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Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella), and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was rereleased in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. --Robert Horton

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In."

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s.

Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella), and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was rereleased in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. --Robert Horton

This Deutsche Grammophon recording stems from San Francisco Opera's 1998 premiere production of André Previn's opera based on the harrowing Tennessee Williams play, with the composer himself at the helm of a strong and supportive cast. Previn's eclectic style embraces rather than challenges operatic conventions. He evokes Williams's New Orleans setting through loping, jazz-tinged motives and wistful, asymmetrical commentaries from solo winds and brass. By contrast, Previn reveals the protagonists' sense of longing and alienation by way of lyrical set pieces scored with lush economy. Philip Littell's libretto emerges at a leisurely gait, while the music underscores and follows the action with dramatic restraint instead of leaping center stage. Similarly, the cast's Southern accents are distinct but never distracting. Renée Fleming handles Blanche's taxing tessitura with effortless aplomb, although she sacrifices diction for tone in her middle register. Elisabeth Futral's light, agile soprano suits Stella's vulnerability to a fare-thee-well, while Rodney Gilfrey is careful to a fault in not letting Stanley Kowalski lapse into caricature. Most valuable player award, however, goes to Anthony Dean Griffey, who infuses Blanche's wooer Mitch with immense dignity and a sense of need. Stage noises and between-numbers applause may enhance the recording's sense of occasion, but they distract as much as those few niggling instances of thin string tone and shaky intonation. That's why God invented studio patching sessions. Still, Streetcar proves a solid achievement overall, priced at three discs for two, with full texts and annotations. --Jed Distler

A handsome casual that's great for traveling or every-day wear Leather upper Cool, breathable mesh lining Dual-density, air cushioned, removable EVA footbed Padded collar and tongue High-mileage rubber sole

For Sale: Luxury Condos, Corpse Included

Just a stone's throw from Judith McMonigle Flynn's thriving Hillside Manor, workmen are busy renovating the elegantly decrepit Alhambra Arms into pricey condominiums. But concerned contractor George Guthrie fears that well-heeled potential buyers may blanch when they learn about the four-decades-dead body that was stashed behind the crumbling walls of the moldy manse. And ever-inquisitive Judith's discovery of some much more recent remains on the premises threatens to se property values through the floorboards--and Guthrie through the roof! Both her professional detective husband Joe and her partner-in-crime solving cousin Renie think Judith is bonkers to suspect that the two killings are connected. Nevertheless, Judith's ready to build a strong case to that effect -- unless some homicidal someone decides to deconstruct her first!

Until They Bring The Streetcars Back serves up a nostalgic journey through the streets of post-war 1949 Saint Paul, those wistful days of ten-cent sodas, big band music, and burning leaves. Stanley West weaves rollicking humor, riveting suspense and a bittersweet love story into the fabric of those optimistic times.

A harmless prank, a chance conversation and Cal Gant (in the friendly neighborhoods of his idyllic life) stumbles onto the naked face of cruelty, incest and murder. When he attempts to rescue a strange and haunting girl from the slaughterhouse her life has become, he finds himself in a heart-stopping struggle with her ruthless father, leading Cal to the brink of self-doubt, terror and death itself. Can he find within himself the backbone to stand against the horror, the daring to concoct some scheme to set Gretchen free? Until They Bring The Streetcars Back is the gripping story of what Cal does.

Streetcar Named Desire 2 Disc SE Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Deluxe Edition Sweet Bird of Youth Night of the Iguana Baby Doll Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

A much-needed DVD tribute to one of the essential American playwrights, The Tennessee Williams Collection gathers six Williams titles and one vintage documentary. Taken together, it's a potent introduction to the specific terrain (geographical and emotional) of this brilliant writer. The set is anchored by Warner's deluxe two-disc treatment of A Streetcar Named Desire, which has copious extras (among them a fine 90-minute documentary about director Elia Kazan). The multi-Oscar-winning Streetcar is one of the better stage adaptations in film history, and it captures the electrifying Marlon Brando, re-creating his stage role, in the part that changed American acting: the brutish New Orleans sensualist Stanley Kowalski. Vivien Leigh won an Oscar opposite him, as the faded (except in her own mind) Southern belle Blanche DuBois, whose arrival in the Kowalski home leads to disaster.

Kazan also directed Baby Doll, which Williams scripted from a couple of one-act plays. This outrageous sex comedy casts the excellent Carroll Baker as the 19-year-old wife of middle-aged Karl Malden, who anxiously awaits the day he can finally consummate his maddening marriage; immigrant cotton magnate Eli Wallach shows up at Malden's crumbling plantation house just in time to take the bloom off the rose, as it were. Famous for being condemned in 1956, Baby Doll remains a very modern (and gloriously dirty) movie. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Richard Brooks, faithfully brings three of Williams's indelible characters to the screen, even if the script discreetly changes the original stage text: the hot Maggie the Cat (Elizabeth Taylor), her reluctant husband Brick (Paul Newman), and Brick's rich Big Daddy (Burl Ives). All three performers act the lights out.

Sweet Bird of Youth reunites Paul Newman with director Brooks, and also showcases Geraldine Page's performance as an aging film star tagging along with young stud Newman to his Southern home town. Some of Williams' more depraved touches are toned down, but the milieu is unmistakable and the movie is intense. The Night of the Iguana gives Richard Burton perhaps his finest hour onscreen: as Williams' dissolute defrocked priest, playing tour guide in Puerto Vallarta to tour groups of nattering biddies. The movie has director John Huston's sympathy for life's losers, as well as a trio of women built to torment Burton's reverend: Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, based on Williams's novel, is not a great movie, but gives Vivien Leigh a good workout as a wounded actress dallying with Italian gigolo Warren Beatty.

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

On 31 May 1968, Navy Lt. Kenny Fields catapulted off USS America, in his A-7 Corsair II on his first combat mission. His target was in Laos, which at the time was officially off-limits for U.S. attacks. Fields call sign Streetcar 304 was the first to roll in and destroyed the target with a direct hit. Three AAA guns began to fire, but, following his wingman, he rolled in again. This time many more AAA guns opened up and Fields was shot down hitting the ground with enemy troop in hot pursuit. The Rescue of Streetcar 304 is Fields exhilarating narrative of the 40-hour ordeal that followed, in what turned out to be one of the largest and harrowing air rescues of the war. Before it was over, the U.S. Air Force had flown 189 sorties to rescue Fields, and in the process four pilots had ejected, seven planes were lost or heavily damaged, and one pilot became a POW for five years. This tale of a Navy fighter pilot s escape and rescue is a gripping story of courage and brotherhood during the Vietnam War.