Suddenly, Last Summer
- Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Writer: Tennessee Williams; Gore Vidal
- Producer: Sam Spiegel
CGiii Comment
Psycho-surgery?!? In an old library with dodgy electrics?!?
Clift's acting is stale...with a paralysed top lip.
Hepburn plays, erm, bad Hepburn...and Taylor, crivens, who said that this unhinged woman could act?!?
A thoroughly preposterous script, a carnivorous plant and a poofy poet who gets eaten, not by the plant, but by...well, that's the end.
Insanity must have been prevalent at Columbia - laughable because of its ludicrousness.
Tennessee Williams must have been laughing all the way to the bank and bar.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable, attempts to bribe Dr. Cukrowicz, a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly. Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian. Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian's mysterious death that she witnessed while on holiday together in Spain the previous summer.
Cast & Characters
Elizabeth Taylor as Catherine Holly;
Katharine Hepburn as Mrs. Violet Venable;
Montgomery Clift as Dr. Cukrowicz;
Albert Dekker as Dr. Lawrence J. Hockstader;
Mercedes McCambridge as Mrs. Grace Holly;
Gary Raymond as George Holly;
Mavis Villiers as Miss Foxhill;
Patricia Marmont as Nurse Benson;
Joan Young as Sister Felicity;
Maria Britneva as Lucy;
Sheila Robbins as Dr. Hockstader's Secretary;
David Cameron as Young Blonde Interne;
Eddie Fisher as Street Urchin;
Frank Merlo as Audience member at operation;
Beatrice Shaw as Elderly lady