List Price: $68.98You Pay Only: $30.99 You Save: $37.99 (55%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0012569750647
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 7
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: May 02, 2006
Running Time: 685 minutes
Sales Rank: 5090
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: September 20, 1958
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Editorial Review:
Description:
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
Amazon.com:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - olmoviebuff
well worth the price. I have enjoyed watching the films and am pleased to have the collection containing Williams interview.
Rating: - Essential boxset for fans of American theater of the 1950s
This is a terrific boxset, collecting six of the films based on Tennessee Williams's plays (plus another disc with the documentary "Tennessee Williams' South"). All the films are transferred with great care, and look quite wonderful. And the films themselves are fascinating, because (with the exception of BABY DOLL), they're invariably sanitized, as the major studios (Warner Brothers, MGM) struggled to constrain the unfettered imagination of one of America's most floridly uninihibited playwrights. Yet Williams' reputation as one of the premiere writers for actors allows some classic performances, starting with Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, one of the most potent displays of Method acting which helped to revolutionize American film and theater. Kazan's hyperbolic direction of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE is tempered in BABY DOLL, possibly the most charming film in the set (with terrific performances from Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, and, most hilariously, Mildred Dunnock). It seems incredible that, at the time (1956), BABY DOLL was the most controversial film of its year, with condemnation and cries of "filth" being bandied about. But BABY DOLL is a comic interlude in Williams' career. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is the most heavily censored, so that all the talk of mendacity makes the film seem mendacious, because no one is talking about what the film is really about. But all the actors go to town with their Southern accents, especially Elizabeth ... Read More
Rating:  - A Boxed Set Named Tennessee Williams
He may be considered the great American playwright of the 20th Century, but until I got the boxed set of DVDs featuring adaptations of his works, I had never really been exposed to Tennessee Williams. This set of six movies gives a good sampling of Williams and shows why he got his reputation for both daring and excellence.
In chronological order by film date, the first film in the set (and probably the best) is A Streetcar Named Desire. This story focuses on the interrelationship of three characters: Blanche DuBois (played by Vivien Leigh), her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) and Stella's husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). Blanche moves in with the couple, fleeing from scandal in her hometown and with only a weak grip on sanity. The brutish Stanley is her natural antagonist, with Stella stuck in the middle. Eventually, however, Blanche and Stanley will have to confront each other.
Though Blanche may be the main character, it is Stanley who steals the show due to Brando's wonderful performance. After seeing this movie, I can understand how significant of an impact that Brando had in the world of movie acting; prior to Streetcar, acting performances like Brando's were quite rare. This is a great film, and the only Williams movie I was really familiar with prior to watching, both due to its immortal scenes ("Stella!") and the brilliant Simpsons musical adaptation (in "A Streetcar Named Marge").
Next is Baby Doll, with Karl Malden as an impoverished cotton ... Read More
Rating: - Tennessee Williams' plays as movies
Each of the plays of Tennessee Williams that has been rended as a movie is worth watching. The rawness of emotions, the actors and the direction all make these movies immensely watchable.
Rating: - A Bit Of Heaven In This Southern Madness
Being a sucker for a good box set, I have accumulated quite a few. You end up with some great DVDs, but also some titles that you might not have purchased on their own. This Tennessee Williams collection is one that I wholeheartedly recommend--each selection might not be a true classic, but each represents a significant part of Williams' lexicon and lore. Put together, they symbolize and honor a master craftsman and a time when words, dialogue and screenplays were more important than quick edits and loud soundtracks.
Of course, the undisputed champion of this set is the two disc "A Streetcar Named Desire." An absolutely perfect rendering of a brilliant play, "Streetcar" boasts some of the most powerful performances you're likely to see. With Oscars going to Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter--this is one of the most honored films in history. And Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski has become a legend.
I'm not going to individually review every film, each offers its own merits. What is amazing about these films is how adult they were for their day and how well they stand up today. Southern melodrama never looked or sounded so good.
"Cat on A Hot Tin Roof" is a flawed, truncated version of Williams' play--but still an entertaining vehicle for Newman and Taylor. "Sweet Bird Of Youth" is one of my absolute favorites proving once and for all that Geraldine Page was an acting icon! Those that dismiss "Baby Doll" as a more minor work miss some of its subtlety. ... Read More
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