Streetcar Named Desire, A

Streetcar Named Desire, A (1947), a play by Tennessee Williams. [Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 855 perf.; Pulitzer Prize, NYDCC Award.] The faded Southern belle Blanche Du Bois ( Jessica Tandy), who lives with illusions of past elegances, comes to visit her sister, Stella ( Kim Hunter), and brother‐in‐law, the coarse, brutish Stanley Kowalski ( Marlon Brando) in their shabby apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The visit becomes more permanent when it is revealed that Blanche lost the family home and has no money or job. Tensions between Stanley and Blanche mount, but Stella, who is pregnant and expecting to deliver any day, loves them both and tries to keep peace. Blanche starts dating Stanley's lonely, kindly co‐worker Harold “Mitch” Mitchell ( Karl Malden), but Stanley breaks up the relationship when he tells Mitch about what he has found out about Blanche's past: She was no better than a whore back in her hometown and was fired from her teaching job for trying to seduce one of her students. When Stella goes to the hospital to have the baby, the rivalry between Stanley and Blanche climaxes when he rapes her. Blanche suffers a nervous breakdown and is sent to an asylum. To the doctor who comes for her, she remarks, “Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Brooks Atkinson wrote of Williams and his drama, “Out of poetic imagination and ordinary compassion, he has spun a poignant and luminous story.” The original production was made especially memorable by Jo Mielziner's glowingly imaginative setting, Elia Kazan's taut yet sympathetic direction, and the tender, understanding portrayal of Tandy. But for many playgoers the evening's high point was Brando's rough‐hewn strength and magnetic performance, a triumph of the method acting style. The drama has been revived continually in regional theatres and in New York, most memorably in 1973 with Rosemary Harris and James Farentino. Marlon BRANDO (b. 1924), a native of Omaha, had appeared in I Remember Mama (1944), Truckline Café (1946), and Candida (1946), among other plays, before making this, his final stage appearance. Since then his work has been confined to films.