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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Deluxe Edition) | 
 enlarge | Director: Richard Brooks
Actors: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith Anderson
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $10.99
You Save: $8.99 (45%)
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Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 1375
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Original Recording Remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 108 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: WARD66985D
UPC: 012569698529
EAN: 0012569698529
ASIN: B000EBD9T4
Theatrical Release Date: September 20, 1958
Release Date: May 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/02/2006 Run time: 108 minutes
Amazon.com essential video
Elizabeth Taylor has never been sexier than as Tennessee Williams's hot-blooded Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt, prowling around her boudoir in a slinky white slip. That's how you know her alcoholic, ex-football-player husband, Brick (Paul Newman), must have more than just his leg in a cast. It's the 65th birthday of wealthy (but dying) southern patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives), and his sons Gooper (Jack Carter) and Brick have come to suck up to him for $10 million in inheritance money. Gooper is a family man and father to a brood of "no-neck monsters"; youngest boy Brick is papa's favorite (as if you couldn't tell from the fellow's names), but hasn't sired progeny. Maggie is definitely in heat, but Brick refuses to sleep with her because he suspects her her of being unfaithful with his best friend, who recent committed suicide. Although toned down for the movies, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is vintage Tennessee Williams. The film was directed by Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood, Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry). --Jim Emerson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof January 7, 2009
M. Lian (Anoka, MN)
Great old Classic. The Stars are truly some of the tops of all times, great storyline
Enough Mendacity to Sink A Ship January 5, 2009
Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950's-style All-American boy Brick, the `great white hope' of the family, may or may not sober up after the `lost' of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their `lovely brood' of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.
In the movie version, done in the 1950's as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the question of Brick's possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick's fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one's existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those `lovely' children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.
The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959
The Fickle Bird Of Youth
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"Sweet Bird Of Youth" is a case in point. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950's style All- American boy Chance who has left his hometown, his home town girl and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive `bird of youth'. On return to town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet's nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do "god's work", old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Ton's daughter and Chance's left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment due to Chance's irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the `brass ring' before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play's end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.
In the movie version the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman, a classic example of a 1950's All-American boy type (among his other acting talents), as the movie star `wannabe' and Geraldine Page as the aging actress recreated their stage performances although with a greater screen presence for Ms. Page. Moreover, Chance's strivings to reconnect with Heavenly are more central to the plot. More importantly, the endings differ in that, despite some mauling by Tom Findley's boys Chance takes my advice from the play version and runs, with Heavenly, just as far and as fast as his now aging legs can carry him.
The Rose Tattoo, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959
Waiting For A Sign
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"The Rose Tattoo" is a little different look at the family. Although the geography of the play is still the American South this play is not peopled with Williams' usually WASPy characters but rather a little conclave of immigrant Italians who have somehow made a beachhead in the Gulf Coast area. The central character is a previously abandoned but now widowed Italian seamstress trying to survive, mainly through her hopes for her daughter, on her wits, her memories of youth, her integrity and her fierce instinct to survive in alien territory. A philandering husband the obsessive subject of her adoration, a daughter trying to learn to fly on her own in the love game, and an incidental encounter with a fellow, younger Italian truck driver come together to give her the sign she needs to start over. Maybe. This play, more than most of Williams' efforts, depends on the strength of the dialogue and not the plotline. That is what gives its dramatic edge as Williams explores yet another tangled up dream gone awry story.
In the movie version, the role of the young Italian truck driver as played by Burt Lancaster and the seamstress as played by the fabulous Anna Magnini is more central to the unfolding story from the beginning. The dramatic tensions between this pair and the `waiting for a sign' by the seamstress are still fairly similar. It is however Lancaster's enhanced role that really makes this a visual treat and gives one hope that this new family `aborning' can survive.
Orpheus Descending, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
Take A Walk On The Wild Side
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space.
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
On reading "Orpheus Descending", Williams' take on the old Greek legend in modern grab I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren's Dove Linkhorn in " A Walk On The Wild Side. Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady's terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this is a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly, to for the outsider to tempt the fates if only symbolically.
Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955
The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry
The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review
Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller as America's finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams' extensive and detailed directing instructions).
That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.
"Suddenly Last Summer is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character Sebastian seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her "genius" son from the world even after his `untimely' death ......last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian's beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian's appetites is to be permanently taken out of the picture in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the `hope' that there may actually be someone to believe the girl's story before she becomes one more sacrifice to `beauty' in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.
In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian's mother and `keeper of the flame'. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor is the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ....some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn't he?
 taut, intense drama with unforgettable performances January 1, 2009
Matthew G. Sherwin
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof showcases the magnificent talents of Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor; and look for Burl Ives to do a stunning performance as well. The plot moves along at a good pace and the cinematography is excellent. This is a movie with guts to it and it should be mandatory viewing for people who view film as a true art form!
When the action starts, a rather wealthy Southern family gathers ostensibly to celebrate the 65th birthday of its patriarch, Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives). However, the real reason for the large family turnout is soon made very clear: Big Daddy is dying from cancer and the members of the family want to get control of his estate even before he dies. Big Daddy's son Brick (Paul Newman), an ex-football player who indulges is large dosages of self-pity and anger tantrums, plays Big Daddy's son. Big Daddy's other son, Cooper 'Gooper' Pollitt (Jack Carson) arrives at the "festivities" with papers drawn up to make sure he gets Big Daddy's estate instead of Brick and Brick's wife Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor).
Tensions are high from the very beginning. Brick's marriage to Maggie is clearly on the rocks; he shuns her and treats her rather cruelly. There are numerous vague inferences to the possibility that Brick's "friendship" with his late friend "Skipper" might have been of a romantic nature; and therefore Brick might not want Maggie simply because he doesn't like women. However, that is left to the viewer's imagination because at the time men being more than friends was in violation of the Hayes Code. In addition, Gooper and his wife Mae (Madeleine Sherwood) have enough kids to form an army and they are desperate to make sure that they, and not Brick and Maggie, inherit Big Daddy's fortune.
Questions arise almost from the start. Will Brick and Maggie ever be able to rescue their marriage--and will Brick and Big Daddy ever make peace, too? What about the fact that the family and the family doctor hiding from Big Daddy that he has terminal cancer--how will Big Daddy take this when he finds out? Will this influence Big Daddy to give his entire estate to one or the other of his two sons? Watch the film and find out answers to this and other questions!
The DVD comes with two extras of note: There is a roughly ten minute retrospective about the making of the film. It was very challenging for Elizabeth Taylor to do the film because they started shooting just before her husband Mike Todd died in a plane crash. I especially liked the comments made by Madeleine Sherwood; she brings extra light to the retrospective that the historians cannot give because she was on the set with Elizabeth Taylor and they were not. The second bonus is a commentary by Tennessee Williams historian Donald Spoto.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof deserves to be an Amazon.com "essential video." This film features superb acting from Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman when they were still relatively early on in their careers. I highly recommend this film for fans of these actors and people who enjoy classic motion picture will cherish this DVD for years to come.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof December 23, 2008
John and Lynn Stockman (Waxahachie, TX United States)
I ordered this shortly after Paul Newman's death. He was so georgous as was Elizabeth Taylor. This is a great Southern story with characters you wouldn't believe could exist unless you're from the South. I know some of these people!
Always a treat! December 17, 2008
M. Hubbell (Logan, UT USA)
Anyone who has no desire to watch two of America's finest actors at the height of their physical beauty is nothing more than a 'no neck monster.'
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