What is Suddenly Last Summer / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof about?

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, 1959, Sony Repertory, 114 min. Director Joseph Mankiewicz’s version of Tennessee Williams’ notorious play stars Montgomery Clift as a famous New Orleans brain surgeon who uncovers wild tales of homosexuality and cannibalism when called in to operate on Catharine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor) by her aunt Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn). CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 1958, Warner Bros., 108 min. Tennessee Williams’ controversial play had to be somewhat sanitized for Hollywood, but what director Richard Brooks loses in frank sexual dialogue he gains in Elizabeth Taylor’s sultry performance as a frustrated wife. Paul Newman plays her impotent husband, and their troubled marriage serves as the focal point for a gallery of gleefully appalling supporting characters, including Burl Ives as the family’s power-and-money-wielding patriarch, Big Daddy.

Suddenly Last Summer / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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What is Suddenly Last Summer / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof about?: SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, 1959, Sony Repertory, 114 min. Director Joseph Mankiewicz’s version of Tennessee Williams’ notorious play stars Montgomery Clift as a famous New Orleans brain surgeon who uncovers wild tales of homosexuality and cannibalism when called in to operate on Catharine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor) by her aunt Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn).
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 1958, Warner Bros., 108 min. Tennessee Williams’ controversial play had to be somewhat sanitized for Hollywood, but what director Richard Brooks loses in frank sexual dialogue he gains in Elizabeth Taylor’s sultry performance as a frustrated wife. Paul Newman plays her impotent husband, and their troubled marriage serves as the focal point for a gallery of gleefully appalling supporting characters, including Burl Ives as the family’s power-and-money-wielding patriarch, Big Daddy.