The Long Hot Summer / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

THE LONG HOT SUMMER, 1958, 20th Century Fox, 115 min. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Angela Lansbury star in director Martin Ritt’s handsomely mounted adaptation of three William Faulkner stories (primarily “The Hamlet”). Newman plays Ben Quick, a drifter who rides into a town run by Woodward’s father (Orson Welles), a man who admires Newman’s sense of ruthless ambition. As Welles tries to push his daughter and the handsome stranger together, a number of intersecting relationships grow increasingly complicated and reach a melodramatic fever pitch.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 1958, Warner Bros., 108 min. Tennessee Williams’ controversial play had to be somewhat sanitized for its Hollywood adaptation, 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.