Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)

Chance Wayne is a drifter, who goes back to his home town.He drives to a hotel with Princess Kosmonopolis, or actress Alexandra del Lago, a fading movie star.With her help, he wants to become a star.In town, Chance wants to meets his former girlfriend, Heavenly Finley, who is the daughter of a ruthless and corrupt politician 'Boss' Thoman J. Finley.Her family wants to keep her far from Chance.Richard Brooks is the director of Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), a story that's based on Tennessee Williams' play.Paul Newman gives an outstanding performance in the lead.His character may not be the most lovable, but he acts the part so right.Same you could say about Geraldine Page in the part of Alexandra Del Lago, who has a severe drug addiction.Rip Torn, who became her husband the next year, is great as Thomas 'Tom' Finley Jr.Ed Begley is terrific as 'Boss' Finley.Shirley Knight is amazing as Heavenly.And so is Madeleine Sherwood as Miss Lucy, the mistress of Mr. Finley.Mildred Dunnock gives a great performance as Aunt Nonnie.Corey Allen plays Scotty.Dub Taylor plays the assistant manager of the Royal Palms Hotel in St. Cloud, Florida.They're both great.This is a movie about dreams and fantasies, about a man wanting to be something bigger, something greater.Wanting to be famous, that is true to this day also.But now many people seem to want fame without having to work for it.The movie has a few really great scenes.There's a lot of tension in the scene with Miss Lucy and 'Boss' in the hotel room.The ending is mighty impressing.Chance gets beaten up, and he loses his good looks, the one thing he needs to be an actor.But Heavenly doesn't mind.She realizes she loves him and gets in the car with him.They become drifters together.

This well-acted screen version of the Tennessee Williams play makes for entertaining viewing, but it's hopelessly marred by an overly-censored ending that dilutes the story of much of its power.I've never seen or read the original stage version, and I didn't know how the film's ending differed from the original until after I'd watched it (I only knew that it had a happier ending imposed on it), but even I could tell that the film didn't end the way Williams had originally intended. Paul Newman plays Chance Wayne (how's that for a subtle choice of name?), a small-time loser who has dreams of making it big in Hollywood. He's returned to his home town with a zonked out famous actress in tow (played by Geraldine Page). His plan is to blackmail the actress into giving him a movie contract, and then take off for Hollywood with his long-lost love, Heavenly (more subtlety), played by Shirley Knight. Heavenly's father, however, the monstrous political boss Tom Finley (Ed Begley, repulsive), wants better things for his daughter and will stop at nothing to prevent Chance from having his way. This is Tennessee Williams, not exactly the go-to playwright for happy endings, so we know all of these personalities have to be heading toward some sort of tragic conclusion, with a few skeletons jumping out of closets along the way, except that in this version, nothing really all that bad happens: Chance gets to run off with Heavenly, and Begley is told off in the film's final scene by one of the film's minor characters.Oh well....I shouldn't have been surprised. Other than Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire," I haven't yet seen a filmed version of a Tennessee Williams play made at the time Williams was actually writing that comes close to doing his work justice, making me wonder why Hollywood wanted to make movies out of his plays at all.This film's not a total wash though. To compensate for its cowardice, it does offer a number of superb performances, many of the actors recreating the roles they originated on stage. Page is probably the standout, no surprise given the juiciness of her role. Her turnaround near the film's end, when this helpless, wasted actress transforms into a more than capable beast of the Hollywood jungle, is one of the movie's highlights. Newman is very good too as Chance. I always respected Newman for his willingness to play unflattering characters and not take the easy route of the glamorous pretty boy. Shirley Knight and Ed Begley are serviceable. Begley, as usual, is nearly unwatchable, but that's appropriate for such a gross character. Rip Torn, Madeleine Sherwood and Mildred Dunnock appear in smaller roles.Richard Brooks provides the capable if undistinguished direction.Grade: A-

While setting about Sweet Bird of Youth, be fond of the good fragments before the sum total. There are charming notions in which to take pleasure here: The superior pages of a screenplay modified from Tennessee Williams's play, Ed Begley's crooked village official, and above all Geraldine Page's boozy, embittered, failed movie star. Nonetheless, other than those, the film is a damp melodrama. Richard Brooks tailored and directed this pulpy adaptation of Tennessee Williams's dystopian sensationalist script that's told by and large in sporadic flashbacks that fill the mysterious blanks of the present-day battle of molds.Williams's story, and this is essentially Williams's movie, has the central character, a blonde, blue-eyed, hunky ladies' man played by Paul Newman, in a hotel room in a sweaty, humid, miserable town in Florida, while aging actress Geraldine Page sleeps in the bed. She settles on giving the manly man a leg up for a career in acting. Later on, we determine that he has returned to patch things up with a girlfriend whom he gave a venereal disease, much to the passionate fury and embarrassment of Boss Finley, her father and a commanding political official.This decent but forgettable filmed reading inelegantly adjoins Williams's reflections on the potentially unbearable certainty of our past with affected and glaringly scripted dialogue that is meant for stage and not screen. Williams's lyrical tinges and involvedness are stabilized, and the damaged characters firmed to caricatured fonts, however eloquent and articulate ones.Via alterations and amendments, Knight's dilemma is unquestionably implied as an abortion, the sensational shock of Newman and Page's "contract" are minimized, and when Rip Torn's character alerts powerless Newman that he's about to take away "lover boy's meal ticket," what ensues is nearly laughably construed as misleading.Then again, each person we see visibly acting all the way through the words does a pleasant chore of it. Newman's stage-sharpened buoyancy in the role is subdued but by no means staggers. Begley's hamming does intensify the vigor in a gloomy exercise whose gloom could have been stronger. Additionally of note are Madeleine Sherwood as Boss' vindictive mistress.

Tennessee Williams wrote a terrific Paul Newman and Geraldine Page vehicle in this 1962 top-notch production.Newman is certainly Chance Wayne. He hits every emotional height in the role of a hustler trying to outfox an aging movie star, Alexandra Del Largo, played to the hilt by the fabulous Geraldine Page. This is another super performance for Page and Williams seemed to enjoy writing for her as addicted person in both this film as well as "Summer and Smoke" the year before.Ed Begley won the Oscar for his sensational portrayal of an extremely ruthless southern politician who has got it in for Newman for getting his daughter, Shirley Knight, into trouble. Begley knows how to handle that cane for more than just walking.Mildred Dunnock plays her usual soft-spoken but wise sister-in-law to Begley.Rip Torn, son of Begley in the film, is menacing due to his dominance by his outrageous father.Madeleine Sherwood, who costarred with Newman in 1958's "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof," is terrific as Begley's tormented mistress who manages to turn the tables on this vicious character at the end.