Hollywood's Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America

No American dramatist has had more plays adapted than Tennessee Williams, and few modern dramatists have witnessed as much controversy during the adaptation process. His Hollywood legacy, captured in such screen adaptations as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer, reflects the sea change in American culture in the mid-twentieth century. Placing this body of work within relevant contexts ranging from gender and sexuality to censorship, modernism, art cinema, and the Southern Renaissance, Hollywood's Tennessee draws on rarely examined archival research to recast Williams's significance. Providing not only cultural context, the authors also bring to light the details of the arduous screenwriting process Williams experienced, with special emphasis on the Production Code Administration--the powerful censorship office that drew high-profile criticism during the 1950s--and Williams's innovative efforts to bend the code. Going well beyond the scripts themselves, Hollywood's Tennessee showcases findings culled from poster and billboard art, pressbooks, and other production and advertising material. The result is a sweeping account of how Williams's adapted plays were crafted, marketed, and received, as well as the lasting implications of this history for commercial filmmakers and their audiences.

Author: R. Barton Palmer, William Robert Bray
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 04/01/2009
Pages: 371
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.83d
ISBN: 9780292723047

About the Author
R. BARTON PALMER is Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University in South Carolina and is editor, with David Boyd, of After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality.WILLIAM ROBERT BRAY is Professor of English at Middle Tenness