A droll and engrossing carnal comedy. . . . Kazan does some of his finest work here.
Pauline Kael
A dilapidated antebellum manor is the fitting site for Tennessee Williams’s menagerie à trois, deemed “salacious” by the Catholic National Legion of
Decency. The featured threesome are Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), a bigoted, cotton gin operator; his wife, Baby Doll (Carroll Baker), a vacuous nineteen-year-old vamp; and Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach), a Sicilian émigré and Archie’s archrival. When the rivalry between gin operators becomes heated, smooth-talking Silva tries to move in on Archie’s cotton candy. Shot in Benoit, Mississippi, director Kazan focuses his Northern eyes on the Deep South and clearly sees the rampant xenophobia, the disenfranchised laborers, the “colored only” water fountains. Steve Seid
Written by Tennessee Williams, from his one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.
Photographed by Boris Kaufman. With Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach,
Mildred Dunnock. (114 mins, B&W, 35mm, From UCLA Film and Television
Archive, permission Warner Bros.)
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