So picture this. It is 1955. OK. We are standing
on the largest cotton plantation in the Mississippi
Delta. I mean, we're talking 28 ,000 acres of
just the richest, blackest soil in the valley.
Oh, wow. And the air is thick. It's humid. It
smells like, you know, expensive bourbon and
dying flowers. That is quite the image. Right.
And the sun has gone down. But the heat hasn't
broken at all. It's just hanging there, really
heavy and suffocating. And inside the main house,
there's a birthday party underway. But it's not
really a celebration, is it? No. No, it is not.
It is a death watch. Yeah, that's exactly the
setting Tennessee Williams described. He called
it a crisis in the life of a family. A crisis
is putting it mildly. Honestly, it's more like
a cage match. You've got a dying patriarch, a
desperate wife, a really greedy brother, and
a completely broken son. And they're all trapped
under the same hot tin roof. Welcome back to
our deep dive, everyone. Today we are unpacking
Tennessee Williams' absolute masterpiece, Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof. It is such a phenomenal piece
of work. It really is. And we have a massive
stack of source material to go through for you
today. We've got biographies of the legendary
cast, people like Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.
Iconic. Truly. We also have the production notes
from the original Broadway run and some really
deep literary analysis of the Southern Gothic
genre. which is gonna be great to get into. Yeah,
but most importantly, I think, we have the records
of the war that happened behind the scenes. The
war between the playwright, the director, Ilya
Kazan, and the census of the 1950s. Because that
behind -the -scenes war is honestly just as vicious
as what's happening on stage. Exactly. The whole
story is about mendacity, right? The lies that
we tell to survive. But the text itself actually
became a victim of mendacity. That's a really
good point. I mean, the play was rewritten just
to please a director, and then the movie was
censored to please the Hays Code. So our mission
for this deep dive is to sort of strip all of
that away and find the truth that Williams originally
wanted you to hear. I love that. And it's really
interesting you mention that war behind the scenes,
because Williams didn't just conjure this nightmare
out of thin air in 1955. No, it has a very specific
lineage. Right. It wasn't a lightning bolt. It
was more like a slow accumulation of storm clouds.
Let's talk about the source code for a second,
because there's a specific short story that kicked
this all off. Yes. In 1952, Williams wrote a
short story called Three Players of a Summer
Game. Three Players of a Summer Game. Yeah. And
it's a really fascinating text. If you want to
understand Cat on a hot tin roof, because it's
a much quieter piece, it's a bit more polite.
But the DNA of the Paulette family is in there.
Exactly. You actually have a character named
Brick Paulette in that story, but the dynamic
is slightly different. It deals with a croquet
game, of all things. A croquet game. Yeah, a
summer game. And the story focuses on Brick's
decline, his alcoholism, and his relationship
with a woman named Margaret. Okay, so Brick and
Margaret are there. They are, but it completely
lacks that explosive claustrophobic intensity
of the play. It's more just a sketch of his decay.
So he took that sketch and really built on it.
He did. Williams spent three years, from 1953
to 1955, expanding that seed into the play we
know today. He essentially took the decay out
of the open air of the croquet lawn and shoved
it right into a sweltering bedroom on a plantation.
Which changes everything. It does. And I think
it's worth noting that despite the massive fame
of A Streetcar Named Desire or The Glass Menagerie,
Williams explicitly stated that Cat was his personal
favorite work. Which is such a telling admission,
don't you think? How so? Well, because The Glass
Menagerie is usually cited as his most autobiographical
work, right? Because of the mother -sister dynamic
mirroring his own family tragedy. Right. Cat
feels autobiographical in a completely different,
maybe even more painful way. It really captures
this specific toxicity of the father -son dynamic.
That is so true. And he constructs it with this
incredible level of discipline that he didn't
always use. What do you mean by that? Well, Cat
on a hot tin roof adheres strictly to the Aristotelian
unities. Time, place, and action. Exactly. It
all happens in real time, in one room, on one
single night. So there's no escape for the characters?
None at all. That structure forces the pressure
to build without any release. There are no scene
changes where the characters can go off and cool
down. They are completely stuck. And that creates
that very specific atmosphere that we call Southern
Gothic. Yes. And I think we really need to define
that term carefully for anyone listening who...
might be an advanced literary student because
pop culture has sort of hijacked the term. Oh,
absolutely. It's drifted toward vampires in New
Orleans or, you know, spooky mansions with ghosts
rattling chains. Right. But in the literary tradition
of William Faulkner or Flannery O 'Connor and
certainly Tennessee Williams, it is not about
the supernatural at all. Not even a little bit.
For the literary student, Southern Gothic is
really about the grotesque within the realistic.
The grotesque within the realistic. I like that.
It's about taking that romanticized myth of the
old South. His chivalry. The manor. Yeah, the
plantations, the mint juleps. Taking all of that
and peeling back the wallpaper to show the rot
underneath. The monsters aren't ghosts. No, the
monsters are alcoholism, greed, repressed sexuality,
racism, and physical decay. And the decay is
so key here. In Kath, you have this massive estate,
which is this huge symbol of power and agricultural
wealth. 28 ,000 acres. Right. But the man running
it is dying of cancer. and the heir apparent
is a drunk who can barely stand up. The entire
structure is crumbling around them, even as they
sing Happy Birthday. And Williams uses the environment
to hammer this home, the heat. The heat is practically
a character. It really is. It's not just a meteorological
fact in the text. It's a dramatic device. It
represents the oppressive weight of the lies
that they're all telling. So they're constantly
sweating? Sweating, changing clothes, seeking
a breeze that just never comes. They are physically
uncomfortable, which mirrors their psychological
state perfectly. When you watch a really good
production of this, you should feel sticky. You
should feel the need to take a shower afterward.
Let's actually look at the inhabitants of this
pressure cooker. because these characters have
become archetypes. They're almost cliches in
the hands of lesser writers, so we really need
to recover their original power for you today.
Let's start with the center of the storm. Or
maybe the eye of the storm. Since he's so incredibly
still, let's talk about Brick Paulet. Brick is
such a fascinating subversion of the American
male hero. Especially for the 1950s. Oh, definitely.
Think about that era. This is the time of the
strong, silent type. Brick is an ex football
star, sports announcer, the favorite son. In
any other story, he is the protagonist who swoops
in and saves the day. But here... He is in a
state of total paralysis. He is literally hobbled.
That image of Paul Newman on the crutch in the
film adaptation is so iconic. It is. But the
backstory of why he's on the crutch in the first
place is incredibly pathetic. And I mean that
in the tragic sense of the word. Yeah, he didn't
get injured in a war. No. He didn't get injured
winning some big championship game either. So
how did it happen for those who don't remember?
He broke his ankle jumping hurdles on a high
school track at three in the morning. Alone.
Alone, just trying to relive his glory days while
he was drunk. It's a completely humiliating injury.
It really is. It symbolizes his absolute refusal
to grow up, his refusal to move forward in time.
He broke himself trying to do something he used
to be able to do when he was young and pure.
Yes. Brick is what we might call a passive protagonist.
He doesn't want to act. He just wants to be left
alone. He's checked out. Completely. He's checked
out of his marriage, checked out of the family
business, and checked out of life. And his primary
activity, his full -time job at this point, is
drinking. But he's not just drinking to get drunk
and party. He's drinking for a very specific
physiological result. Right. He calls it the
click. The click. It is honestly one of the most
chilling descriptions of addiction in all of
literature. I think anyone who has struggled
with substance abuse recognizes it immediately.
How does he describe it in the text? Brick says
he drinks until he hears a literal mechanical
sound in his head, a click. And that signifies
the exact moment the noise stops. The noise being
his memories, his guilt. The noise of being alive,
the noise of mendacity, which is his word for
the lying world all around him. So the click
is peace. It's the moment of indifference. He
is trying to anesthetize himself against the
reality of his life and specifically the reality
of his friend Skipper's death. He isn't drinking
for pleasure at all. He is drinking for oblivion.
Exactly. Well, we are going to get to Skipper
in a bit because that is really the radioactive
core of the play that radiates out and poisons
everything else. But first, we have to look at
the force trying to pull brick back from the
edge. Maggie. Maggie the cat. If Brick is death
and stasis, Maggie is life and motion, she is
vibrant, she is frantic, and she is utterly terrified.
Her motivation is often simplified, I think.
People just say it's greed, that she just wants
the inheritance money. Right, but looking closely
at the text, it supports something much more
primal than that. Because she comes from genteel
poverty. She does. She has seen what happens
when you have the old family name, but you don't
have the money to actually support it. She's
the one who had to wear the hand -me -down dresses.
She is a survivor above all else. She married
into the Pallet Millions to escape that specific
fate. And now? Because brick? completely refuses
to sleep with her and give her a child. She's
facing expulsion from the family. Gooper and
May, those are Brick's productive siblings with
their huge litter of what Maggie calls no -neck
monsters. They are circling. They smell blood
in the water. They really do. So Maggie is fighting
for her economic life. She knows that without
an heir, she is going to be completely destitute.
Which perfectly explains the title. A cat on
a hot tin roof. It's such a masterful image.
You're in pain. your feet are burning, but you
cannot jump off because the fall will kill you.
So you just keep dancing? You just keep dancing.
And the real tragedy is that she loves brick.
Yes. It's not just about the money. If it were
just the money, she could manipulate him completely
differently. But she actually desires him. And
his indifference is destroying her. It's destroying
her confidence as a woman. She is sexually frustrated,
she's socially besieged, and she's just emotionally
starved. She talks a mile a minute throughout
the play because silence is dangerous for her.
Exactly. If she stops talking, she has to actually
face the dead silence coming from Brick. And
looming over both of them is the architect of
all this misery. Big Daddy. The Titan. The largest
cotton planter in the Delta. Big Daddy is an
absolute force of nature. He's crude. Very crude.
He's racist, misogynistic, and brutally honest.
He represents the Old South's power because he
built this empire from absolutely nothing. But
he also represents its mortality. Yes. He towers
over the play even though he's absent for large
chumps of it. And the central irony of the play,
the main mendacity that Brick hates so much revolves
around Big Daddy's health. It's a massive conspiracy.
It really is. So let's lay out the central lie
of the plot for everyone. Big Daddy has terminal
cancer. Yes. The doctors know it. Gooper and
May know it. Maggie knows it. But they have told
Big Daddy and his wife Big Mama that it's just
a spastic colon. A clean bill of health, essentially.
And they're throwing him this massive 65th birthday
party to celebrate a life that is effectively
over. It's wild. Let's dig into the why of this
lie. Why maintain this charade? Because from
the outside, it seems incredibly cruel to let
a man die without knowing it. It is cruel, but
it's also highly complex. For Gooper and May,
the motivation is purely tactical. They need
time. They need time to secure the estate and
the will before the chaotic realization of death
sets in. Because if Big Daddy knows he's dying,
he might do something rash. Exactly. He might
liquidate the assets, or leave it all to a charity,
or worse of all for them, leave it all to Brick.
So they need to keep him perfectly calm while
they maneuver behind the scenes. But for Big
Mama, it's completely different. For her, it's
just pure denial. She refuses to believe the
truth. She loves him. Obsessively, pathetically,
despite all of his abuse toward her. She refuses
to believe he is dying because her entire identity
is wrapped up in being Mrs. Big Daddy. Right.
If he dies... she ceases to exist. So she clings
to the lie of the spastic colon like it's a life
raft. But then there's brick. Brick is the only
one who refuses to play along, and yet he won't
expose it either. He just watches everyone from
the sidelines completely disgusted. He watches
it as confirmation of his worldview. To Brick,
the fact that his family can stand around and
sing happy birthday to a dying man proves that
the entire world is totally fake. Mendacity.
Mendacity. It's a systemic web of lies. Yeah.
And he drinks to tolerate the fakeness of it
all. This brings us to that concept of mendacity.
It's a word Brick uses like a weapon. He says,
there is nothing to live with but mendacity.
But as we peel back the layers, we realize the
mendacity isn't actually just about the cancer
diagnosis. No, the cancer is just the symptom.
The real disease is the lie regarding Brick's
own life. And this is the critical pivot point.
This is where we really need to focus our deep
dive. Definitely. Because if you read the original
stage play, the real source of Brick's disgust
and the real reason he hates Maggie is not just
some general existential angst. It is specifically
rooted in his relationship with his dead friend,
Skipper. Yes. We really need to tread carefully
here to distinguish between the different versions
of the story, because this is where history and
censorship collide head on. They really do. So
let's clarify the original source version first,
the play that Williams actually wrote. What is
the truth about Brick and Skipper? Well, in the
play, the subtext is barely subtext. It is practically
text. Brick and Skipper were football teammates.
They were inseparable. They had a bond that was
pure and noble in Brick's eyes. They were the
perfect pair. But Maggie, being the perceptive
cat that she is, saw something else entirely.
She suspected that on Skipper's side, and perhaps
deeply repressed on Brick's side, there was actual
romantic love. And she confronts Skipper about
this. She challenges him directly. She essentially...
tell Skipper, you are in love with my husband.
Which is a huge accusation for that time. Huge.
And to prove her wrong, to prove he's a real
man, according to the standards of the time,
Skipper tries to sleep with Maggie. He tries
to perform heterosexuality. And he fails. He
fails completely. He cannot perform. And that
failure absolutely breaks him because it confirms
Maggie's accusation. He finally realizes the
truth about himself. And then comes the phone
call. Yes. This is the moment that haunts Brick.
for the rest of his life. A drunken late night
phone call from Skipper to Brick. Skipper confesses
his feelings. He essentially comes out to his
best friend. He tells Brick he loves him. And
Brick, who is the southern football hero raised
in a culture of very rigid masculinity, he panics.
He's disgusted. He tells Skipper you're squealing
like a stuck pig. And then he hangs up the phone.
He hangs up. He abandons his friend in his moment
of greatest vulnerability. And Skipper drinks
himself to death shortly after. So Brick's guilt
is not just that his friend died. No, his guilt
is, I killed my friend because I couldn't handle
the truth of who he was. And deeper still, Brick
is terrified that he might actually reciprocate
those feelings. Exactly. He hates himself for
his own intolerance, or maybe for his own repressed
desire. And he projects all of that self -hatred
directly onto Maggie. He blames her for naming
it. So when he talks about mendacity, he's really
talking about the lie of his own heterosexuality,
the lie of his supposedly pure friendship. The
cancer lie is just a mirror for the skipper lie.
That is exactly it. Now, I want you to take all
of that complex trauma and transpose it to 1958
Hollywood. Oh, boy. We have Paul Newman, basically
the most beautiful man in the world playing brick,
and Elizabeth Taylor, the biggest star in the
world. playing Maggie. But we also have the Hays
Code. The Hays Code. Let's talk about the impact
of that. The Hays Code was the film industry's
self -censorship guidelines, and it was incredibly
strict. It explicitly forbade any depiction of
what they called sexual perversion. Which included
any reference to homosexuality. You couldn't
even imply it. So MGM buys the rights to this
Pulitzer Prize winning play, but they are legally
barred from filming the central conflict of the
story. It's like buying Hamlet and being told
you can't mention the ghost. That's a great comparison.
So the director, Richard Brooks, who was also
the writer for the film, he has to completely
rewrite the engine of the movie. What does he
replace the skipper story with? He replaces the
struggle over sexuality with a vague struggle
over maturity. Maturity. Yeah. In the film, the
story becomes that Skipper died simply because
he was a washed -up athlete who couldn't handle
his fading lorry. A hazy hero worship. Right.
And Brick is depressed because he thinks Maggie
actually cheated on him with Skipper. That is
a massive downgrading complexity. It really banalizes
the trauma. It turns a tragedy about identity
and societal repression into a daytime soap opera
about infidelity. In the film, Brick rejects
Maggie not because of his own internal confusion,
but because he thinks she's a, well, a slut.
He thinks she betrayed him and ruined the purity
of his friendship with Skipper. It fundamentally
alters Brick's character arc. He goes from being
this tortured, complex soul to just a sulking,
immature husband who's mad his wife might have
strayed. And this is exactly why Tennessee Williams
was telling people waiting in line at the cinema
to go home. He literally went to the theaters
to tell people that. He was furious. He hated
the script. He told the crowds, this movie will
set the industry back 50 years. Go home. Wow.
He felt that by removing the homosexual element,
they created a massive hole right in the center
of the film. Because Brick's intense misery seems
totally unmotivated without it. Right. Why is
he this destroyed just because his friend died
of alcoholism? It doesn't add up without the
betrayal element. The censorship forced the film
to substitute sexual repression. with this vague
sense of immaturity. And yet, despite all of
that, the movie actually works. It really does.
It was a massive hit at the box office, and it's
still considered a classic today. And I think
that's largely due to the performances. Even
with this laundered script, Paul Newman does
something extraordinary. He really does. Director
Richard Brooks said he cast Newman specifically
because he could project thought without speaking.
Project thought without speaking. And Newman
uses that. He uses the illusion of the first
time acting technique. He plays Brick as this
tightly coiled spring. Because even though the
script removes the specific homosexual context,
Newman plays the repression perfectly. You absolutely
believe he is hiding something, even if the movie
won't let him tell you exactly what it is. The
audience feels the weight of the secret, even
if the secret has been erased from the dialogue.
It's a real testament to Newman. that he could
play the subtext of the play even while speaking
the text of the censored movie. He was actually
pretty disappointed himself that the themes were
laundered. Now, speaking of changing the story,
the movie wasn't the only time the script got
completely overhauled. No, it wasn't. There's
a whole saga involving the original Broadway
run in 1955 and the legendary director, Aliyah
Kazan. We call this the third act problem. This
was a real clash of titans. Aliya Kazan was the
director of the original Broadway production,
and he was arguably the most powerful director
of his era. He made a streetcar named Desire
a hit. He made Death of a Salesman. He was the
kingmaker of Broadway. So when he read Williams'
draft of Cat, he had notes. Big notes, I imagine.
Very big notes. What exactly didn't he like about
it? He felt the original ending was way too passive.
In Williams' original draft, Big Daddy finds
out he's dying and just disappears. He doesn't
come back on stage. No. He goes off stage to
rage and silence. And the play ends with this
quiet, very unresolved tension between Brick
and Maggie. Sounds very European, very ambiguous.
Exactly. And Kazan said... No. This is Broadway.
The audience needs a showdown. So Kazan demands
a rewrite. Three specific demands actually. He
said one, Maggie needs to be more sympathetic.
Okay. Two, Big Daddy has to reappear in act three
for a final confrontation. And three. Three,
Rick needs a moral awakening. He needs to change.
Kazan wanted a moral arc. He wanted the hero
to learn something. Right. He wanted a transformation.
And Williams, who desperately wanted another
hit because he felt a bit insecure after a couple
of recent flops, he capitulated. He gave in.
He rewrote the third act to please Kazan. He
brought Big Daddy back. He made Maggie softer.
And he gave Brick a moment where he actually
supports Maggie's final lie, which suggests some
sort of moral awakening. So the published text
of the play, if you go buy a copy today, what
do you get? You usually get both. Williams often
published the play with both versions of the
third act included, the original version and
the Broadway version. So readers can actually
decide which one they prefer. Yeah, it's a rare
look into the collaborative and sometimes compromising
nature of theater. And later on, in the 1974
revival, Williams revised the text again. He
blended them. He blended elements, but he kept
the harder, more ambiguous edge of his original
vision. And naturally, the 1958 film adaptation
took the Kazan approach and just ran even further
with it. The film leans heavily into the Kazan
ending, but it adds that real Hollywood gloss.
It includes a very lengthy reconciliation scene
between Brick and Big Daddy in the cellar. Right,
among all the antiques in the luggage, it's highly
symbolic. They're literally surrounded by the
baggage of the past. And they have a heart to
heart. Big Daddy talks about his father, who
is a hobo, a vagrant, but who left him with memories
of love. And Big Daddy realizes he left Brick
with wealth, but no love. And Brick realizes
Big Daddy actually loves him. They connect. They
hug. It heals the wound. Which, as an observation,
adds this very Hollywood ending of reconciliation
that the original Southern Gothic play deliberately
avoided. It's touching and it makes you cry,
but it completely undermines the Southern Gothic
intent. Because the point of the genre is often
that the wounds don't heal. The tragedy is the
inability to connect. By having them connect,
the film offers a catharsis that the play intentionally
denies. It tells the audience that love conquers
all. Whereas Williams was saying that lies conquer
all. Exactly. I want to circle back to Big Daddy's
Journey for a minute, specifically in that moment
where the lie finally breaks. Surrealization.
Because Burr lives played Big Daddy on Broadway
and in the film. And today I think most people
know him as the voice of Sam the Snowman from
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The guy singing
Silver and Gold. Right, he was a folk singer,
he sang Wayfaring Stranger, he was this gentle
giant. But in this role he perfectly embodies
this macabre, domineering patriarch. He is terrifying.
It is a staggering transformation. He physically
dominates the space. But the transition from
tyrant to victim is incredible. When Brick eventually
reveals the truth to Big Daddy in a moment of
anger, when he says, there is no spastic colon,
you are dying of cancer. The way Big Daddy crumbles
is heartbreaking. Williams actually noted something
specific about this moment in his notes, didn't
he? Yes. The squealing quote. Williams wrote
that the play says one affirmative thing about
man's fate. that he has it still in his power
not to squeal like a pig but to keep a tight
mouth about it not to squeal like a pig that
phrase comes back around big daddy spends the
first half of the play roaring and abusing everyone
just to cover up his deep existential dread when
the fear becomes reality he tries to hold on
to his dignity he tries to keep a tight mouth
That connects beautifully to the Dylan Thomas
poem that Williams used as an epigraph for the
1974 version of the play. Do not go gentle into
that good night. Rage, rage against the dying
of the light. Big Daddy is the absolute embodiment
of that rage. He curses, he yells, he buys things,
he exerts power over his family, all to deny
the dying of the light. But in the end, the light
goes out anyway. It does. And in the shadow of
that death, Maggie makes her final play, The
Final Lie. The pregnancy announcement. It is
her absolute desperate gambit. The clock is ticking,
Gooper has the legal papers ready to sign to
take over the estate, and Maggie just stands
up and announces that she is pregnant with Brick's
child. To secure the inheritance. Yes. And it
is a lie. Everyone knows it's a lie. Gooper and
May know it's a lie. But Big Mama believes it
out of pure hope. She needs a future to distract
her from the end of her husband. And Big Daddy.
In the movie, especially, he looks at Maggie,
and you can see he knows she's lying. But he
accepts it anyway. And Brick. This is the real
pivot. In the film and the revised play, Brick
supports the lie. He has the power to destroy
her right there. All he has to say is, no, she's
not. But his complicity is what saves her. He
steps up, he validates the lie, and they resolve
to make the lie true. Make the lie true. That
is the closing resolution. They will go upstairs
and literally make the lie true. It's an ending
that is both a victory and a total surrender
to the theme of mendacity. It's a survival strategy.
They are building their future on a deception.
The mendacity hasn't been defeated at all. They've
just decided to use it to their own advantage.
Before we wrap up the analysis, we really have
to acknowledge the human element of the production
itself. We've talked about the characters suffering,
but the actors were going through Absolute hell.
It's true. Production trivia rarely gets this
intense. We touched on Elizabeth Taylor briefly,
but we need to really understand what she was
dealing with during filming. Filming began in
March of 1958. Elizabeth Taylor was just 26 years
old, and she was married to Mike Todd, the mega
producer. He was the love of her life at that
time. He was. And right after filming began...
The plane crash. Yes. Mike Todd's private plane,
the Lucky Liz, crashed in New Mexico. All the
passengers were killed. And she was supposed
to be on that plane. She'd only stayed behind
because she had a cold. Imagine the survivor's
guilt she must have been feeling. She was absolutely
devastated. Hysterical. She took a few weeks
off, but she returned to the set, thin and weak,
and she channeled all of that terrible grief
straight into the role of Maggie. She said later,
I became Maggie. Acting was the only time I could
function. So when we see Maggie the Cat frantic,
screaming, begging for love on screen, that isn't
just acting. It's real trauma. And then, during
production, the scandal hit. The Eddie Fisher
affair. Eddie Fisher was a famous singer and
Mike Todd's best friend. He was married to Debbie
Reynolds, who was America's sweetheart at the
time. Eddie was comforting the grieving widow,
and it turned into romance. And her public image
flipped overnight. Instantly. She went from the
tragic, grieving widow to a homewrecker, and
MGM, being ruthless, used it to market the film.
They put her on the poster on a bed in a slip,
selling the heat of the scandal. Selling Hollywood
mendacity with a story about mendacity. It's
almost poetic. And Paul Newman had his own funny
rebellion against the Hollywood machine. Oh,
the SPUman anecdote. Yes. When he was asked to
change his name earlier in his career for Siddle...
on the waterfront, he sarcastically suggested
S .P. Eumann. He hated the fakeness of the industry,
which is probably why he aligns so well with
Williams' disappointment over the censored script.
So to summarize the legacy of this incredible
work, the play won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.
Despite the jury actually preferring a play called
The Flowering Peach, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. had
to step in and push for cat. And the film was
a massive box office hit, despite the huge censorship
controversy. It remains a definitive text on
family dysfunction, greed, and the destructive
power of secrets. It really is. Williams presents
a world where lying is the only way to survive.
The family lies to Big Daddy about death. Maggie
lies to the family about life with her fake pregnancy.
Which leaves us with a really fascinating question.
Exactly. I want to leave you, the listener, with
a final provocative thought to mull over. In
the Pollitt family, is the truth actually more
destructive than the lies? Because the truth
about Skipper destroys Brick. And the truth about
the cancer destroys Big Daddy. Right. So is the
refusal to face reality the real tragedy here?
Or is reality so unbearable that the click Brick
searches for that numbness, that lie? is actually
the only way to survive in this world? It's a
tough question to answer. Something to think
about the next time you're sweating out a tense
family reunion in the summer heat. Absolutely.
Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into
the sweltering heat in the Mississippi Delta.
It's been a pleasure. Stay cool out there everyone.
We will catch you on the next deep dive.