A Streetcar Named Desire: Beauty and the Beautiful Beast

Tony Maietta:
Hello. I'm film historian, Tony Maietta.

Brad Shreve:
And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies.

Tony Maietta:
We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age. We go behind the scenes and share our opinions too.

Brad Shreve:
And, of course, being the average guy, my opinions are the ones that matter.

Tony Maietta:
As does your self delusion. Welcome to Going Hollywood.

Brad Shreve:
Tony, I wanna start out this episode a little differently than we normally do.

Tony Maietta:
Okay. Go ahead.

Brad Shreve:
Normally, we put off me giving the synopsis. I'm gonna do it right up front here and tell people what A Streetcar Named Desire is about. That sounds great. A Streetcar Named Desire is a classic film about Marlon Brando wearing tight T shirts, and I am okay with that.

Tony Maietta:
I am not mad about that

Tony Maietta:
at all. In fact, if Marlon was here, he'd say, you know what, Brad Tony? I understand that I was pretty turned on too. What do you think of, a pair of queens? Would it drive you crazy if I did this with the whole podcast, Brad?

Brad Shreve:
Well, do you want my critique of your accent?

Tony Maietta:
It's not very good.

Brad Shreve:
You sound like the love child of Marlon Brando and Pee Wee Herman.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. It's pretty bad. I'll stick to little Edie. That was very funny. But that's that's I can't tell you how many I've seen this movie so many times, And every time I see him in the very first scene, he takes my breath away every time. What is it about Brando in that T shirt, in that gorgeous black and white photography? It it is just stunning. I mean, you can understand why he just blew everybody away, throughout the world with this. I mean, it's crazy.

Tony Maietta:
Can you it's just it's insane. He still does it. That's what's amazing to me.

Brad Shreve:
This launched his career, and it would have been a travesty if it didn't because he was amazing.

Tony Maietta:
You know, it's funny. Yes. Obviously, we're talking about Streetcar Named Desire for anybody who who has not caught on to that by now, Directed by Aliyah Kazan from 1950, Warner Brothers, also starring, a little actress you may have heard of called Vivian Leigh, and Kim Hunter and Karl Malden. The 3 of them, Brando Malden and Hunter, are reprising their Broadway roles, and Vivian Leigh brought into her place Jessica Tandy, who was the original Blanche, played her on Broadway.

Brad Shreve:
And I can't wait till we talk about that. I have a few words about that. But, anyway, go on.

Tony Maietta:
Do you? I do too. Good. Good. I was kind of surprised when you when you suggested this. This sounds like something I would say, hey. Let's do Streetcar. And you go, oh, I've never seen it. But you've seen it clearly.

Brad Shreve:
Well, Tony, it's not like I don't watch classic films. But the reason I wanted to do this is I remember the movie and loving the film. I don't remember the details. I really didn't remember a lot of the details of the story. But what I did remember is in drama class in high school, we didn't do this play on the stage, but we did read it in class. Mhmm. And I fell in love with it. Just I remember just how much I loved it.

Brad Shreve:
And I wanted it to take me back to get that feeling again, and it Yeah. Didn't let me down.

Tony Maietta:
That's amazing. Yeah. I I had a similar first experience with Streetcar that it was the play, and I read the play, and I don't think I have ever been so affected by a play by reading a play before or since, so much so that I read it I would used to read it once a year every year. I just it's the most beautifully written piece of work, and Tennessee Williams just really outdid himself with the street car. And then I saw the film I can't remember the first time I saw the film. It was it was quite a while ago, but I can remember being knocked out by Brando. But I'm always I'm always knocked out by Brando, young Brando. It's you can see why he set the world on fire with this and then began with the play.

Tony Maietta:
You know? He he galvanized Broadway with this play, and it wasn't like he came out of nowhere. He had done a few plays on Broadway and, but it was this film, this performance, this character, it's 1 of those it's 1 of those instances where the character and the actor come together, and the effect is so perfect and so startling that it, in this case, changed acting. It changed, the way Broadway per perceived plays. And when the film when the film was made, it changed Hollywood, and the whole style of acting changed because of this performance. Think about that for a minute. I mean, an entire style of acting changed because of this 1 performance by this 1 man. Incredible.

Brad Shreve:
It is incredible, and I loved it when he was on oh my god. What an awful, awful person, and I I heard he didn't like playing this role because Stanley Kowalski was such a horrible person. But you couldn't wait for him to be on the screen because he played it so well.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. Well, it's he no. He didn't. You're right. He he detested Stanley because and he fought that stereo he he fought that typecasting for the rest of his life. That's why he did so many I mean, he did Julius Caesar, 3 years after this, and he played Mark Tony, and he he's done I mean, he's Brando. He's legendary for

Tony Maietta:
all the things he's did, and the way he sang in Guys and Dolls 5 years later. Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love, and may they gaze up a more until...I'm not supposed to sing. I had to do it. I had to do it. 


Brad Shreve:
You know what? I don't think the Internet spiders will catch that

Tony Maietta:
They won't catch my Brando singing? 

Brad Shreve:
No. No. No. 

But, yeah, it's funny. You know, in in Williams, let's talk I'd like to talk a little bit about the play because I think it's important to get the genesis of the play. I'm not gonna talk a lot about it. I never do, but it's important to have background.

Tony Maietta:
Williams, Tennessee Williams, his first hit in 1945 was The Glass Menagerie, which kind of really put him on the map. Before then, he'd been very much a journeyman writer, always writing. He worked at MGM for a while in the forties working on stories, but he could never really catch fire. And then The Last Menagerie did it, and he wrote Streetcar, and he gave it to his agent, a very famous agent named Audrey Wood, and he said that he based Blanche DuBois on a combination of his aunt, Tallulah Bankhead, but mostly everybody who talks about Tennessee Williams said that that Blanche DuBois was based on Tennessee Williams, that he was he was basically Blanche DuBois, which is kind of funny. If you know anything about Tennessee Williams, it makes sense. So, Irene Mayer Selznick was the wife of David o Selznick, a big producer in Hollywood, produced Gone with the Wind, and the daughter of Louis b Mayer. So that's quite lineage. And she was starting out her career.

Tony Maietta:
She'd left David Selznick, and she was starting out her career as a producer. She had produced another play, which didn't do well, and she this play was brought to her attention, and she decided it was her mission to get this play on Broadway. She was a very canny, very sophisticated woman, and she it made she made it her mission to get this taken care of. And she contacted Aliyah Kazan, who was a director on Broadway. He had directed All My Sons. On film, he had directed Extra Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and she wanted Kazan to do this play. And Kazan was an actor in the group theater. The group theater was basically the precursor to the actors' studio.

Tony Maietta:
This is all going somewhere. I guarantee you. I know it seems like I'm going off in tangents, but it all dovetails. Okay.

Brad Shreve:
It'll all come around.

Tony Maietta:
It all comes around. It all dovetails like me with me. So the group theater is the entity that introduced the Stanislavski acting method to the United States. We've talked about this before. What is the method? The method is the Stanislavski method. We talked about Breakfast at Tiffany's. We talked about George Peppard. He was a method actor.

Tony Maietta:
When we say someone's a method actor, it means they were trained in the Stanislavski method, and it was from the group theater. And from the group theater, these people broke off. Lee Strasberg was in the group theater. He broke off and he became most clearly identified with the method, because he taught then at the actors studio. He created his own studio. Stella Adler, same thing. Stella Adler had a student at the New School for Social Research in the forties that she trained, and his name was Marlon Brando. And even then, he set everybody on their asses with his acting.

Tony Maietta:
So you have this conglomeration of people all coming around, circling around this project called A Streetcar Named Desire.

Brad Shreve:
I didn't know all that background.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. No. No. Not that you needed to, but I told it anyway.

Brad Shreve:
No. I did. I love hearing your background stories.

Tony Maietta:
It's fascinating to me because there's always there's always a through line. You know, things just don't happen. Brando wasn't just walking down the street 1 day and walked into a theater and audition for this part. They knew who he was. Kazan had seen him on Broadway in a 1 scene in a play called Truck Line Cafe. He had 1 scene and he stopped the show in this 1 emotional scene. He played an ex GI who murders his wife, and he just has 1 scene. So everyone was aware of who Brando was, but Brando being Brando was very hard to get a hold of.

Tony Maietta:
They could never find him, because he didn't have 1 place where he lived. He kind of went from sofa to sofa to sofa, but they knew they wanted him. So they were eventually able to track him down and talk to him about it, but they had to get the approval of Tennessee Williams. And Tennessee Williams was living upstate at the time, so this is what I love about this Tony. So Kazan gave Brando some money and said, go upstate and meet Tennessee Williams and get his okay before we start this play. So he gave Brando this money, and Brando left New York and disappeared for a couple weeks. Nobody knew where he was. Tennessee's like, he's not here.

Tony Maietta:
He's not showing up. Well, it turns out he spent all the money that Kazan gave him on god knows what and had to hitchhike to see Williams, but he eventually made it to Tennessee Williams. Tennessee Williams wasn't really sure about Brando for this, and then Brando did something amazing. He fixed Tennessee Williams' plumbing. Tennessee Williams was having plum plumbing problems, and Brando, I'm sure he took his shirt off. Well Took his shirt off, climbed under the sink, and fixed his plumbing, and Williams fell in love with him, of course, and said, you're my Stanley. So that's how that part got cast because of Tennessee Williams' plumbing problems.

Brad Shreve:
Well, knowing Tennessee Williams, seeing Marlon Brando working on his plumbing, I'm sure his mind went wild and he was in.

Tony Maietta:
Yes. Yes. So he was he was Stanley. But, you know, the thing about the play is is that the play it's Blanche's story. You know, when we talk about Streetcar Named Desire, we always talk about Brando. I just imitated Brando when we first started talking about it. You said the reason, you know, you said the synopsis was Brando and a and a t shirt. If Blanche's story and, Brad, you should give us a synopsis of it.

Brad Shreve:
It's actually a very simple story. It takes place in the French Quarter, which really surprised me. I didn't realize it was I knew it was in New Orleans. Mhmm. And I've never been in New Orleans, but I picture the French Quarter as a big touristy party place. But I guess at that time or maybe there's bad areas of the French Quarter. At that time, it was a different animal.

Tony Maietta:
It takes place in an area of the French Quarter. The well, the street that they live on that Stella and Stanley live on is called Elysian Fields, and that's a real street in New Orleans. And then and as Blanche says, and we can talk about more about this later, they told me to take a street car named Desire and transfer to 1 called Cemetery and to get off at the Elysian Fields. Well, that story right there is the story of A Streetcar Named Desire. You go from Desire to cemetery to Elysian Fields. What are the Elysian Fields are a mythological place where heroes that was their afterlife in in Greek mythology was Elysian Fields. So you're basically telling you the story of Blanche, but I interrupted you with my little tangent. Go ahead with the synopsis.

Brad Shreve:
That's what you're here for.

Tony Maietta:
To interrupt you.

Brad Shreve:
So Blanche DuBois is a high school teacher who lost her job in Laurel, Mississippi, and we find out it's because she had a fling with a 17 year old boy. And after that fling, she moves into the Flamingo Hotel in Laurel. And this all takes place back this is all before the story begins, but this is how she gets to New Orleans. So in the process of all this, she also loses the family estate Belle Reeve due to creditors. So she's pretty much done and out and she moves into the Flamingo Hotel, and she gets this she's a hussy.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah

Brad Shreve:
She gets this reputation of, being a kind of a Shreve willing gal.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
And, so out of money, she goes to New Orleans, and she moves in with her sister and her lovely husband, Stanley. And Stanley dislikes and torments Blanche, and he eventually rapes her. But that, I guess, that's more prominent in the play. They fade to black in the in the movie. I didn't even catch for sure that he did that.

Tony Maietta:
Hello, production code. Yeah. We'll talk about that. 

Brad Shreve:
Exactly. At the same time, there's a friend of Stanley's, kind of a card buddy, Mitch, who fall they fall madly in love with each other. And then Mitch learns about her time at the Flamingo Hotel. And pretty much with everything else, Stanley especially tormenting her, Blanche who was teetering on the edge to begin with, she is driven to madness.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
And that's the story. There really if you think about Tony, there really is no real story here. There's not a traditional

Tony Maietta:
Like a plot?

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. There's not a traditional plot.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. Like with a well yeah. Well, it's basically as we said, it's it's Blanche's story, so it's basically the disintegration of this woman and her psyche and her descent into madness. I mean, she's pretty shaky to begin with when she arrives at the Faubergh Marigny, is what the, area in New Orleans is called where they live. And, and as I said, they live on Elysian Fields. So you kind of get those illusions from her very first entrance that this is a woman who's on the downside. And on Broadway, the character Blanche was played by Jessica Tandy, who I'm sure most people know now from Driving Miss Daisy, but this was many years before, obviously. She wasn't quite that old

Brad Shreve:
Brilliant actress.

Tony Maietta:
When she played Blanche. Yes. A brilliant actress and, a British extraction, by the way. It's kinda funny, how both famous these actresses who were who were British or or had a link to to Britain played the ultimate Southern Belles. So Blanche DuBois and for my our Golden Girls friends out there, no, you're not be you're not mistaken. Blanche Devereaux was definitely named in honor of Blanche Dubois because they're both overheated southern bells former southern bells. You know, I think it's interesting, this production on Broadway that we said was is Blanche's story, but Brando was so galvanizing. Brando just knocked, as I said, knocked everybody on their asses that it became really unbalanced, and it really did become the Marlon Brando show.

Tony Maietta:
So when they decided they wanted to make a film of it because first first of all, the the show was a huge hit. Huge, huge hit. It it just it blew everything out of the water that season. But, oddly, usually what happens when a a play is a big hit, the movie studios come calling. And the movie studios did not come calling for A Streetcar Named Desire, mostly because this was the time of the production code. And these studio heads knew that there were just way too many things that runs the production code in this play.

Brad Shreve:
1 being Blanche's husband.

Tony Maietta:
The first 1 being Blanche's husband. 1 of the very 1 of the big stumbling blocks is Blanche talks about her young husband who killed himself because she discovered him in bed with another man. So you right away have number 1 on the code. Sec it's not number 1, but you know what I'm saying. Sex perversion, homosexuality.

Brad Shreve:
That went out the window.

Tony Maietta:
That's so they had to deal with that. They also had to deal and so, basically, what happened was was that 20th Century Fox passed. They're, like, there's too many red there's too many problems with this. We'll never be able to get a workable script out of this. And so it was actually Warner Brothers who Jack Warner who, for everything that people say about Jack Warner, took some big chances. He also brought Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf to the screen. So, I mean, he Jack Warner was a ballsy guy. He said, we'll do this, but, yes, we have to make some choice some changes.

Tony Maietta:
So the production code said, you have to do something about the homosexual character. The rape scene. They said you have to the rape scene is okay, but make sure it's a and this is what they said. Make sure it's a tasteful rape. 

Brad Shreve:
Oh, my god. 

Tony Maietta:
So you can have the rape in there, but just make sure it's tasteful. 

Brad Shreve:
Oh, god.

Tony Maietta:
And there were other, there was other language that they had to tone down, in order to pass the production code. The script.We're just talking about before the movie's even shot. We're just talking about the hurdles they had to clear to even begin filming. By this time, Kazan had directed, Gentleman's Agreement, had won an Oscar. He always wanted to just direct films, and he didn't like repeating himself. So they off they said, would you come back? Tennessee Williams said, would you please direct this film version of Streetcar? And Kazan at first said no. And then Tennessee Williams begged him, basically. He said, please, you have to protect me. And he trusted Kazan.

Tony Maietta:
Kazan would protect him. Otherwise, he knew his play would be chopped to pieces. So Kazan said that he would come back to direct it primarily to help Tennessee Williams and also because he was very unhappy with how the play became unbalanced on Broadway between Blanche and Stanley because of Brando. So he wanted to correct that balance and bring Blanche back into the forefront, as much as possible to more to to evenly balance the film out the way it was originally written.

Brad Shreve:
Tony, I'm stopping our conversation real quick.

Tony Maietta:
Why? Why, Brad? We're we're in the middle of a podcast.

Brad Shreve:
But this is about the podcast, and it's very important.

Tony Maietta:
Okay.

Brad Shreve:
Listener, whatever app you're listening on, whether it's on the computer or on the phone, reach your finger or your mouse over. It usually says follow, some still say subscribe, and click that. And what's gonna happen when they do that, Tony?

Tony Maietta:
They're gonna get notified when a new episode is available, and they can listen to us again. Know, you don't wanna miss that. No. Can we get back to the episode that we were recording?

Brad Shreve:
Of course. Please? Of course.

Tony Maietta:
Alright. Thank you. Don't forget to subscribe and follow.

Brad Shreve:
There you go. And talking about this film going from stage to film, there's something I really liked about this. A few weeks ago, we talked about the boys in the band.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
And how it was a play, and then they made a movie out of it. And 1 of the downfalls of the movie was they were projecting too much like they were in the theater. They they were theatrical. Mhmm. This movie was very similar that way, but it worked here whereas it didn't work in the boys in the Brad. And I think for a couple of reasons. 1, this not that the boys in the band wasn't full of melodrama, but this was full of drama. So it didn't seem as much like they were overacting.

Brad Shreve:
These were people in Stanley was awful, and and there was just a lot of hurt and pain. The other thing is the set. You know, it opened up with Blanche getting off of the Shreve car named Desire, which really didn't run at that time period, but that's a whole different story.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. It was it was just bus lines. Right? And it was a bus called Desire. They didn't wanna call it a bus line called Desire.

Brad Shreve:
Right. So they got to see New Orleans, let the music a car, and they put the Desire back on there, which no. That's minor. I just thought was funny. Yeah. Anyway, so she comes off the street car and then she goes to a bowling alley, I Shreve. But eventually she may go to the house, but eventually when they get to the set, it's definitely not the nicest part of Tony. That's for sure. There's dancing girls and strip clubs and blah blah blah. But you see this courtyard of this apartment building that is not very nice. And the building, the way you can see the building, the way you can see the courtyard, it is like, oh, this is a theater set. And I knew right away, the only difference between this and what was in the theater is there's a wall there

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
From when they go inside the building. That was and I've never seen it on stage, but that was pretty obvious to me. Am I correct?

Tony Maietta:
Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Brad Shreve:
To me, it didn't hide the fact that this was original play. This is, to me, I was watching a play on film to a much different degree than the Boys in the Band. Yeah. I And that's why it didn't that's why it didn't bother me in that sense, the Boys in the Band did.

Tony Maietta:
I think that, like, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, you had a cinema. Although Vivien Leigh did a lot of theater, I mean, she was a classically trained actress. She was Lady Olivier, after all, married to Laurence Olivier, so they did a lot of theater. But Vivien Leigh was also a filmed film trained actress. She knew how to act in film. Hello. She plays Scarlett O'Hara.

Tony Maietta:
Mhmm.

Tony Maietta:
So you had an actress who was very, very good at film acting, who was very adept at film acting, and you had Brando who had this wasn't Brando's first film. Brando did a film called The Men a few years before. So this wasn't his first film, plus Brando was Brando. I mean, he could he he brought his naturalism to this that was what's so galvanizing about him on stage, was people had never seen a person behave this way. He behaved on stage just like people did in real life, and they were blown away by that. So that's why when you see A Streetcar Named Desire, you're not thinking, oh my god. This I mean, yes, it does have the theatrical trappings. It's in 1 set or 2 sets, but that was that was the whole crux of Brando's acting genius, was it was like a real person walked in the stage with I mean, he talks while he eats, and he wipes his nose, and he I mean, it's just it's people had never seen anything like this before.

Tony Maietta:
And when Kazan was first thinking about doing the film, he actually wanted to open it up. He actually wanted to make it more cinematic. That's what they call it. They call it opening up when they take it outside of the confines of a stage set. And he actually thought about doing some scenes of Blanche Blanche's history at Belle Reeve, which is the the I guess it was a plantation. The plantation that she and Stell grew up on. And then he thought a few weeks later, he thought no. He thought better, but he goes, no.

Tony Maietta:
Best thing to do is just film the staged play. And so he create but he did add some scenes, as you mentioned, that were cinematic. Blanche's arrival in New Orleans if you notice, the train comes in and says New Orleans, and the train comes in. And we're at a train we're at a train station, and Blanche appears through a puff of smoke, which is, you know, which which is such a brilliant shot. It's it's a it's kind of like a, a whole a throwback to Anna Karenina, because that's how Anna Karenina in Tolstoy's book Anna Karenina appears through a through you know, and she's a doomed character as well. So she appears like this unearthly creature through a puff of smoke, and Vivian Lee had just filmed Anna Karenina a few years before. So it was, like, I'm going through the smoke again with a puff of steam after she appears with a puff of steam. And there's a short scene in the bowling alley, when Blanche first arrives, and she sees Stanley from afar, and she sees Stella.

Tony Maietta:
And then there's the scene with Mitch later on in the film, which takes place in a pavilion. But other than that, it's on those 2 sets. And what's so genius about that is what's happening in this play when you really think about it? Blanche's life is closing in on her. It's more so and so it makes a lot of sense that you would film it on this very closed set. So the sense of claustrophobia, also the sense of the heat, the sweat, the sensuality, you know, bodies up against each other fit so perfectly into the themes of this play. And I even read that as the play progressed and as they were filming it, that Kazan, brought the sets in closer. He, like, moved walls slightly closer to get that Shreve more of a sense of Blanche's life closing in on her. And I just think it was because Kazan was such a talented film director, and this is such a talented cast that they were able to bring that off and make it not seem like we're watching a play, like we're watching a film.

Brad Shreve:
I heard about the closing walls things. And I gotta tell, you don't notice it. But once I I heard that, I'm like, oh my god. Yes. Because you just become increasingly uncomfortable. Yeah. And at 1 point, I thought, god, they seem really cramped. And they didn't seem really cramped in the beginning, but I never made that connection that they made the room smaller.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. It's pretty amazing. 

Brad Shreve:
It's so gradual. 

Tony Maietta:
It's beautifully done. Ingenious idea.

Brad Shreve:
This set was absolutely beautiful. It is not a place you'd ever wanna go.

Tony Maietta:
No.

Brad Shreve:
It it just it is beautiful and it's this place is grubby. The people are grubby. It's just it is very Shreve. And they won for, best art best art direction

Tony Maietta:
Art direction. Right.

Brad Shreve:
Which I think is well deserved. Best art direction for a black and white film. Well deserved in my opinion.

Tony Maietta:
Yes. It won for best art direction black and white, and it was nominated for best cinematography black and white, and I think, it didn't win. But I think that it is beautifully shot. Oh. The whole film is beautiful. From from the first frame, it's it's so the atmosphere just overwhelms you. You get that sense of the heat and the humidity, and then in comes this gorgeous animal named Stanley Kowalski, who just grabs your attention and doesn't let it go. And I I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about the differences between the 2 Blanches, and I think that Jessica Tony although I didn't see Jessica Tandy on stage, I'm not that old.

Tony Maietta:
From what I've read and what I've heard and what Brando has said, Brando preferred Vivien Leigh.

Brad Shreve:
Oh, really?

Tony Maietta:
I think that was because they were kindred spirits. They were both a little bawdy, a little crazy, and they kinda connected in that respect. And Jessica Tandy was very much she was a married woman. She was married to Hume Cronin for years years years.

Brad Shreve:
Thousands years.

Tony Maietta:
And she was and Brad referred to her as the school teacher. You know, and Blanche was a school teacher. So I think Jessica Tandy's version of Blanche was much more prim, much more proper.

Brad Shreve:
Mhmm.

Tony Maietta:
Not quite as again, this is speculation because I wasn't there. It wasn't quite the, overheatedness that Vivian Lee gets gives to it. Karl Malden preferred Jessica Tandy. He felt that that Vivian Lee was too sexy in it. And Vivian Lee, just for just hold on to your phones for a minute. Vivian Leigh was only 37 when she made this film.

Brad Shreve:
I know.

Tony Maietta:
Okay. This and that think about that for a minute. She had just played Scarlett O'Hara 11 years before in 1939. So maybe 10 years because they shot this in 49. So 10 years before, she was she was the ultimate femme fatale Scarlett O'Hara. 10 years later, she's playing an over the hill woman whose life is over. I mean, it's it's insane.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. It's pretty crazy. The reason I would have liked Jessica Tony, and I didn't see the play, but I love Jessica Tandy as an as an actress. And the story with her and humans, I just think is a Hollywood love story. Yeah. But, anyway, my entire family, we laughed a lot and we weren't supposed to be laughing because what we felt we were watching was Scarlett O'Hara has lost Tara

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
And she has fallen into madness. Yeah. And I could not shake that because that really is what it is, the way she played it

Tony Maietta:
in my opinion. It's incredibly meta. You know, it's meta for the character of Scarlett O'Hara, you know, because you had the ultimate southern belle who a decade ago was, you know, the most beautiful thing in the world, and now she her life is falling apart 10 years later. Scarlett O'Hara was a lot stronger than Blanche DuBois. That's important to point out. Blanche DuBois. Yes. Yes.

Tony Maietta:
Scarlett O'Hara, after all, tomorrow was another day. She'll never go hungry again. I mean, Scarlett O'Hara was much stronger, but you get that you get that through line, which is another wonderful genius thing about casting Vivian Lee. Vivian Lee was obviously cast because she was a movie star. She was a name. And if you're gonna have Brad, who had only made 1 film, if you're gonna have Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, both from Brad, who had never who were not names, you need a name. And how fortunate that the name Vivian Lee was available. It was not only available.

Tony Maietta:
Vivien Leigh wanted to do it. She played Blanche in London directed by Laurence Olivier, directed by her husband, in preparation for doing the film. That's how much she wanted it and that's how much she identified with it. It's also a very meta performance in the fact that Vivian Lee said that Blanche was probably the role that tipped her over into madness, being is that this the strain of playing Blanche sent her past the limits of her own mental frailty. Blunt, Vivien Leigh was was fame well, not famously now, but Vivien Leigh had a lot of mental instability. She had her first breakdown. She was bipolar, which, you know, when we talked about Carrie Fisher, it's kind of interesting that we're also talking about another actress dealing with, the disease of bipolar. And she had her first bipolar episode after she had a miscarriage.

Tony Maietta:
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that pretty much a valid, theory that very often mental illness has brought in is is sent on by a traumatic event, creates the first set on of a of a mental illness?

Brad Shreve:
Well, it's unknown what causes bipolar disorder, but it's believed to be hereditary. You're born with it. Mhmm. Not so great analogy as alcoholism, and maybe it's not so bad because substance abuse rate in people with bipolar disorder is much higher as is the suicide rate, which is astronomically higher. People are predisposed with it. For example, if drinking heavily makes a person alcoholic, everyone who went to college would be an alcoholic. That doesn't happen.

Tony Maietta:
Right.

Brad Shreve:
So bipolar disorder can't be cured, but it's treatable. And the general consensus is it's a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it can be more evident after a traumatic experience triggers it.

Brad Shreve:
Mhmm.

Brad Shreve:
I struggled with bipolar my entire life, and I didn't understand what was wrong until shit hit the fan in my life and it became so prevalent, it was finally diagnosed. Thank God.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
As for Vivian Leigh, I know women who showed more pronounced symptoms of the disease after childbirth.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
So it is not uncommon.

Tony Maietta:
Chemical the chemical imbalances of it. So, yeah, so the miscarriage and then she became unstable for the rest of her life. It was a battle for her to hold on to her to her mind, you know. And I think that playing Blanche at this after you've just had an experience like this, a terrifying experience, I'm sure, for her, and then to play a character which pretty much is going through a very similar situation, and she plays Blanche, you know, she I heard someone say that she plays Blanche without a safety net. You know, this is a character who who runs the gamut, who's in the extremes, and and she plays it. She's so brave in her she's so out there. She's so exposed. And for as strong as Scarlett O'Hara is and as far as conniving as Scarlett O'Hara is, Blanche is also conniving and Blanche and Blanche is very, deluded, however, and Scarlett O'Hare was never diluted.

Tony Maietta:
Scarlett O'Hare was a realist. So I think it's interesting that 1 character makes you think of the other, but when you really look at the 2 characters, they're totally different characters played by the same actress in Oscar winning performances.

Brad Shreve:
Well, I think my husband worded it well. He said she was Scarlett O'Hara broken. Yes. And I think that's legit. And 1 1 thing I will give her to to say that she was good in this role in a sense, Blanche, despite her station in life, she basically was trying to be Scarlett O'Hara. Yeah. She was trying to be something she was not. And maybe she was back when Shreve Reeve was around.

Brad Shreve:
I don't know. We really aren't told that, and I'm fine with that. I I'm glad they didn't do the background. I I like it being kinda mysterious and should stay that way. But maybe she was that southern belle that she was still trying to be, but she certainly was not.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. No. It's better off it's better off left, I think, to our imagination. And Lee does, you know Kazan, preferred Tandy as well, he said, but he also said that Vivian Lee really earned his respect. He felt that Vivien Leigh's performance had too much of Laurence Olivier in it, which, you know, makes sense. She just did the play directed by Laurence Olivier, but that she was probably the gutsiest actress he ever worked with, that she would stop at nothing to get this performance right, and she really, really she he said I think he said something about she would walk on glass to get this performance right, and you can sense that. And she did some amazing things. She worked what I find impressive about her in this film, 1 of the things is how she uses her voice.

Tony Maietta:
You know, she's got, like, 3 different registers of her voice. She's got her upper flirty range, you know, when she's first meets Mitch and she's trying to she's being all coquettish with him. And then she's got her normal middle range, which is which is how she talks to Stella, primarily Stella or another woman. And then, you know, when she's in sadness and despair and anger, her her register drops, and you really get the sense. I mean, it's this deep, longing voice, and I find it so I love technical stuff like that. I love, maybe it was because I was an actor, but I love seeing these actors be this technical. So you have this actress who is of the stage, of the British stage. Yes.

Tony Maietta:
She had done film, but of the British stage, very technical. And then you have this wild thing named Marlon Brando, and they come at each other in 2 different styles and 2 different ways of approaching a character. And, you know, it's not just fireworks. It's cataclysmic when these 2 get together, and I think that's a great example of how these 2 different styles can really work. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it looks like people are in 2 different movies, but not in this. They they hit each other and it's a cataclysm, and I think that's what gives this movie its energy and its fire are these 2 people just bumping up against each other over and over again until 1 of them eventually breaks?

Brad Shreve:
Their relationship feels very real and very sick. Yeah. And another thing I wanna say, through most of the film, you do not see Blanche's face directly. It's shadowed or and you don't really know that or at least I didn't notice it at all until the end

Tony Maietta:
Yeah.

Brad Shreve:
Which when Carl Malden exposes her face Yeah. After he finds out that she had this past. And he says, I wanna see you, and then she's begging him not to turn on the light. Yeah. And he does. When he turned on the light and you're looking at her face, that was when when I'm like, we haven't seen her face really that much throughout this film until then.

Tony Maietta:
No. It's true.

Brad Shreve:
And they did a very good makeup job in making her look older. The wrinkles on the head were a little too much.But forthe most part, they did a good job of making her look older. I was I was quite impressed. I was actually surprised to find out how young  she was after I saw that.

Tony Maietta:
That was definitely smart filmmaking because they had to hide her face because she wasn't. You know, she didn't look like this this, woman who's on the her last, you know, the last journey of her life. You know? This is her last hope. How sad is that? This is her last hope. I think that's what hits me so emotionally about this film is is that when you realize in the end, again, spoiler alerts for a 60 year old movie. We forgot to mention that. So if you haven't seen Streamcar, uh-oh, when she's taken away to the asylum, it really hits you. You're, like, oh my god.

Tony Maietta:
Her life is over.

Brad Shreve:
Oh, yeah.

Tony Maietta:
You know, this was her last this was her last opportune her sister was her last opportunity for a life, and Stanley just did you know, deliberate cruelty is the 1 unforgivable thing, she says. And he just not only did they rape her, but he drove her into he tipped her into madness, and now she's being thrown into an asylum, which God knows what's gonna happen to her in an asylum, and then and, you know, at this time period. So it's really devastating.

Brad Shreve:
And that deliberate cruelty line was excellent, because that's exactly what he was.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, it's absolute yes. Yes. I think she said it to Mitch.

Tony Maietta:
I think she says, but that's definitely Stanley. Yeah. Stanley is definitely deliberate cruelty. I mean, there are lots of famous lines from this film. There's also you know, there's her famous last line is, you know, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers, which many a drag queen has gotten a lot of distance out of that line.

Brad Shreve:
Well, when I was younger, I could that could be so true for me, but that's a whole different story.

Tony Maietta:
It's it could be true. It could be true for a lot of us. But what a what a brilliant line. She has so many she has so many wonderful lines. Tennessee Williams is Tennessee Williams. I mean, that's what he does. He writes these lines that that that are just butter in the mouths of these actors. I I do wanna talk a little bit about Brando.

Tony Maietta:
I think we need to talk a little bit about Brando and and his persona and what god. You just when you're watching him in this film, I think in this film more than any other, you just want to hate him. Mhmm. But you can't. And it's not just because he's so beautiful because he is so beautiful. But Stanley is this is what's so brilliant about Brando is, Stanley, he's an animal. Yes. But he's got a soft side.

Tony Maietta:
And I think this is the thing about Brando is Brando had this really intoxicating mix of male and female. He could be very soft and very quiet and then explode the next minute and be a brute. And I think if you look back in the history of really big movie stars, iconic movie stars, I'm thinking people like Garbo. I'm even thinking of Judy Garland a little bit here. Mhmm. They had this mix of masculine and feminine, which makes them everybody. It doesn't just make them 1 thing. It makes them everybody.

Tony Maietta:
Everybody can identify. And with Brando, it's that. He's he's sweet, and he's cruel. He has menace, and he has humor. Stanley's very funny.

Brad Shreve:
Mhmm.

Tony Maietta:
That scene in the the scene, the birthday party scene with the birthday cake when he clears the table.

Brad Shreve:
It's, no. My my my my part's clean. Let me help you clean yours. And, It's yeah.

Brad Shreve:
It's terrifying and funny.

Tony Maietta:
It's funny. I mean, it's menacing and terrifying, but it's funny. Yes. It's funny. He's like, let me help you clean yours. You know, and he's got this beauty and this brutality. And that's what's so fascinating about Brando is that he brings that to every role, but never better and never more illustrated than in, you know, this most iconic of his roles, of Stan Lee Kowalski.

Brad Shreve:
Well, and another thing I think they did beautifully, and this is Kim Hunter being spectacular. And I and I'm ashamed to say I didn't know Kim Hunter from anything other than Planet of the Apes.

Tony Maietta:
Well, there's a good reason for that, and I'll tell you when you're done.

Brad Shreve:
The codependent relationship and this very dysfunctional relationship was so real. 2 people that don't get along, they're like oil and water, but they need each other, and there's a passion. I don't know if I would call it love, but there's a passion. Lust. Yes. And I know they changed well, who could blame him? But, I know they changed the ending on that as well.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. But, yes, lust. How about that scene where the morning after, you know, after the fight and after the whole Stella, and she she comes down the stairs with that look of contempt slash lust. And, you know, they go back to the bedroom, and they just fuck all night. And she's laying there in bed. She has no clothes on, if you notice, when Blanche comes down. And she has that look on her face, and she says to Blanche, and Blanche says he's like that street car named Desire that rattles up and down the street here. And she says, have you ever ridden that street car, Blanche? I mean, hello.

Tony Maietta:
She's that's right there.

Brad Shreve:
A hot scene too.

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. That's that's fabulous. You you

Brad Shreve:
see his back, and she's running running arms up as a anyway.

Tony Maietta:
I guess it doesn't surprise anybody that Marlon Brad worked out a little bit before he did this. Yes. Because wow. Wow. He didn't look that good on Broadway. I've seen pictures. I mean, he still looked great, but, he worked out before he did this. So since we're talking about Stella in that scene after when he said when he says, Stella, when he's in the torn t shirt, we should probably talk about some of the cuts because that was that was 1 of the things.

Tony Maietta:
So what happened was was that they had this this film was made. Done. They did all they took all the suggestions that the Production Code Administration gave them, including cutting the homosexual references to Blanche's first husband, and it's actually a very funny story. So as I said, in the play, Blanche catches her she tells us the story in the play. She catches her young husband with an older man in bed, and then later on he shoots himself. So they had to change that somehow, the homosexual illusion. So what they did was they they made it they euphemistically presented the young boy, when Blanche is talking about him, as a boy who was just too sensitive for life, he was a boy who wrote poetry, and Vivian Lee allegedly said to, Kazan when she read this, she said, you mean I have to say you disgust me because you write poetry? But it's you get the idea. He's a sensitive boy who's just too sensitive for the world, and there's a lot of euphemisms, and so they took care of that whole homosexual character in there.

Tony Maietta:
They also softened, the idea of Blanche getting kicked out of her hometown because of her promiscuity. She stated, tarantula arms, she says in the restored version, she the name, yes. I had

Tony Maietta:
I met many, many strangers in tarantula arms like a spider, was the hotel where she would have her assignations. The rape scene, as we discussed. So these these things all pass the production code, and they thought they were home free. And then what do you know?

Brad Shreve:
The church.

Tony Maietta:
Here comes the Catholic church. Of course. Here comes the legion of decency. You may have gotten approval from the PCA, from the production code administration, the Catholic church said, but you didn't get it from us, and we're gonna give you a c rating. Now back in the days, a c rating from the Catholic church meant condemned, which basically meant that priests could tell their congregation, you go watch this movie, you're going to hell. It was a mortal sin to see this movie. So that means they would no Catholic could see it under threat of eternal damnation. So they got a mediator together, 1 of the guys who originally wrote the the code way back in the thirties, and they made some changes in the version.

Tony Maietta:
1 of the changes was Stella's walk down the steps. After he yells Stella and she looks at him after they've had their fight and she looks at him with that mix of contempt and lust, and she had just this carnal look on her face, like, she's ready to tear her clothes off and tear his clothes off. And she does this long walk down the stairs, and it's a close-up. And the music is talk about lascivious music. I mean, we have no doubt what's happening here. That was changed from a close-up to a long shot, and they changed the music to more of a, more violins, so it wasn't quite as blatant. They they removed a couple lines. Like, Stanley has a line to Blanche at 1 point where he says, I could get some I I would get ideas about you, and he kinda looks at her.

Tony Maietta:
And she goes, what do you mean? He goes, you know what I mean. So that was cut. That's in the restored versions.

Brad Shreve:
In in today's world, that's hard to imagine that was taboo. 

Tony Maietta:
I know. Right? I mean, who cares? But she also cut the line I just said about I have had many meetings with strangers. So that was cut. So there was, like they cut about 4 minutes, and the Catholic church was like, okay. Oh, there was 1 more scene. There's a scene with a newspaper boy in which Blanche Blanche just asks asks him. She's

Brad Shreve:
Yes. I was gonna ask you about that if there was more to it.

Tony Maietta:
Yes. Yes. Well, you probably saw the restored version. I mean, I'm not sure which version you saw, but the the restored version, it's a scene right before Mitch comes to take Blanche away, and she's reminiscing about her her in her mind she's having an episode. Yes.

Brad Shreve:
I saw the restored version.

Tony Maietta:
And so the newspaper boy comes to collect for the paper, and he's this young, good looking kid, and she requests to kiss him softly on the mouth just once. And that got laughs when it was in previews. So they recut it to make him less prominent, which I don't know why it was getting laughs. I think it's a it's a beautiful scene, and you get the real longing in this woman for her.

Brad Shreve:
It's sad on her part.

Tony Maietta:
The life yeah. The life of beauty that she lost.

Brad Shreve:
You could tell she's longing for to be young.

Tony Maietta:
Longing to be young and longing for her life that she had at Shreve, which is gone with the wind. Anyway, so these scenes were miraculously. Once again, another miracle. We talked about babyface miraculously showing up in the Library of Congress. Well, these cutscenes miraculously showed up in an unmarked box, and we're, like, oh, these are the scenes that were cut from A Streetcar Named Desire. So they're back in now, and most versions that you see now, I believe, is the restored version, and the easiest way to tell is just look for Stella's walk. And if Stella looks like she's ready to rip into a t bone steak and the music is indicating it, then you're watching the restored version.

Brad Shreve:
And I have a question about the the paper boy. First of all, I think it was hysterical that he's there to collect for the newspaper and he's wearing a suit. Maybe that was maybe that was coming that time, but I got a kick out of that.

Tony Maietta:
Different time.

Brad Shreve:
But I was curious. I felt like there was more to it than just the kiss. Because in the movie, she kisses him and he goes away.

Tony Maietta:
There's not more to it. It's just that it's what he brings up in her.

Brad Shreve:
Yes.

Tony Maietta:
You know what I mean? She's talking you know, she's obviously thinking about her dead husband. She just had this that's probably what in the psychology of this character, and I didn't go too deeply into the psychology of of Blanche DuBois because I don't wanna lose my mind. But, in the psychology of this character, I'm sure he tripped off a memory in her mind of her young husband because not too much long after this, she tells Mitch the story of her young husband, the young boy who killed himself, as she calls him. So I don't there wasn't more. I think that, that's the purpose of it. I think the purpose of it, and this is just my interpretation, is to to kick her into that reverie about her husband so we can find out about that.

Brad Shreve:
And and it was quite obvious. It it did a good job of showing that she was trying to regain her youth through this boy. 

Tony Maietta:
Yes. Well, she's, you know, she's Blanche DuBois. Blanche DuBois has become a catchphrase for fading southern bells. That's why we got Blanche Devereaux.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
You know, it's all you need is that 1 even Blanche. Just say Blanche and people know you're talking about a faded southern bell. Yeah. These characters are are you know, they're mythic. They've been played by every actor and every actress. I mean, we're talking about Jessica Lang. I heard Amy Ryan did it. I saw Anne Margaret do it with Treat Williams.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, it's Tennessee Williams, so people wanna play these characters. It's also been reinterpreted. Do you remember that movie Blue Jasmine that was out a couple years ago that Woody Allen did?

Brad Shreve:
No, I don't.

Tony Maietta:
With Cate Blanchett. She won best actress.

Brad Shreve:
Don't don't remember that at all.

Tony Maietta:
Remember that movie? There were definite watch it. It's a great it's a very good movie. I mean, if you can talk if you can tolerate Woody Allen films, watch it. It's a very good movie, and

Brad Shreve:
I like his older stuff

Tony Maietta:
It's very good. Blue Jasmine is 1 of his better, more recent films. I mean, we're still talking, I think, over 10 years ago, but Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for it, and it's got definite Streetcar Named Desire allusions to it. So, I mean, there's that. It was played by Talula Bankhead, who was 1 of the inspirations for Blanche, actually did a production of this in the mid fifties that turned kind of comical, which is very sad. It was very sad for Tallulah, and and it was very sad for Tennessee Williams because she had become she had become such a caricature then that people were laughing when she would say these lines. So that's unfortunate.

Brad Shreve:
Oh, that's sad.

Tony Maietta:
But, I mean, Uta Hagen, Rosemary Harris, just the list goes on. Julian Anderson played Blanche, and, you know, there have been Stanleys. Blair Underwood, I remember not too long ago, there was a there was a, all black production of Streetcar, and and Blair Underwood played Stanley. So people wanna play these characters. I mean, it's they're they're iconic characters, but I just don't think how can you possibly touch Brando and Lee? I mean, they're just it's everything. It's everything.

Brad Shreve:
Yeah. It's amazing. And you talk about iconic characters. II need to point out iconic lines, which you named them already. But my husband, who has never seen this movie, when Stella is upstairs in the apartment and Stanley is you see the the angst that he has in his face, They show close-up of his face. And Maurice goes, here it comes. Here it comes. And he goes, Stella. Maurice goes, yes. There he said it. 

Tony Maietta:
Yeah. 

He knew right away. And then when at the end, when she said, I've always relied on the kindness of strangers, he was like, I've been waiting the whole movie for that line.

Tony Maietta:
It's the last her last line. That's why you're waiting for it. Yeah. This talk about the Stella thing. You know, I always thought it had to be overrated. It had to be overrated. And then just watching it again recently, I was like, he's not overrated. He is unbelievable when he yells, Stella.

Tony Maietta:
You get all of that from him. You get all of that fear he has that he's lost her. You get that desire for her. You get I mean, everything in that. That's it's that's why it's iconic because it's so fucking good

Brad Shreve:
Yeah.

Tony Maietta:
When he does it. It's full of everything in Stanley.

Brad Shreve:
You can define the passion in many, many, many ways, but you can't argue that was a passionate scream for Stella.

Tony Maietta:
Oh, it's from the depths of his soul. And then when he drops to his knees and he's like a little boy and he's crying, you you and she wraps her arms around him and then kinda digs her nails into his back. It's you get their relationship. You understand why she's with him. You also understand oh, I should point out 1 other important change to the script, but I forgot to mention is is that after the tasteful rape that has pushed Blanche into madness and Stanley, and and it's alluded to that Blanche has been telling Stella what Stanley did and that nobody believes her, which also trips her into madness and then she's taken away. Stella realizes that Blanche was telling the truth, and she does not go back to Stanley. She says to her baby, we're not going in there. I'm never going back in there again, and she goes upstairs, and that's where the movie ends.

Tony Maietta:
The play doesn't end that way. The play ends with her going back with Stanley. Yeah. So they felt that there had to be some kind of repercussions for this heinous act that Stanley did, and that was 1 way of, quote, unquote, punishing the bad guy was having Stella leave him. Now I don't know how long she says I'm never going back in there again, but we've clearly seen her willpower when Stanley's there with a torn t shirt and ate all that strong. But but that was an interesting change that they made. So I think the legacy of of this film to acting clearly, this film Brando's performance in this film changed screen acting forever. From then on, you had the old the old, actors and you had the new method actors.

Tony Maietta:
In an entire generation, even up to my generation. I mean, I studied Sanislavski. I studied the method. You that's what you do now. And, you know, for from Brando to James Dean to Paul Newman to George Papard, for Christ's sake, to James Caan, to Al Pacino, to Robert De Niro, this is all because of this 1 actor's titanic performance. So I don't think you can overstate the the effect of Brando in this film.

Brad Shreve:
I agree.

Tony Maietta:
And that's it. Are we done?

Brad Shreve:
I think we're done. Tony.

Tony Maietta:
Can I tell you 1 thing, though, Brad? Sure. Never let him see you ache. That's what mister Mayer used to say.

Brad Shreve:
Oh, I wear my heart on my sleeves.

Tony Maietta:
Or is it a ass? Never would love to see your ass unless it's Marlon Brando's.

Brad Shreve:
Well, I don't have the ass I had when I was 25, so I don't know if that's a problem.

Tony Maietta:
Thank you everybody for your for rating us, for reviewing us, for listening. I hope you're listening to our Spotify playlist. It's a beautiful score by Alex North from this film, and, yeah. Please subscribe, rate, review us. Let us know what you think. Text us. Let us know what if you'd like, there's a movie you want us to talk about.

Brad Shreve:
And I didn't tell how to do that. 

Tony Maietta:
You didn't? Tell the people.

Brad Shreve:
There's 2 good ways to do that. First of all, the fun way would be to go to the website, goinghollywoodpodcast.com, and there's a little microphone on there that you can click on and actually leave a message that we can play for you on the show. But if you don't wanna do that, you can just send an email to goinghollywoodpodcast@gmail dot com, Let us know either way what you think or if you have any suggestions or both.

Tony Maietta:
It'd be great to hear from you all. Thanks for listening. 

Brad Shreve:
Tata.