How "Streetcar Named Desire" Drove Vivien Leigh to the Edge of Insanity

I don't believe anything like that causes a mental illness, but it sure can exacerbate it.

This is an aside, but I would give my eyeteeth to time travel and see Jessica Tandy play Blanche.

Well, here's a recording of the original cast of Brando and Tandy but I don't think it's a good representation of what their actual performances were like....it was for the radio, the play heavily censored and it seems that the actors were asked to read the lines over some table at a lunch break or something, it does not seem like it was from an actual performance and the actors just don't seem into it. But knock yourself out.

Thank you, r3!!!

Interestingly, r3 includes more of the rape scene than the film.

R5 They include the infamous "We've had this date with each other from the beginning" line but not much more.

He would have driven me a little crazy too...

R7, I agree Brando was unbelievably gorgeous then.

r8 = Tennessee Williams

^ No, me too 😜

I always say , if I absolutely had to go insane, it being via sex with Brando's Kowalksi, then that wouldn't be a bad way to go. Just sayin...

Brando and Ten. I love this pic

And no they never fucked, get your mind out of the gutter

^ Don't think for one minute that Ten didn't give it his best shot

[quote] How "Streetcar Named Desire" Drove Vivien Leigh to the Edge of Insanity

As if this millennial know-nothing named Stephen Galloway could attempt to psychoanalyse a woman from the grave he's never met. No wonder Vivien left the primeval muck-heap in Tinsel Town.

This is mere regurgitation of stuff we knew about 40 years ago. Where's the new material from the archive?

R13 Tennessee always said he always kept it professional between him and his actors, and I believe it. He chased after men constantly but didn't seem like the type that would shit where he ate so to speak.

R3 Tandy plays it so weird. She sounds like a schoolmarm. From that, I cannot begin to imagine what it was like on stage.

Leigh absolutely gives the definite performance of the character. What on earth could be more perfect than to have the woman who embodied Scarlett O'Hara 11 years earlier play Blanche DuBois?

Did she hook up with Marlon Brando? I want to know if he is good in bed

I thought Viv got neurosyphilis from her nonstop sex romps, no?

Muck-raker and smoodger.

[quote] [R3] Tandy plays it so weird. She sounds like a schoolmarm. From that, I cannot begin to imagine what it was like on stage.

Not R3, but wasn't Blanche supposed to have been a school teacher? Also, it was a different time & place for acting, plus it was stage or voice acting, I'm assuming. Yes, it does sound stilted, but maybe that's just how it was.

Plus, the Blanche character was supposed to have been condescending and maybe pedantic towards Stanley.

But agree that Leigh did a really good job.

Young Jessica Tandy was not as beautiful as Leigh, but she was attractive.

R17 Leigh? he claims he wanted to and probably could have but didn't because he liked/respected Laurence Olivier too much to do so. Now THAT I will not believe, Brando who was ultra competitive would have jumped at the chance. I think they hooked up, and if they didn't it wasn't because of the reasons given.

R20 I really wish there was some film of Tandy doing the character. I'm so curious to know how that character was performed for the first time ever, on Broadway.

And, I can't imagine Olivier's direction of the show in the West End was any good. Talk about a mismatch!

Fwiw, Brando preferred Leigh always as Blanche, while the rest of the cast/crew preferred Jessica. Brando actually agreed that she played her too severe and school marmish and wasn't as sexy and Leigh.

I do think Tandy was a million times better than what we hear on that radio version. I don't really like Brando in that either.

Scarlett would have had such little respect for Blanche.

[quote] I can't imagine Olivier's direction of the show in the West End was any good.

What makes you imagine that?

[quote] Talk about a mismatch!

A mismatch between whom?

I can believe that inhabiting the Blanche character would be depressing. If you're already not feeling great and then, for work, you're going into a dark place, that would be hard. Tennessee Williams knew human fears and sadness.

The Londoners really did not take the Streetcar in it's first run....they thought the play vulgar, brash, sensationalistic. It's interesting because I always feel the brits have a more sophisticated palate, but nope, they didn't get Streetcar. Perhaps Olivier, an english man, was not able to interpret the play to others because he lacked that american sensibility?

[quote]This is an aside, but I would give my eyeteeth to time travel and see Jessica Tandy play Blanche.

I'd do the same for Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie. So many old timers commented on how interesting her performance was. I once heard an excerpt, I think she did it for radio, and she was using a halting, gasping voice. In all the productions I've seen of The Glass Menagerie, I felt that nobody really captured the desperation of these characters living in grinding poverty. Plus Amanda is like Rose in Gypsy, she keeps getting played by older and older actresses. If Tom and Laura are approximately 21 and 23, Amanda should be about 40 or younger. The idea should be that she had her children when she was 16 or 17 years old.

[quote] Perhaps…

Perhaps not.

Neither of us knew him.

I once worked with Kim Hunter. She said during one performance, Stanley picks her up and starts to cross the stage and there was supposed to be a blackout. The blackout didn't happen, so he just carried her into a closet.

R30 that reminds me of a story I heard about Uta Hagen and her run as Blanche with Anthony Quinn as Kowalski. Apparently during the climactic (no pun intended) rape scene where Stanley picks up Blanche and carries her to the bed. As soon as he lays her on the bed, there's supposed to be a blackout....but something went wrong and there wasn't, prompting Quinn to ask Uta "What do I do now?" to which she replied "Rape me you idiot!" lol. Thankfully the black out mercifully happened before things had to get too hot.

Also, Kim Hunter said they rehearsed all night before and most of the day of opening night. I don't know if Actor's Equity didn't have as much power as they do now or what the deal was.

R32 where/when did you work with Hunter R32, if I may ask?

[quote]that reminds me of a story I heard about Uta Hagen and her run as Blanche with Anthony Quinn as Kowalski

Uta hated Anthony Quinn. I heard her tell the story about how he was being too rough with her onstage and she told him to knock it off. He said he was just playing the character. So the next night when he grabbed her too roughly, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

[quote][R32] where/when did you work with Hunter [R32], if I may ask?

In 1989, in a regional theater in Massachusetts. The play was "Watch on the Rhine." It was starring Elaine Stritch and Sharon Gless. The first week of rehearsal, Stritch was being the biggest pain in the ass. They fired her and brought in Kim Hunter to play the mother. Gless devotes a chapter to the story in her new autobiography.

Oh wow..interesting. Stritch must have been such a piece of work.

[quote]Stritch must have been such a piece of work.

First day of rehearsal, she walks into the rehearsal room carrying a paper bag. First words out of her mouth, "I'm a diabetic and I need a refrigerator to store my insulin."

Sad thing is, I think she would have given an excellent performance, but she couldn't get past whatever personal demons she had.

R27 Yes, and I just feel like Streetcar was an Actors Studio type of play, which would clash with Larry's more classical notions of acting. They should've flown Kazan over to London to direct.

I really can't see Tandy in the role, she just didn't have the extreme femininity that Leigh had, or the charisma or sensuality. And Williams's original stage direction called for Blanche to wear loud, vulgar, trashy clothes, and apparently he fought to keep Viv from having the lacy wilting ladylike wardrobe she wore for the film. I can't believe he'd be so wrong about wardrobe, her too-young Belle-wannabe wardrobe is one of the keys to her character, her depth of self-deception.

I just can't imagine Tandy... dressing like a slut and talking like a schoolmarm.

r39 Where have you read he wanted Blanche in trashy clothes? Because the stage directions say otherwise.

Blanche was supposed to have been delusional about her current social status. She was stuck in the past and I can't remember whether her family ever even did have any social status. Her character was similar, IMO, to the mother character in the Glass Menagerie (talking about her gentlemen callers from years ago).

There are pictures of Tandy in Streetcar.

Wow, she's got some cheekbones at R42.

Speaking of bad wigs, that wig on Vivian Leigh (at OP) looks horrible. Some women, like Angelina Jolie, are absolutely beautiful, but way better-looking with dark hair. Julia Roberts also looks really unnatural with blonde hair.

R44 I think they purposedly made Vivien look older because they were afraid she looked too young and beautiful to play a wilting southern belle. Though technically, Blanche really is only supposed to be 30-ish, 30-ish in 1947 was very different from 30-ish now.

In a documentary in the Williams’ films box set there was an excerpt of Tandy doing one of Blanche’s monologues. I don’t have it at hand and honestly don’t remember what I thought,

Tennessee Williams' South is a 1973 documentary featuring some marvelous observations from Williams, as he holds court for filmmaker Harry Rasky. It also has long scenes from his plays, enacted by good folks such as Maureen Stapleton, Colleen Dewhurst, and Burl Ives. Especially valuable is a Streetcar sequence with Jessica Tandy re-creating her original role as Blanche. Williams himself reads the narration from The Glass Menagerie, a privileged moment. This is not an exhaustive Williams set (Joseph Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer and Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind are among the best Williams films), but it maps out the steamy, tortured landscape awfully well. --Robert Horton

Leigh’s visceral suffering in the last scenes were heartbreaking, and Karl Malden sobbing on with his head down was so sad and poignant. They were both so expressive, like the characters haunted them, overcame them. It’s pretty amazing, actually.

I admire what Leigh did with her voice and cadence, modulating from light and breathy to relatively deep, like a growl. She really “went for it” and I can understand how that must have felt like madness, or an exorcism. She was amazing, and beautiful.

I have come to dislike Mitch (as a character) more than Stanley. They're both misogynists, but Mitch tries to cover it up with an air of respectability.

The "You're not clean enough to take home to Mother" line is the most harrowing in the film.

Love all of Tennessee's work . Amazing man.

Mitch had "nice guy" syndrome up the wazoo. I do feel that in the end he's the only one who truly sees what has been lost in the end, and that causes him to break down. So, he earns a few brownie points there.

R50 me too. I want to get in to some of his later works which got panned by critics but there was probably some good stuff in there. Tennessee is probably my biggest artistic idol.

Leigh was nuts, legitimately nuts, with a badly or barely understood psychiatric condition. Olivier always seemed like a precious asshole.

Wasn't Leigh manic depressive?

Supposedly, Leigh's southern accent was not great. I'm not from the south and I can't detect where she's falling short.

R48 Leigh's last scene as Blanche is still the most heartbreaking performance I have ever seen in an actress. Those wails in the end well she's being held down.....and to think asshole Kazan said she had "a small talent".

R53 Yes, she has legitimate mental health problems. In David Niven’s memoirs he has a chapter or two about some episodes of Leigh’s he was around for… of course, he uses a pseudonym instead of outright saying it was her.

I am from the South and Leigh’s accent is unlike any I’ve ever heard. That said, it works

^ I don't really remember, but was it different than her Gone With The Wind accent? I too am from the South and thought Scarlet O'Hara was passable

Library of America has all of Tennessee Williams' works published in beautiful hardcover editions. Even his lesser plays are superior to the crap out there today—what a talent.

Tennessee Williams had an interesting career. All his major works came in the early part of his career. At the end of his career he was doing experimental stuff.

[quote] Olivier always seemed like a precious asshole.

You don't know him, R52.

You weren't there.

And what do you mean by 'always'? When are you talking about?

I still have never seen this film, but still know what it is because of the infamous "Stella" scene that's been parodied 100s of times.

I guess that's a sign it's a classic.

Nobody here knew these people and yet there are still references to "Viv," "Larry," "Ten." Some of you are ridiculous.

R44

[quote] that wig on Vivian Leigh

that wig on Vivien Leigh

R63 Has no friends

Perhaps r63 would be happier going to another site. I know we would be if he did

Jessicas Blanch was prose. Vivians Blanch was poetry. It's the difference between Dame Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas. Garland and Merman. Edith Wharton and Virginia Wolf. I idolized Vivian Leighs Blanch in my youth. I maintained a fragile physique, the better to play off the ruff working-class men I was attracted and repelled by. I loved to watch my reflection in a dimly lit room being brutalized and robbed by the prison trade I'd pick up in the rancid dive bars close to the LA County Jail. In late middle age, I became Blanch DuBois minus the poverty. Now I'm 68 and with one ruff fuck I'd snap like a twig. My soul is poetic /my body is prose.

[quote] Vivians Blanch …Virginia Wolf… ruff … Blanch DuBois

Vivien's Blanche …Virginia Woolf… rough … Blanche DuBois

Her bi polar was exacerbated by doing Blanche in London on stage and then the film. Leigh herself has said Blanche tipped her into madness.

[quote] Her bi polar was exacerbated by doing Blanche in London on stage and then the film. Leigh herself has said Blanche tipped her into madness.

Girlfriend was batshit crazy long before Streetcar was even written.

^ The girlfriend was Dicknotized...

R63, possessiveness, overfamiliarity, showing off and strict corrections are part of the old dolls' CODA on DL. Check out the Gilded Age thread. Waspish. There's a subreddit about the same show that has somehow completely avoided the need for these peculiar old creatures to mark their territory (finally, an upside to age-related incontinence.)

In short, they spoil a lot of the fun. Don't mind them.

^ Has anyone ever accused you of over-thinking nonsense?

Just wondering, "Old Doll"

These fucking Brits are infesting the place.

What's that old saying? "If you encounter a pond where two fish are fighting, the British just passed by."

Scored a direct hit.

Oh...!

@r75, "Scored a direct hit. "

Right in her foot

R76 I always wish Tennessee had been around to watch that, I feel he would have gotten a great big laugh from it .

It wasn't a long drive, OP.

Tennessee Williams would sometimes stay at the Hotel Elysee. He called it the Hotel Easy Lay.

I need to reread his autobiography.

He used to pick up sailors at the dive bars near Times Square. Can’t you imagine him turning on the Southern charm? “My, the muscles on your arms are so big. May I inquire if there is a lady who enjoys them?” I believe Blanche was Tennessee Williams. It’s also been said that he used to laugh like hell when Blanche was taken away at the end of Streetcar. He had a very black humor.

One time, he couldn’t get rid of a trick that stayed around too long, so he moved and left the landlord to deal with it.

I sometimes pass in front of the hotel. Its around the corner to the MOMA. I believe they have a suite named after him . That is where he died.

Leigh, who was born in India to British parents, was sent away to boarding school in England at the age of 6. There have been numerous studies on the negative effects boarding school has on young children. It makes them into people who have difficulty trusting or emotionally connecting to anyone, and that can certainly contribute to mental health problems later on.

[quote] I loved to watch my reflection in a dimly lit room being brutalized and robbed by the prison trade I'd pick up in the rancid dive bars close to the LA County Jail.

Mary!!!

I was just reading her Wikipedia, and I'm surprised by how few films she actually made. After "Gone with the Wind," she only has 9 other credits.

[quote] The Londoners really did not take the Streetcar in it's first run....they thought the play vulgar, brash, sensationalistic. It's interesting because I always feel the brits have a more sophisticated palate, but nope, they didn't get Streetcar. Perhaps Olivier, an english man, was not able to interpret the play to others because he lacked that american sensibility?

As an Australian who grew up with British TV, it’s sad to me that Americans think this, especially as America gave the world the most dynamic art of the 20th century in almost every form. There is nothing sophisticated about the Brits. They have a talent for storytelling (THE talent for storytelling) but their tastes are very provincial and dorky and not at all complex.