Professor David Peimer
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire: The Film, the Play

Professor David Peimer | Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire The Film, the Play | 02.17.24

Visuals and videos played throughout the presentation.

- So today, continuing with America, as we all know. Last week, we looked at Arthur Miller, in particular, “The Crucible.” And today, we’re going to look at Tennessee Williams, specifically looking at “Streetcar Named Desire,” which is obviously his most well-known and I think his most important play. So because I think it was Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and to a degree, Eugene O'Neill, although he is slightly of the slightly earlier generation, but those are the three truly great American playwrights of certainly the first half going into the second half of the last century. More important than that is that I think these players have lasted. You know, with Miller, we spoke about “The Crucible,” “Death of a Salesman,” “All My Sons.” Eugene O'Neill, I’ve done before, and with Williams as well. And I think it’s not by chance, not just because they’ve sort of become part of an historical canon, but there are reasons why these guys are such good writers. And their works, I think, still resonate so much and are performed globally so often.

Later, I’m going to go into, you know, more of the ‘60s. Some of the poets and some of the later playwrights of the '60s and '70s. That’ll all come. So for now, Mr. Tennessee Williams. Before going into a couple of his quotes, there’s two main ideas that I wanted to mention go diving into today, which is the one that he is writing. I mean, “Streetcars,” and some of the really great plays, but it’s certainly written in that period post-Second World War. And I think it’s crucial because similar to Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller, of course, is hugely influenced by the McCarthy period and the House Un-American Activities. But Tennessee, they’re both part of their post-war period and a period of massive change. The hopes, the dreams of what the war was fought for in not only America but the West. And winning the war war was fought for, and the hope and the aspiration, that what kind of society might emerge. And then comes McCarthyism, especially for Miller. And I think for Tennessee Williams comes a more fractured, broken, insecure sense of the American dream. I don’t want to just use the cliche of the broken dream, but it’s a kind of insecurity about, well, is it real, not real, partly. You know, an ambiguity certainly to put it mildly. And he uses that word a lot when he talks about his playwriting, Williams.

So that on the one hand, and I think it’s this, the sense of, to use Arthur Miller’s phrase, you know, when there’s an exhaustion of the illusions of one era is when another era will begin. And it’s the exhaustion of illusions of the past era and a new era, which is not yet formed, due to begin. And that’s where I link it to, secondly, to Tennessee, to WB Yates’ poem, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” You know, and we all know that poem, “The Second Coming,” you know, the best of all, filled with passionate conviction. Passionate intensity, the worst are filled… Sorry, I’m getting it wrong here, okay. But it’s things fall apart. And the worst of all, the best are filled with the intensity, the conviction, and the worst are filled with passionate conviction. So, it’s a sense of complete change. Is the centre going to hold, isn’t it going to hold, given the massive changes in America and in the West globally after the Second World War? So, it’s those two main ideas.

And I don’t think it can be minimised because one point that is not often, that often mentioned with Tennessee Williams is how it’s linked to the South. And the complete change in the end of the south in that way, through the character of Blanche, of course, the dreams, the mythology that she holds onto, is pure fiction in her imagination. So, she’s almost an embodiment of that. And Stanley, as the immigrant Polish working class character, the Brando character, he represents a whole new emergent, you know, not only East coast, but America. And the two are destined to absolutely clash from a class and immigrant and insider perspective. The one with lost broken dreams of the South, Blanche, and the other, the immigrant working class, viral fit guy, you know, and the clash is almost ready-made for theatre, but it’s a clash of the times. That to me is what echoes so powerfully with us today, you know, of the foreigner and the so-called citizen, the alien or the outsider, and the insider, which is part of the Jewish experience, absolutely.

Assimilate or not, caught on the horns of the dilemma of assimilation. To assimilate or not, or partly, you know. And this is all fascinating for me about Tennessee Williams. He understands the perspective of the outsider completely. He’s not Jewish, obviously, but the aspects of his life, which I’m going to mention, which he gets it, I think completely. And I’m not trying to just stretch the point, but I think he and Miller, for very different reasons, understand that outsider position and are able to therefore look at their own culture. And when, if one imagines for a moment after the war in America in particular, ‘cause England is going through rationing, and loss of empire, and decline, economic decline and others. But America is going into becoming the new superpower and the boom. And yet what are the haunting echoes of the past that are going to inform this massive change in the era that will come. So I think Williams finds these, all these ambiguities, and I think we find it in the play. Obviously, the play is about desire and the absolute power of desire, emotional, intellectual, sexual, you know, the desire on every level and how to live a life with that.

Obviously, that is so crucial in the play and just the playing out of the human passions that we all have, you know. And that is where he combines the personal, with the overall sociological, if we like, or sociocultural. And I think he does it brilliantly, you know, in the way that I think Arthur Miller in a completely different way does it as well with “The Crucible,” “All My Sons,” and other plays. I think they’re both caught up in this. Tennessee Williams is maybe even more psychological than Miller by not hesitating how far deep he’s going to go into the demons and the saints in our psychologies. So, these are some pictures of him. On the top right is Williams arriving in New York. And he’s here, you can see the top right, this is obviously a young Williams. And then, the two other pictures of Tennessee Williams, a much happier Tennessee Williams, compared to the alcoholism and severe depression that he had a little bit later in his life. “Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.” And I think that really gives us the essence of Tennessee Williams’s characters that he and his vision of human nature, really. And I think all his characters do follow this little maxim of his.

It’s how we see life through the flaws of our own egos. Fascinating way of putting how we live in relation to others. “If you write a character that isn’t ambiguous, you’re writing a false character.” Interesting to me that he says a false character, not a stereotyped character. Not a two-dimensional, but a false character. In other words, not true to human nature. And so, this word ambiguous keeps recurring in his letters and his writings about his work. And I think he’s constantly seeing ambiguity in human desire, human relationships, society, beliefs, what are false beliefs, what are not. And it’s this word ambiguous and false that haunts him. Jessica Benjamin is a fascinating contemporary theorist, and she was at Cornell. I think she just might have retired and she wrote this brilliant book called “The Bonds of Love.” And I wanted to mention it because she focuses on what is desire in relation to the play naturally, but she’s writing generally. And she relates to some of Hegel main idea that what drives humans is not just power, or the one for power, or the one for material goods, or whatever, but what drives humans is what Hegel articulated as the need for recognition from/and other, whether the other might be a boss.

It might be a partner. It might be a child. It might be a society. Wherever, doesn’t matter. But it’s on the need for recognition from/and other and that those who are driven by that are always in relation to the other. And then, comes the question of desire. You know, get recognition from the other one desires or not get recognition, and what happens when it breaks down and the bonds of love break down and become rather than bonds. I’m giving really just an essence here of her notion in her, for me, brilliant book. The other main idea is, you know, that, you know, she talks about, in which I think as we see in the play, by the way, this sort of breakdown. But how people collude with their own domination by being over placatory, over nice, over pleasing, or trying to fit in and conform where they really don’t want to. In a job, maybe in relationships, maybe in a society, whatever. You know, the desperate need to assimilate in some way and conform. Assimilate in every meaning of the word, metaphorically and literally. And how that can lead to a collusion with how they allow themselves to be dominated.

Neither Stanley nor Blanche will allow that in this play. And that is what is so powerful as dramatic conflict. Neither will surrender and allow the other to over deter, to dictate to them, so that they collude with their own domination. They are determined to be assertive. The Polish immigrant working class, we imagine that in the late '40s in America, and Blanche who’s lost everything of the South, the mansion, the house, the plantation, everything gone. It exists purely as fiction in her imagination. But she has to keep up the airs, the grace, the external persona of belonging to that lineage of the Southern belle, you know, coming up from before the Civil War in America to afterwards. So, he’s setting up two worlds destined to clash. It’s so obvious the metaphor for today of the immigrant, or the foreigner, or the outsider within and the so-called insider within. The clash is the same metaphorically as what he has set up in the play. And of course, the play out of very personal passions of desire. Okay, if we can go to the next slide, please. These are obviously as key plays and I’m sure many of you know them, “The Glass Menagerie,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and so on.

But “Streetcar”, you know, is just top Mount Everest, without a doubt. But let’s look for a second. 1947 is when he writes it. It’s very similar generation, obviously, to Arthur Miller, late '40s, early '50s, to the mid '50s writing so much. You know, and how they both really set the standard of brilliant writing coming from America Post-Second World War, but they’re formed by that war, by the Depression, 1929 Great Depression, and the Second World War. That’s their formative years. And these are the works that come out. Okay, if we can go on to the next time, please. This is very interesting. This is when Tennessee Williams first auditioned and interviewed Brando. And it’s a fascinating story. Look how young he is. I mean, I think he was 20 or 21 here, maximum, you know? And what happens is that Tennessee Williams did not want Brando in the play at all. I have to fill you with a bit of theatrical gossip. He had other actors in line. He thought of Brando was a complete unknown kid.

That’s what he is at the time. And Elia Kazan, you know, phones him and says, “No, no, no, you got to meet this guy, talk to him or audition him. You know, just see, get him to read. Just try.” And Williams was completely was really dead set against. And what happens is when they meet. And Kazan says to him. Kazan wrote a letter because Kazan directed it. He was a genius. His preparation, his personality, his memories, desires were so deep. There’s very little that you had to do, except tell him what the scene was about. Brando’s acting was like jazz. The notes were. The words were there. Brando played them in a way that was so personal, so intense. Instead of making it appear learned, Brando rode his emotions where they led him. And he goes on about it. And when they need the story that when they meet is that Kazan gave Brando $20, literally and said to him, “Catch a train, you know, whatever, get the bus, go up to Provincetown, and meet Williams, and read, and et cetera.” Brando has no money. Then Kazan says, and this is in Kazan’s diary, “I waited, no return call. After three days, I called Tennessee and asked him what he thought of the actor, Marlon Brando, I had sent him. Tennessee replied, 'What actor? No one had showed up. So I began to look elsewhere.’”

This is William saying to him. And what had happened was that Brando was broke. He’d used the $20 to get a bit of food and decided to hitchhike to save the money to get there, which took him longer than three days. At their house, William then suddenly wrote it struck him that Brando, and I’m quoting from Williams, “Was a spectacle of both beauty, he was the best looking young man I’d ever seen, and prowess and virility.” What did Brando do? He first fixed the lights in Williams’s house, then he fixed the plumbing in the pipes in his house. And Williams wrote, “You’d think Brando had spent his entire life repairing drains and plumbing, doing plumbing.” So, that’s the first interaction they have. But Tennessee Williams is still completely against this guy doing it. And what happens is the morning after the audition that he read for Tennessee Williams, Brando and Williams go for a walk on the beach in silence.

Tennessee Williams later recounted, “And then, we walked back from the beach in more silence.” This is all true, so you can imagine this is a bit of theatrical gossip, but you can imagine these two going on a walk and doing all this, this young kid and the great, you know, and the writer. He said once he started to read it though, he suddenly got completely enamoured. Brando, in turn, wrote about how he was terrified. He was scared. And he went there and he was hiding so much fear inside, because of course he was just a, he was a university kid. He was a student and he didn’t know anything from anything And just he’d done a few little gigs here and there, but you know, nothing and yeah. Then the other thing that happened is that he tried to phone Tennessee Williams later to say that he really wasn’t up to it. He couldn’t do it. Too nervous, too neurotic, too crazy. Better find somebody else.

And believe it or not, and this sounds like a complete nonsense story, but it’s true, the phone was engaged and it kept being engaged, couldn’t get through. Till finally Kazan phoned him, asked, et cetera, et cetera. Kazan persuades him. And the story is the rest is in the jargon history. I just share this with the vagaries of fate and chance and life. ‘Cause these are two stories and happens so much, not only in theatre, but in every aspect of life. You know, chance and destiny or not, whatever we believe you, way things intervene. Brando says, “If the phone hadn’t been engaged, my life would’ve been so different,” and play maybe, who knows. So, a couple of little stories to share there. I’ve spoken already about James Dean and the others. And this is where Tennessee Williams learned of that episode where Brando as a student actor to one example I’ve given before. I think it’s so important, it’s worth mentioning. 'Cause it speaks to this young kid’s intelligence, amazing intelligence as an actor, as a human being.

When he was being taught by Stella Adler and they were given the exercise, “Okay, you are going to act chickens and imagine in the next five minutes, you know, Russian atomic bombs are going to land on New York and blast the whole half of New York, half of America to smithereens.” And they’ve got five minutes and all the other student actors of 20, 19, 20, 21 are running around, literally headless chickens, terrified. Brando is sitting in the middle of the room, casually smoking a cigarette. She comes up to him, Stella Adler, and she says, “What are you doing?” And she gets angry. “You’re not doing the exercise, you’re just, you know, I mean, you’re not just here to be a layabout.” And Brando looked up at her and he says, “I don’t know any chicken that knows what an atom bomb is.” And in that moment, Stella Adler says she knew she could teach him very little and he was destined to do something really good. It’s the intelligence to realise this is nonsense and follow his own instinct, really. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please.

So a couple of clips from “Streetcar.” You know, some of these very famous ones that we know. And this is from Tennessee Williams here. “I found it easier to identify with characters who verge on his hysteria.” We’ve got to remember these are the times he is writing. Hysteria has a similar connotation to Freud’s times, not the colloquial connotation we might have today and the condemnation of that word today. We’d call it maybe neurosis or anxiety or you know, mass anxiety today. “Who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life.” So interesting. Frightened of life, that’s Tennessee Williams. “Who were desperate, frightened, but desperate to reach out to another person.” Need for recognition again. “But these seemingly fragile people are really the strong people.” It’s a fascinatingly little complex quote, which I’ve often come back to to really get to grips with Tennessee Williams and his insight into human nature and for us, to the characters. It said ambiguity word, again. Who verge on it. Who verge on mass, anxiety, terror, fear, frightened of life. But in that frightened want to reach out, they’re desperate.

But maybe they look fragile, but they actually could be strong inside. So, it’s this multilayered sense of human nature. And this is what’s in Blanche. It’s also in the Brando character, I would argue, and in a lot of his other plays that we see. And desire comes out of this. Desire is not some sort of passion, lightning bolt from heaven that, you know, strikes us and off we go in that split second maybe. But this, it comes from a deeper unconscious world for Tennessee Williams. Just a couple of things about him and his life is that he grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi of English, Welsh, and Huguenots ancestry. Father was a travelling shoe salesman who became a terrible alcoholic. His mother was the daughter of a music teacher. And his father always saw him as very effeminate and he had real, pretty serious disdain for his son. And there was the mother’s attention and sort of fairly typical, I guess, especially for this generation clash. And Miller talks about this as the son and the father clash after the war, enormous clashes. We get it with James Dean that I mentioned before in that generational father-son.

So, many of these plays and movies are the father-son, which are metaphors of the generational clash and the sense, so-called sensitivity vulnerability versus the, so-called, you know, strong guy image that we get in their plays and their films. I mean obviously we get here. And he gets it in his own life. You know, it’s that generational clash, which is mirrored in the war and the post-war generation, I think, in the '50s and the '40s. Kazan who directed the plays, many of his plays, he said that everything that Tennessee lived is in his plays. So, everything came from his lived life in a way that he wanted to put in. And I think Miller was the same. And many writers, of course. Okay, by 1959, he’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critic Circle Awards, Tony. The early '50s, “Glass Menagerie, "Streetcar,” already adapted as movies. It’s a very quick movement. The '60 and the '70 are the period of decline or to be more direct, you know, his tragedy really. He goes seriously into alcohol, major drug consumption. Destroys his body and his mind slowly step by step. He was very close to his sister Rose and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1943. And she had a lobotomy, she was forced to undergo.

In the '60s and '70s, he has many bouts of very pretty severe depression, drugs, hospitalizations, et cetera. In 1983 finally, he was found dead at the age of 71 in a hotel in New York on his own. He wrote over 71 act plays and obviously, the other full length plays during his lifetime. A couple of quotes, which I always feel with Tennessee Williams, which are important. “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels. If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” Not the other way around. So, it’s this almost romantic idea of the writer, the artist, you know, “That I need both, 'cause I see both in human nature all the time.” “I’ve got the guts to die, have I got the guts to live?” It’s a phrase from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” “A line is straight, or a street, but the human heart, it’s curved like a road through mountains.” That’s in “Streetcar,” in the play. That line I think is so crucial to him. “I don’t want realism. I want magic. I try to give that to people. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that’s sinful, then let me be damned for it.” That’s Blanche in “Streetcar.” “No one realises I want magic.”

It’s not, obviously, she’s in total denial about her broken dream of the past that I mentioned. You know, coming from the south and being the Southern belle and all of that. “I try to give that to people. I want magic.” So, that’s part of her charm. She wants to give magic, adventure, spirit to others, but in at the price of denial. It’s a fast end bargain. It’s the ambiguity again. In another line of his, “A prayer for the wild at heart, you are kept in cages.” Another phrase from his, another play of his “Camino Real,” “I have always make voyagers attempt them. There’s nothing else.” you know, what would life be without some bit of voyage, a bit of adventure, a bit of risk, a bit of trying. I mean, what’s really, you know, to always play the safe card. “The card that is so high and wild.” That the Leonard Cohen phrase. It just suddenly struck me. Similar kind of thing. Make a voyage, try it. And of course, one of the great lines from “Streetcar,” of Blanche, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

It’s so ironic, it’s so multifaceted, and it’s a way of putting the words together. It’s not just I’m going to, you know, sell my body for money or anything. “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” It’s so ironic and playful and multi meaning, which is Tennessee Williams. Again, ambiguity. Okay, the next slide please. It’s couple more of the classic clips. You know, the top one is Stella and Stanley at the end. And some other clips here we can see look how young they are. Extraordinary. And Kazan used to say, rehearsing, that he with Jessica Tandy for the play, he would go line by line. With Brando, they would go for walks in Central Park. And all he had to do was plant a few seeds of ideas of the social milieu, the meaning of the play, the meaning of the scene, philosophical thinking.

He engaged him on such an intellectual basis. And they didn’t bring the two together to rehearse for a long time until much later in rehearsals, which is unusual. But he was intelligent enough to suss. They were completely different actors. The one needed the security of line by line and the other would’ve gone crazy with that. And just plant a few ideas and have a few walks. That’s a good director, when to be covert and when to be overt. So we go on to the next slide, please. Another scene from it. One of the great classic scenes that we know. She’s such a good actress here in the movie. You see all so many different contrasting emotions in that scene, and the light, and the shade. Okay, in the next slide please. This is from the opening scene where they first meet, Stanley and Blanche. Their first meet. Blanche has come, of course, to visit her sister Stella.

[Clip plays] - You must be Stanley. I’m Blanche.

• Oh, you Stella’s sister?

• Yes.

• Oh, hi. Okay, where’s the little woman?

• In the bathroom.

• Oh. Well, where are you from then, Blanche?

• I live in Laurel.

• Laurel. Laurel, huh? Oh yeah, that’s right, Laurel. That’s not my territory. Man, look at how fast in the hot weather. You want a shot?

• [Blanche] No, I rarely touch it.

• Well, there’s some people that rarely touch it, but it touches them often.

• [Blanche] Oh.

• [Stanley] Hey, you mind if I make myself comfortable? My shirt is sticky.

• Please, please do

• [Stanley] Be comfortable, that’s my motto up where I come from.

• It’s mine, too. It’s hard to stay looking fresh in hot weather. Well, I haven’t washed or even powder, and here you are.

• Well, you know, you got to be careful sitting around in that thing gets you cold, especially when you’ve been exercising hard like bowling is. Well, you get to teach, aren’t you?

• [Blanche] Yes.

• What do you teach?

• English.

• Oh, I never was better than any student. How long are you here for?

• [Blanche] Well, I don’t know yet.

• You going to shack up here?

• I thought I would, if it’s not inconvenient for you all. Travelling wears me out.

• Well, take it easy.

• What’s that?

• Oh, those cats. Hey, Stella. What you, what you doing? Fall asleep in there? [Clip ends]

• So, what I love about the scenes is obviously the two are established right at the beginning. You know, he’s going to take charge. He’s going to be the dominant one. He’s going to assert himself no matter what. And obviously, the virility and all, you know, so many people have talked about it anyway. You know, I dunno if to mean the animal instincts. And you know, she comes with this desperate, this fragility she’s trying to cover up and everything I mentioned. The frightened character is trying to be strong. What’s interesting to me is Brando’s acting. What makes it magnetic? He never stops moving his mouth. It’s the mouth that gives him such high status. That gives him such assertive power in the scene. You know, as a character actor, suddenly he doesn’t look like that little kid that we saw in the picture with him and Tennessee Williams. But he is that same kid. Maximum, he’s a year older. So he’s the same, but look at how he’s done. Look at the, you know, the obviously the costume, the T-shirt.

But it’s that folding of the arms,, it’s the moving of the mouth. But it’s so subtly done and yet, it’s a physical way of acting without being too obvious which gives him such inner power as an actor. And I think it’s brilliant and it’s fascinating. And Brando would always find something like that, always find the opposite of the obvious, something different, you know, that really helps, you know, not even show the assertiveness of the character, but something about the inner life, you know? And so, yeah, look at the mouth. Some actors, it’s in the hands. Some actors, it’s in the neck or other things. The really good ones find something physical. So obviously, he embodies, you know, the sheer masculinity. That there’s a certain violence, which is a controlled fury, controlled violence, obviously. Obviously, his intense sexuality there rages. But there’s an intelligence and there’s a class wall going on. It’s primal obviously, a primal clash of desires. You know, we pick it up immediately, the desires there in the heat of New Orleans.

We can imagine the music, et cetera. But it’s what gives it, what enables it to rise above just being stereotyped is the intelligence of his character and hers, which is seen in that. There isn’t an obvious, you know, way of acting or the lines even. And of course, there’s a class war set up immediately. You know, she’s come from that very established American background, which has ironically lost everything in the war, in the Civil War. And he comes from the New Hope for America, the Polish immigrant, who’s the physical construction worker. There’s also a kind of, the music is sad, romantic for Blanche. at times. The music with that Kazan uses with Brando is more jazzy, New Orleans. The heat, the sun, virility, basically. Kazan wrote, “I get to know my actors very well. I always do. I find out what the human material is I’m dealing with, so that none are unknown to me. And whether I worked with James Dean, Warren Beatty, Lee Remick, Brando,” he goes on and on and on.

You got to get to know, I mean, today the cliche would be man management or human man woman management. You know, that would be the cliche. But it’s getting to know who are, who is this human being and whether I’m more covert, overt, how to work with them to get the best. Brando’s physical performance, 'cause we noticed he also does very little with his eyes. She does much more with her eyes. And that’s how she’s trying to express, you know, so much of the inner world of a character. But he only really stares intently. But he’s got that constant, ironic, playful with the movement of the mouth always in motion. It says it all. It’s simmering. It creates that feeling. Okay, “Streetcar,” won four Oscars. Three years later, he directed Brando. He has then directed Brandon on the “Waterfront,” which won eight Oscars. In 1955, he directed, you know, John Steinbeck’s, “East of Eden.” We know all that. And of course, introducing James Dean. Okay, if we go into the next clip, please. This is between Stanley and Stella.

[Clip plays]

• Honey, look, it’s best not to talk much about it until she’s calmed down.

• Well, now, is that going to be the deal? Your sister Blanche can’t be annoyed with details right now?

• You saw how she was last night.

• I saw how she was not. That’s, I mean, where’s the copy again with the bill of sale?

• I haven’t seen any.

• What do you mean? She didn’t show you no papers, no deed of sale, or nothing like that?

• It seemed like it wasn’t sold.

• Well, what was it then? Give away to charity?

• She’ll hear you.

• Oh, I don’t care if she hears me. Now, let’s see the papers.

• Honey, there weren’t any papers. She didn’t show any papers. And I don’t care about papers.

• Look, wait. Now listen, did you ever hear of the Napoleonic Code?

• No, Stanley. I haven’t heard of the Napoleonic Code, if I have,

• All right, okay, then, then just, now just let me enlighten you on a point or two.

• Yes.

[Clip ends]

• Now, we got here in the state of Louisiana was known as Napoleonic Code. You see now, according to which that what belongs to the wife, belongs to the husband also, and vice versa. Will you listen? Now, like take for instance, I had that piece of property-

[Clip plays]

• My head is swimming.

• Well, oh, all right then. Okay. Then we, we’ll wait until she’s to soak in the hot tub and then, I’m going to inquire if she’s acquainted with Napoleonic Code.

• Oh, Stanley, don’t be so silly.

• It’s looks to me like you’ve been swindled, baby. And when you get swindled on Napoleonic Code, I get swindled too and I don’t like to get swindled.

• Oh, Stanley, you have no idea how ridiculous you’re being. You suggest that my sister, or I, or anyone else of our family could have perpetrated a swindle on anyone.

• Oh, come on. Now where is the, where’s the money if the place was sold?

• [Stella] Not sold, lost. Lost.

• [Stanley] Come here.

• Stanley, ow

• Now, will you just open your eyes to this stuff here? Now, I mean what, has she got this out of teacher’s pay?

• Oh gosh.

• When you look at these fine feathers and furs that she comes to bring herself in here. What is this article? That’s a solid gold dress, I believe.

• Oh my.

• And this one here. And what is that fox piece?

• Stop.

• That genuine fur fox, a half a mile long. Where, where your fox pieces?

• Ow.

• This is bushy snow white ones, no less. Where are your white fox furs?

• Those inexpensive summer furs that Blanche has had a long time.

[Clip ends]

• So what I love here, if we can just show one of the, oh, the image for the beginning of the next clip, please. Thanks, Jess, if we can freeze that. So, what I love in that previous little clip is I mean not only his thing about the Napoleonic Code and bringing Europe into, you know, this conversation of these two working class families. Stella has essentially accepted her past. It’s a lost dream. The mansion they had, the life of being the Southern belles, all of that has gone with the Civil War and post-Civil War. You know, it’s totally toast. She lives with no illusions. She lives, she’s realistic and the most grounded of all. Blanche comes in, still caught up with all those dreams. She expects to be treated with respect. She’s got all those, look at the gowns, the furs, the jewellery, everything. It’s all the trappings of privilege, wealth, and that history, you know, of coming from being a Southern belle and coming from that whole world, which is gone and gone forever.

Although today, we might think some of the ideas have not gone so completely. Maybe they never did. The ideas take much longer to destroy than or to change than the actual physical world, of course. So, it’s a sense of Blanche still living with her illusions. And she wants magic as she says. She wants adventure. She doesn’t want to give realism. So, she’s aware of her situation. And it’s that intelligence that Tennessee Williams gives his characters. They are compelled to drive, to riot, to live in a certain way. Their desire takes them, but they are aware and intelligent. They’re not naive. They’re not out of touch. You know, that’s why I gave the quote earlier from Blanche. She knows he wants to give magic. She doesn’t want to live in realism. In other words, I want to live in denial. I don’t want to live in reality and I’ll do anything to make it happen. I’ll depend on the kindness of strangers. I’ll set it up.

Stella, firmly rooted. No denial. Forget the past. Focus on the present. And that’s it. Stanley caught between the two. And literally like an animal we’ve often mentioned, many have mentioned, you know, it’s caught between the two pillars of what has happened in American history and American society. You know, do we accept what’s happened and move on, because the era has changed. Things might fallen in apart, the centre doesn’t hold. But what do we do or do we hold onto the illusion and the dream or the nostalgic fantasy about the past? And that’s what these two sisters represent together. And we’ll see it played out even more in this scene. You can play it, please, Jess.

[Clip plays]

• Stanley, tell us a joke. Tell us a funny little story to make us all laugh. I dunno, what’s the matter? We’re all so solemn. Is it because I’ve been stood up by my ball? It’s the first time my entire experience with man, and I’ve had a good deal of all sorts, that I’ve actually been stood up by anyone. Oh, I dunno how to take it. Tell us a funny little story, Stanley, something to help us out.

• I didn’t think you like my story, Blanche.

• I like them when they’re amusing, but not indecent.

• I don’t know any refined enough for your taste.

• [Blanche] Well then, let me tell one.

• Yes, you’d tell one, Blanche. You used to know a lot of good stories.

• Now, let me see, I had to run through my repertoire. Oh yes, I love parrot stories. Do you all like parrot stories? Well, this one’s about the old maiden and the parrot. This old maiden, he had a parrot that cursed a blue streak and knew more vulgar expressions than Mr. Kowalski. The only way hush the parrot up was to put the cover of the- Must be upstairs. Well, the only way to hush the parrot up was to put…

• Go on, Blanche.

• No, I don’t think Mr. Kowalski will be obtuse.

• Mr. Kowalski is too busy making a pig of himself to think of anything else. Your face and your fingers are disgustingly greasy. Go wash up and then help me clear the table.

• Now, that’s how I’m going to clear the table. Don’t you ever talk that way to me. Pig, Polack, disgusting, vulgar, greasy, those kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister’s tongues too much around here. Who do you think you are, a pair of queens? I just remember what Huey Long said that every man’s a king and I’m the king around here. And don’t you forget it. My place is all cleared up now. You want me to clear yours?

[Clip ends]

• It freezes there. Thanks, Jess. For me, it’s such a fantastic scene of dramatic tension. You know, yes, there’s a controlled aggression and there’s the explosion of moments of rage, but you don’t really get a sense that he’s going to do anything physical to them. You know, because his voice stays softer. And then of course, he exits like that at the end. It’s often been said that, you know, Tennessee Williams actually wrote about this. That all the characters are the victims of history. And maybe we all are. In particular, in America, the lies of the old self no longer can sustain an individual like Blanche is trying. Stella, it’s over. It’s gone. The loss of the mansion, which is called Belle Reve. And Belle Reve literally means beautiful dream. It’s the name of the plantation they lost in the South.

Stella and Blanche obviously used to live in it and it’s symbolic, of course, of the entitled nostalgic life that they had in the South. But that privileged life is gone. Blanche wants it back. So not only does she dream and want to offer others dreams and not realism and magic, and all the rest that she calls it, which is illusion, but she has a nostalgia for wanting it back. She hangs onto the trappings, which are some of those coats, but it can’t. History’s moved on. I think it’s often underestimated how Tennessee Williams combines the movements of history together with, you know, the passions of real desire in human nature. What’s desire? It’s a sea of competition for Tennessee Williams. It’s a sea of aggressive competition, a sea of dominance of submission. It’s not so much a sea of romance. And that’s often underestimated in what he’s saying. And these are the late '40s going into the '50s that he’s looking at. Romance is a backseat.

It’s aggressive competition. It’s America. It’s the West. It’s the world. It’s dominant submission. America becoming the new power. All the new power. All of these things are subtly played out, I think, amongst these characters. Because why else makes such a thing out of her coming from the West? Why else makes such a thing out of him being called a Polack and a pig? His manners compared to her manners when they’re eating, licking his fingers and so on. It’s linked to him being a Polack, a pig, a polish immigrant. That’s in this, it’s in the dialogue. And as Jewish people who did, of course, what’s happening now? What’s so recurrent in such a horrific, obnoxious way in so many places. So these old tropes about the outside, of the foreigner, the so-called alien, all come back at certain times. And the tropes of who is rooted in a culture apparently rooted, going back, even if they’ve lost everything, they have a certain dignity or social persona to maintain.

But Stella is drawn to him, maybe unrefined, unsophisticated. She knows he’s the future. She knows that he represents a whole new world opening up. And she knows she cannot hold on to the nostalgic dream of the past, like her sister, most important. What’s happening? The lower classes are climbing up the social ladder after the Second World War. Many southerners of course fell from their social rank. But the struggle between Blanche’s old self ideals and the more survivalist codes of sex, dominance, violence, which is Brando, which is Stanley, are starting to emerge more and more. And that’s in historical conflict played out in the passion of desire in the play. Blanche criticises Stella, but Blanche is the one under delusion. She thinks she’s socially superior to her sister, but she arrived with a couple of pennies and a trunk of costume gowns. Not real gowns, costume gowns. It’s all a fake theatrical illusion almost that she has.

So, who do we sympathise with? All of them. And that’s the brilliance of Tennessee Williams. He’s under, again, that word ambiguity of all the characters and how they caught up in historical moment plough the psychology against the canvas of the historical background. That’s what I love about his work so much. Of course, he’s such a primal image. Is it over the top for us audiences today, isn’t it over the top. That’s for everybody to decide for themselves. Okay, and I think the last thing to say is that Stella actually fascinatingly is the practical one, the most practical of all. She doesn’t need all this conflict, this fight. She knows what’s real, what’s illusion. She knows where her life is. She knows what she’s given up and loss. She knows where she’s going in the future. There’s a very deep pragmatism in her. Blanche remains trapped in the nostalgia and the hook of the romantic past. Stella has abandoned it. She’s moved right on. Stanley, it’s almost like, you know, as Christopher Hitchens once said, We are tamed animals trained to abide by the laws of the world. Primates with a bit of a brain.“ Okay, if we can show the next, the last clip, please. It’s at the end of the play.

[Clip plays]

• [Stanley] Hey, Stella,

• You’ll quit that howling down there and go to bed.

• [Stanley] You answer why my clothes down here.

• You shut up. You’re going to get the law and you beat that woman

• Hey, Stella.

• And then call her back. Well, she ain’t going to come. And her ain’t going to have a baby.

• Listen-

• I hope they haul you in and turn a fire hose on you.

• Eunice, I want my girl down here

• [Eunice] You stupid.

• Hey, Stella! Hey, Stella!

• Stella.

• [Eunice] I wouldn’t mix in this.

[Clip ends]

• Freeze it there, please. So if we, that music is that soft jazz tune in the background, hot New Orleans. She ultimately is the one with the power and the real strength. He’s caught in the dilemma between what the two sisters represent. But she’s the one who’s practical, has no illusions about life, about the past, anything. No illusions about Stanley. She comes slowly down to say, "Okay, I can come and meet you now, but I know who I am.” He collapses as the vulnerable one. Not only is this obviously the scene where he screams twice, and that’s really the only scream where he really loses it in the whole play. He’s not the screaming raving lunatic.

But it’s after that, collapsing in complete vulnerability and complete submission to her. And then of course, the wonderfully, it’s a sexual erotic image at the end here, which Kazan is creating. So, what do we have? Tennessee Williams, he said that he was not only writing about the south, although he was obviously and he talks a lot more about, I’m paraphrasing here, “What I’m writing about is the South, but it’s also human nature.” This is quoting him, “Human relations are terrifyingly ambiguous. My characters are full of uncertainties, mysteries, guts.” And I think that’s where he gets into such ambiguity, such complexity of character, which makes these plays resonate today as much as they did in 1947. “Desire, domination, submission, denial, dream, pragmatism, hope, nostalgia for a lost, privileged past, anxiety about a future, illusions are smashed.”

Neither of them give in to the need for recognition as a placatory act. The need for recognition comes at the end for me and that walking down the stairs like that, coming together finally. Not as a happy go like, happy, we’re all happy and you know, let’s go off and have a kind of beautifully perfect romantic ending, but a one born out of understanding life and human nature, which actually makes it so much deeper and richer and so much more powerful as a love relationship between these two. And I suppose again, for me at the end, coming back to what I said right at the beginning, it’s a massive change in what’s happening in America, Post-war, 1947, the plays on the hope, the dream of that generation, the father-son conflict, the illusions. And he taps the powerful myths and realities of American history, the Civil War, the South, you know, what’s emerging with the north, what’s emerging in the future after the war.

America becoming the great empire of the world. America realising its power. And the role of the immigrant, the outsider who’s trying to find. He’s also trying to find how he is going to fit in as a Polack, polishing in his own words. Who doesn’t know how to apparently eat with knife and fork and apparently eat properly as no manners, no graces, no sophisticated airs. All of these things are being played out, but they don’t feel forced. They come from the characters. But the characters cannot avoid riding the horse of history and the that is taking them. And yet they try to, as we all do in our own lives, whatever background we come from, whatever worlds we inhabit now.

And I think what’s obviously going on, you know, in terms of Jewish history now. It’s so obvious post-war, post-Holocaust, you know, and these massive changes that are terrifyingly ambiguous and terrifyingly being experienced in Tennessee Williams’ words. And yet so understood in terms of the Jewish experience, because it goes back thousands of years. I don’t want to over link it to the Jewish experience, could go on about it. But because he’s such an outsider and Tennessee Williams is such an outsider, he understands and is able to look at his own culture, like I think any really good writer or artist would do. Okay, I’m going to hold it there. Thank you. And I’m going to the questions.

Q&A and Comments

Okay. Hannah, “The photographs from Williams,” oh yes. Yeah, when he went to the memorial service for Dylan Thomas in 1953. Rita, thank you for that. That very first picture that I showed. He’s there with a suit and tie. And all these people, all these these poets and writers all connecting in New York. This just jumped for a second. Mitzi, “According to the work group, now homosexuality is much more in the Jews. Williams would be a hero in the middle of the outsider.” Yes, the Jews were in for a while after Holocaust came out then. Exactly. I mean, you know, it doesn’t matter. The Jewish person can be a capitalist, can be a communist. The Jewish person can be homosexual, can be not, can be straight. The Jewish person can be tall, can be short, can have long hair, no hair. I don’t think it matters because the tropes are so powerful of 2000 years or more. You know, it’s that anything. In Marilyn Monroe words to Arthur Miller, she understands Jewish people because they’re always going to be blamed for whatever goes wrong in society. That’s Marilyn Monroe saying it. She got it in a phrase. Of course, there has to be the scapegoat and that’s the Jewish character and the outsider who is a scapegoat for anything and everything, you know? And I really believe it. And that comes from Sartre’s idea in his book, the “Anti-Semite and Jew,” where it’s, you know, his theory is that the Jew is the ultimate scapegoat of Western society. And I agree with it. I think, you know, so anything can be latched onto it.

Patricia, “Brando and his daughter were in the seats in front of me in a play.” Oh, fantastic. “That’s when he was very overweight,” yeah. Okay, his daughter was beautiful. Oh, that’s really interesting. Thanks, Patricia. Yolandi, “James Dean gave a talk a couple of weeks ago.” It was James Dean and Brando, and there’s specifically them representing aspects of the ‘50s and the beat generation. I think all, I mean all the clips are caught, are on the lockdown website if you want.

Q: Yolandi, “When did Brando have time to get to muscular? He was scrawny.” A: I know. Well, he had time and he was young. He could get fit quickly. He realised for this part he had to, because he was working, he was a construction worker in the play.

Rita, “Brando looked for 80 years.” Okay, the hundreds of muscular pictures, yeah. And of course, those very tight T-shirts are going to make me look even more masculine With costume designer. Sandy. “I always have a debate with myself, which is the greatest, 'Streetcar,’ or ‘Salesman.’” Okay. Yeah, I think both are. I mean it’s a fun to have the debate, but I think both are absolutely brilliant. And “The Crucible,” I would add in as well. I think they are the really true great plays that come out of this whole period of American second half of the last century. Hannah, thank you. Dr. Rita, thank you as well. Okay.

Q: Anna, “Did Brando play the role in Broadway?” A: Yeah.

Clara, “First production in Moscow was 1970.” Thank you. Didn’t know that. Thank you, Clara. Pat, “Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote have a French.” That’s interesting. I don’t know. “Saw descending on Broadway with Vanessa Redgrave her performance.” That’s great. Thank you. Got to include gossip when we’re talking about theatre, Patricia. Can’t be theatre people without a bit of gossip, that’s for sure. Rita, “Phenomenal video of Brando’s early screen test.” Oh, that’s great. Thank you for that.

Trisha, “You said in Brando’s mouth, the actor’s hands, neck, or other parts.” Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All different features. Actors will always find something. Marko Cain used to use the camera. And if you look at Marko Cain, the way he acts, one eye is directly looking at the camera and the other eye is slightly just looking at the side of the camera. So, he gives that impression always of the thought going on. What he’s really doing as an actor is concentrating on where each eye is going. And he talks about, and it’s a technique he perfected superbly, you know, to give you such a sense of thinking and inner life in the mind of the characters. All use different techniques. They physicalize something.

Janice, it’d be a great idea actually, you’re right, to do a talk of different physical characteristics of actors. Dennis, thank you. That’s very kind of you. “Andre Previn’s opera based on the play I did.” He said in San Francisco. That’s great. Thank you, I’ll have a look.

Q: Leslie, “All the directing he was doing, when did Kazan have time?” A: Well, he gave eight names to the McCarthy period and that’s what made Arthur Miller furious. Cut the friendship for 10 years, never spoke to him at all. Afterwards, he forgave him and had a bit of a friendship come back. But it was a terrible time, we can imagine, you know, of it’s like “The Crucible.” You know, of in Arthur Miller’s words, “Mass hysteria like in Salem,” going back a couple of hundred years and the same in the ‘50s.

Nina, it’s almost like this mass hysteria today in different parts of the world about different things. You know, excuse my language, but I’m going to quote from Bertolt Brecht. From the end of Arturo Ui’s great play. It’s obviously about Hitler, but it’s a warning. “Do not yet rejoice, my man. The bitch that bore him is in heat again,” and he’s talking about Hitler. And he’s talking about, it’s a metaphor of Hitler for Arturo Ui, who’s a gangster in Chicago. And the whole play is a satirical metaphor for Hitler, of the rise of fascism. “That bore him is in heat again.” And can we, you know, so many people have mentioned that phrase to me over the last year or two. You know, it’s coming out especially now.

Nina, “Daniel Delos has spoken about the impact Brando had on him.” Yes, for me, he’s the greatest of all time film actor without a doubt. Because he walks the fine line between defiance and vulnerability, and you never know which is going to come when. And he has that obvious animal presence. Francine, “'Streetcar,’ always made me anxious.” I understand. And here we are, 1947, 2024, what’s that? Over 70, 80 years. Extraordinary that a play so long ago can have such an effect still.

Q: Gene, “Is anything about William’s relationship with the New Orleans?” A: Gene, I don’t know about that. I’ll find out. Thank you.

Q: Mante, “Is Stanley a caricature, grotesque figure? No.” A: Yeah, agreed.

Mitzi, “Blanche is too white. Stella is the star.” Yeah. And I think the filming tries to bring it out. That’s why I wanted to show that final image. She comes out as the really strong one and she’s obviously the fragile because her illusions that she’s lived by are gone.

Q: Richard, “Is the boxing element the trope of the White underclass rising by the great white, the counterpart of the Black?” A: Yeah, that could be. I dunno, I never thought of that, Richard. Interesting idea. Thank you.

Yolandi, “I remember Stella calling contests.” Well that’s become one of the great jokes, you know, Stella, Stella. Of course, we’ve got to almost be Tarantino and be self-ironic and parody these things now. Totally, you know. Madeleine, “You know, now it’s become pop fiction.” Literally, Madeleine. Barbara, say thank you. Prisa, thank you. Rita, thank you. Lorna, thanks, very kind comments. Francine, yeah, the ending in the movie, yeah. This was, well, this is close to the ending in the scene there. Naomi, thank you.

Q: Elaine, “Which British contemporary playwrights have written with comparable despair and passion?” A: Well, that’s a lovely way of putting it, Elaine, despair and passion. It’s a great question. I’ll have to give it a bit of thought. I don’t think Pinter really does it, but it’s, in England it’s very different because it’s so minimalist with language and emotion. It’s very minimally expressed in England. Maybe D.H. Lawrence and you know, the “Women in Love,” and all, you know those kind of ones, but it’s not quite the same. You know, I think in England it’s very, very different because the culture and the use of language is very different. A way of expressing emotion is so different, but it’s a great idea. Just to go on. Richard, yeah.

Q: Lorna, “What do you think would be the attraction between Stella and Stanley?” A: Because they’re from very different backgrounds. Yeah, great question. And I think it is because she’s a realist and so is he ultimately. He knows, he’s very self-aware. He’s a Polish immigrant who’s trying to get by, trying to keep a job. He’s getting I’m sure massive discrimination and anti-Polish stuff at work. It’s the late ‘40s. You, know he’s being, you know, I’m sure that he’s being called all sorts of names and attitudes and you know, everything because of that. He’s an outsider. She’s an outsider because she’s brought up to be, you know, the Southern belle, the privileged world, that whole, you can imagine gone with the wind society completely all gone. So, both are very aware of what they’ve come from and how they have to try and make a life, you know, relatively happily or realistically together. They’re realists. Don’t think there’s any illusion or denial in either of them and they want to get on with it. They don’t want to live in the past, but the past is always going to come back, because society and history don’t stop haunting the present.

Rita, “Elaine Seinfeld screaming Stella.” Great scene. Fantastic. I love all the parodies, of course. Yeah, room at the top. Yeah, it could be room at the top. “A Look Back in Anger,” that’s great. Yeah, thanks Alice for reminding me. John Osborne, “Look Back in Anger.” That’s the play, absolutely. 'Cause there, the characters are looking in the '50s are looking back 'cause this, they were part of the '40s generation, who win the war. And all the hope, and the promise, and the national health service and everything, the wealth, semi welfare, all the hope and the promise of the war has gone. They look back in anger, what did they fight for? And they lost everything. Economically despair. And is there any hope? Look back in anger the promise betrayed, I guess. Great point, Alice. Thank you. That would be the play which might be comparable of despair and hope. And yet they have to be rooted in the present reality. Louise, “Elaine May and Mark Nichols to the parody of despair and passion.” Ah, different cultures. Great. Thank you very much.

Okay, well thank you very much everybody and really appreciate and your wonderful comments at the end. Hope everybody takes care in these really difficult dark times and has a great rest of the weekend. Jess, thanks so much for all your help.