titles in the theatrical canon will always draw audiences to Tennessee Williams’ 1955 play set during a cataclysmic 65th birthday party for a Mississippi plantation owner. Anyone lured to find out what Cat on a Hot Tin Roof means should leave satisfied with this imaginative staging.

Anthony Almeida, young winner of the Royal Theatrical Support Trust’s Sir Peter Hall director award , follows Ivo van Hove and Yaël Farber’s work on Williams’s contemporary, Arthur Miller, by emphasising the deep ancient Greek roots of American drama of this period.

Rosanna Vize’s design for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

The relatives, pastor and doctor accompanying Big Daddy at this landmark anniversary often speak in a choric, choreographed manner. During furious duologues exposing the family’s numerous delusions, off-stage characters watch from a raised surround that might aptly be called a catwalk around a stage bare except for a table that can suggest bedroom or banquet. Maggie the Cat begins the play showering off-stage, prompting designer Rosanna Vize to shroud some scenes with a retractable railed drape invoking shower curtain, mosquito net and the family’s instinct to obscure the truth.

Modern dress and diverse casting shift the white supremacy implicit in the characters into more submerged forms of modern racial tension, positioning this version intriguingly between traditional stagings and the all-black casting of a 2009 Broadway and West End version. Themes of public and private mendacity – “we can make that lie come true” is a pivotal line – are anything but dated. This, with Miller’s All My Sons and Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, is one of the texts most justifying David Mamet’s claim: “All plays are about lies … when the lie is revealed, the play is over.”

Siena Kelly’s magnetic Maggie embodies the sleek, skittish, erotically frustrated energy in the title image. Peter Forbes’s Big Daddy, dominant but shrinking, wounded yet still fighting, feels consciously related to Brian Cox’s Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession, reasonably so as both are explicitly latter-day King Lears.

Classic revivals with a modern vision are sometimes derided as “director’s theatre”, but Almeida is always true to a play as great as its name.

At Curve, Leicester , until 18 September. Then touring until 30 October.

Tennessee Williams
Curve theatre

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The Fur Flies in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'; Talent Galore Found in Music Hall Film Acting Does Justice to Williams Play

By Bosley Crowther

Sept. 19, 1958

AN all-fired lot of high-powered acting is done in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," film version of the Tennessee Williams stage play, which came to the Music Hall yesterday. Burl Ives, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Judith Anderson, Jack Carson and two or three more almost work and yell themselves to pieces making this drama of strife within a new-rich Southern family a ferocious and fascinating show.And what a pack of trashy people these accomplished actors perform! Such a lot of gross and greedy characters haven't gone past since Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes" went that way. The whole time is spent by them in wrangling over a dying man's anticipated estate or telling one another quite frankly what sort of so-and-so's they think the others are.As a straight exercise in spewing venom and flinging dirty linen on a line, this fine Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production in color would be hard to beat. It is done by superior talents, under the driving direction of Richard Brooks, making even the driest scenes drip poison with that strong, juicy Williams dialogue. And before the tubs full of pent-up fury, suspicion and hatred are drained, every major performer in the company has had a chance to play at least one bang-up scene.The fattest and juiciest opportunities go to Mr. Newman, Miss Taylor and Mr. Ives as the son, his wife and the former's father (the Big Daddy of the lot), respectively. In their frequent and assorted encounters, they have chances, together and in pairs, to discourse and lash each other's feelings over the several problems of the family.First there is the private problem of why this son and his wife do not have any children—and, indeed, why the young man shuns his wife. Why does he spend his time boozing, hobbling around his bedroom on a crutch and reviling his wife, who quite obviously has the proclivities of that cat on the roof?And, secondly, why does this young fellow resent and resist his old man, who as obviously wants to be pals with him and leave him his estate if he will only have kids?Let it be said, quite frankly, that the ways in which these problems are solved do not represent supreme achievements of ingenuity or logic in dramatic art. Mr. Williams' original stage play has been altered considerably, especially in offering explanation of why the son is as he is. Now, a complicated business of hero-worship has been put by Mr. Brooks and James Poe in place of a strong suggestion of homosexuality in the play.No wonder the baffled father, in trying to find out what gives, roars with indignation: "Something's missing here!"It is, indeed. And something is missing in the dramatists' glib account of how the son gets together with his father in one easy discourse on love. But what is lacking in logical conflict is made up in visual and verbal displays of vulgar and violent emotions by everybody concerned.Mr. Newman is perhaps the most resourceful and dramatically restrained of the lot. He gives an ingratiating picture of a tortured and tested young man. Miss Taylor is next. She is terrific as a panting, impatient wife, wanting the love of her husband as sincerely as she wants an inheritance. Mr. Ives snorts and roars with gusto, Miss Anderson claws the air as his wife, and Mr. Carson squirms and howls atrocious English as their greedy, deceitful older son.Madeleine Sherwood does a fine job as the latter's cheap, child-heavy wife and a quartet of unidentified youngsters insult the human race as their brats.Lawrence Weingarten's production is lush with extravagance, which is thoroughly appropriate to the nature of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."The stage show at the Music Hall, entitled "Autumn Gallery," features Jeanette Scovotti, coloratura; Jack Beaber and Françoise Martinet, soloists; the Two Martys, novelty performers, and the Corps de Ballet and Rockettes.

The CastCAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, screen play by Richard Brooks and James Poe; based on the play by Tennessee Williams; produced by Lawrence Weingarten for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At the Music Hall, Rockefeller Center. Running time: 108 minutes.Maggie . . . . . Elizabeth TaylorBrick . . . . . Paul NewmanBig Daddy . . . . . Burl IvesGooper . . . . . Jack CarsonBig Mama . . . . . Judith AndersonMae . . . . . Madeleine SherwoodDr. Baugh . . . . . Larry GatesDeacon Davis . . . . . Vaughn Taylor

A Summary and Analysis of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is widely regarded as Tennessee Williams’s greatest play, and in it we find an echo of many of America’s main social and political preoccupations and struggles of the 1950s. But the way Williams taps into the national psyche at a particular point in US history is subtle, and requires closer analysis. Before we offer an analysis of the play, however, it might be worth recapping the plot of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof : summary

Big Daddy, a wealthy plantation owner who lives somewhere on the Mississippi delta, is dying, and everyone except his wife, Big Mama, acknowledges it. The couple’s son, Brick, is married to Margaret, but Brick seems uninterested in his wife sexually (she is the ‘cat on a hot tin roof’ because of her lack of satisfaction). Brick has turned to drink in the wake of his friend Skipper’s death.

Big Daddy confronts his son about his suspected homosexuality (which was a criminal act at the time the play was written), believing Brick had sex with Skipper. (Spoiler: he did.)

In contrast to Brick and Margaret, who are childless, there is Brick’s older brother, Gooper, whose wife Mae is currently expecting the couple’s sixth child. When the family force Big Mama to confront the reality of her husband’s terminal condition, they discuss what should happen to the plantation and estate after Big Daddy’s death.

Gooper and Mae want to look after it, but Big Mama rejects such an idea. Margaret argues that she should be in charge.

She then announces – in a shocking moment – that she is pregnant with her first child. Nobody believes her, so she sets about trying to make the statement true by seducing her husband, locking away his drink, and conceiving a grandchild for Big Daddy, who dies shortly before the end of the play.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof : analysis

The action of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof progresses with an inexorable energy, with each new act picking up at the exact point the previous act ended. As Big Mama is forced to face up to the fact that her husband, who seems the very paragon of virility and the life force, is dying, and Brick is forced to confront the lie that lurks behind his sexless marriage to Margaret, so we, as spectators, are dragged forwards through the relentless family drama with barely a moment to catch our breath.

Masculinity is a key theme of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof : what does a ‘good’ husband and family man look like? Brick and Margaret are made to feel inadequate because, unlike Brick’s brother Gooper and his wife Mae, they don’t have any children, and because of the rumours (which turn out to be true) surrounding Brick’s homosexuality.

And, of course, Brick stands in stark contrast to his father, whose name throughout the play, Big Daddy, emphasises both his status as patriarch of the family and his almighty power over everyone’s life.

But as Big Daddy is dying, the play also raises questions about the interplay between different generations and what one leaves behind: Big Daddy has left behind children and, via Gooper, has grandchildren, but the family disagrees over who should manage his estate when he has passed on. (Curiously, the name Big Daddy was taken up by the famous American wrestler, who used it as his professional wrestling name. He was born Shirley Crabtree, and named ‘Shirley’ after the title character of a Charlotte Brontë novel. This may make him the only person whose real name and stage name were inspired by works of literature.)

Margaret feels forced to act in a desperate manner in order to ensure that she, not Mae, ends up with Big Daddy’s plantation after he dies, and the only way she can conceive of usurping Mae is literally to conceive – to ensure that she falls pregnant with Brick’s child.

Of course, the play’s setting on a plantation on the Mississippi also raises questions relating to race relations in the US in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement had begun to gather momentum (the play’s premiere was in the same year that Rosa Parks famously took a stand and refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white passenger).

Williams acknowledges this important background to the play’s setting without making race the play’s principal theme (although in the second version of the play’s third and final act, which he wrote at the suggestion of the play’s director, he made the black servants more prominent on stage).

Why does this setting matter? It was a world that Williams knew fairly well (as he knew about living as a homosexual man at a time when it was criminalised and socially unmentionable), but it also reminds us that Big Daddy represents, on some level, the uncertainty of the United States at the time.

The Cold War between the US and the USSR was raging, the Soviet Union was developing its own atomic bombs, and America itself seemed riven by internecine suspicions and conflicts surrounding suspected Communist activity (McCarthyism, of course, also provided the backdrop to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible , another classic American play of this era).

And, as the 1950s advanced, the second-class status of black Americans would also start to unravel as the Civil Rights movement became more mainstream. The America that Big Daddy lived and thrived in is, like Big Daddy himself, dying.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an example of naturalistic drama: that is, it reflects the realities of normal life (especially domestic life) and tries to recreate the family dramas of real people in an authentic way.

There is no Brechtian ‘distancing’ or metatheatrical breaking of the fourth wall: we are invited to become absorbed into the lives of the characters via some emotionally engaging performances (the director of the original production, Elia Kazan, was famed for his work in naturalist theatre).

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3 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”

I am tempted to disagree with the observation that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is “widely regarded as Tennessee Williams’s greatest play”. That status surely belongs to A Streetcar Named Desire. Although I personally prefer Cat to Streetcar, I seriously doubt that I’m in the majority. Part of the reason for this may be that, unlike the film version of Cat (which is beautifully performed but takes a lot of the teeth out of the original material), the film version of Streetcar was a massive success both artistically and commercially. Millions of audiences who don’t live in big cities with thriving live theatre have seen a legitimate interpretation of Streetcar, but only a sanitized interpretation of Cat.

Thanks, Matthew, and I think that’s a fair point. I suppose when I write ‘widely regarded’ I mean critically rather than commercially or in the popular imagination, though even then, I’m aware the point is debatable!

Comparisons are difficult: so often “greatest” means the highest gross. It occurs to me that the embryo of the #ME TOO movement lies in both plays, and (just incidentally) I never remember Brick’s wife being called anything but “Maggie” or “Maggie the Cat.”

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‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’ Review: The Legend In Her Own Words In HBO Documentary About Newly Discovered 1964 Interview – Cannes Film Festival

By Pete Hammond

Pete Hammond

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The tapes weren’t actually lost. No one had combed the contracts and did the detective work to see if they even still existed, until now. What is most interesting about this docu, which had its world premiere Thursday night as part of the Cannes Classics section at the Cannes Film Festival , is giving the world a chance to hear Taylor, who died in 2011 at 79, tell her story, at least until the mid-’60s, in her own voice. And through the miracle of new technologies and AI, it has been remarkably cleaned up with a clarity and style that sounds like it might have been professionally recorded in a sound studio just yesterday. Liz comes vividly alive here, and though what she reveals is largely well known, it gives it extra gravitas to hear that unmistakable voice give us the 411 on what really happened.

Some of the “lost” tapes are augmented by old or, in a couple of cases, new interviews by friends and associates like bestie and Lassie and Cleopatra co-star Roddy McDowall, Debbie Reynolds and agent Marion Rosenberg. But the anchor is Taylor in her often charming and occasionally blatantly honest recollections for the taping sessions designed to be turned into an autobiography. Early days at MGM in 1942 are detailed including her story about desperately wanting the role in 1945’s National Velvet. That is very amusing, with her saying she went to great lengths — literally — to win the part despite being told she was too short. Thus she did a training regimen over the course of three months to “stretch” herself, eventually adding 3 inches and getting the role.

Among other memories Taylor shares was that her first real kiss was preceded by her first kiss onscreen by just a week. Taylor says the movie version was a lot better. Her first film as a grownup, rather than teenage roles, was in 1951’s certified classic, A Place in the Sun with Montgomery Clift, who would become another lifelong friend even though she was intimidated by his acting experience compared to hers. She reveals she never took a lesson.

The movie Giant five years later also was notable and also directed by George Stevens, with whom she would get into disagreements about her character. It starred yet another man who would become a lifelong friend, Rock Hudson, along with James Dean, who died during production at 24. She recalls telling the producers that she got word her co-star was dead, something she could not comprehend. There is also talk about how Taylor, an early champion against AIDS, felt comfortable her whole life with gay men, including close friends McDowall, Hudson and Clift.

1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was a blur because her beloved third husband Mike Todd had been killed in a plane crash two weeks into shooting. It was devastating as this was a man she truly loved. Burstein steadfastly chronicles each of the star’s famous string of marriages beginning with Nicky Hilton, then Michael Wilding, Todd and Eddie Fisher, who was married to Reynolds and the couple were good friends with the Todds. After his death Fisher grew closer to Taylor as both grieved the loss of Todd, eventually breaking up his marriage to Reynolds and wedding Taylor, who confesses she liked him but never loved the singer. That would be saved for her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton.

The section detailing the ups and downs during Cleopatra, her near-death health experiences, the breakup with Fisher and his erratic behavior, and the marriage(s) to Burton are the film’s best, with Burstein and team precisely choosing just the right portions of the interview to tell the scandalous tale. That period also included winning her first Oscar for 1960’s critically reviled Butterfield 8, a part she hated but played with such anger at being in it that it worked to her advantage. “I won because I had a tracheotomy,” she said.

It all makes for a satisfying journey through one of Hollywood’s most memorable careers. There is the feeling of intimacy that makes this one special, if not exactly full of new revelations. Like the 2015 docu Marlon on Marlon , which chronicled 200 hours of recorded tapes by Brando, it is a valuable addition to our understanding of what made her tick. Taylor comes alive in different ways for this one, and she makes for very good company.

The producers are J.J. Abrams, Sean Stuart, Glen Zipper, Bill Gerber and Rachel Rusch Rich. The film make its North American premiere at Tribeca in June.

Title: Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes Festival: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Classics) Distributor: HBO Release date: August 3, 2024 on HBO (and streaming on Max) Director: Nanette Burstein Running time: 1 hr 40 mins

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REVIEW: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

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Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Review

West End Review: ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ With Sienna Miller

Matt Trueman

Popular on Variety

Apollo Theatre, London; 75 seats; £67 ($88) top. Opened, reviewed July 24, 2017. Running time: 2 HOURS, 40 MIN.

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The Fur Flies in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'; Talent Galore Found in Music Hall Film Acting Does Justice to Williams Play

A Summary and Analysis of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’ Review: The Legend In Her Own Words In HBO Documentary About Newly Discovered 1964 Interview – Cannes Film Festival

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