Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Director:  Richard Brooks (Nominated for an Oacar 1959)

Cast:  Liz Taylor--Maggie
           Paul Newman--Brick
            Burl Ives--Big Daddy

Plot Summary:
    In this drama, wealthy land owner Big Daddy celebrates his Birthday and is visited by his two sons, Brick and Gooper.  Big Daddy has had cancer but his doctor has declared him to have recovered.  Gooper and his wife Mae have a bunch of kids and are gredily waiting to inherit Big Daddy's millions.  His favorite son Brick, on the other hand, is a drunken, ex-football star with an unhappy marrige to Maggie.  She is frustrarted since she loves her husband, but he dispises her.  It is everybody's war against everybody to get the money and Brick is the only one who won't suck up to Big Daddy.                                                                   By:  Mattis Thuresson

Review of film:    by Lenord Maltin   (3 1/2 Stars)
    Southern plantation owner Ives (Big Daddy) learns he is dying; his greedy family, except for son Newman (Brick), falls all over itslef sucking up to him, Tennessee Williams's classic study of "madacity" comes to the screen somewhat laundered but still packs a wallup, entire cast is sensational.  Adaption by Brooks and James Poe.
 

A Streetcar Named Desire(1951)

    Director:  Elia Kazan
    Cast:  Vivien Leigh--Blanche
               Marlon Brando--Stanley Kowalski
               Kim Hunter--Stella Kowalski  (Golden Globe Winner 1952, Best Supporting Actress)

Plot Summary:
    Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the restless years following World War Two, A Streetcar Named Desire, is the story of Blacne Dubois, a fragie and neurotic woman on a desperate prowl for someplace in the world to call her own.  After being exilied from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi for seducing a 17 year old boy at  the school where she taught English, Blanche explains her enexpected appearance on Stanley and Stella's (Blanche's sister) doorstep as nervous exaustion this she claims, is the result of a series of finincial problems which have recently claimed the family plantation, Belle Reve.  Suspecious, Stanley points out that. "under Louisiana's Napelonic code what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband."  Stanley, a sinewy and brutish man, is as territorial as a panther.  He tells Blache he doesn't he doesn't like to be swindled and demands to see the bill of sale.  This encounter defines their relationship.  They are opposing camps and Stella is caught in no-man's land.  But Stanley and Stella are deeply in love.  Blanche's efforts to impose herself between them only enrages Stanley when Mitch-a card playing buddy of Stanley's arrives on the scene, Blanche begins to see a way out of her predicidament.  Miych, himself alone in the world, reveres Blance as a beatiful and refined woman.  Yet, as rumors of Blanche's past in Laurel begins to catch up to her, her circumstances become unbarable.                                               By: Mark Fleetwood

Review:  by Rodger Ebert
                Chicago Sun Times

                Four Stars,   to see review:   http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1993/11/888889.html#cast