December 3:

1947 : A Streetcar Named Desire opens on Broadway

On this day in 1947, Marlon Brando's famous cry of
"STELLA!" first booms across a Broadway stage,
electrifying the audience at the Ethel Barrymore
Theatre during the first-ever performance of Tennessee
Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.

The 23-year-old Brando played the rough, working-class
Polish-American Stanley Kowalski, whose violent clash
with Blanche DuBois (played on Broadway by Jessica
Tandy), a Southern belle with a dark past, is at the
center of Williams' famous drama. Blanche comes to
stay with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), Stanley's
wife, at their home in the French Quarter of New Orleans; she and Stanley immediately despise each
other. In the climactic scene, Stanley rapes Blanche,
causing her to lose her fragile grip on sanity; the
play ends with her being led away in a straitjacket.

Streetcar, produced by Irene Mayer Selznick and
directed by Elia Kazan, shocked mid-century audiences
with its frank depiction of sexuality and brutality
onstage. When the curtain went down on opening night,
there was a moment of stunned silence before the crowd
erupted into a round of applause that lasted 30
minutes. On December 17, the cast left New York to go
on the road. The show would run for more than 800
performances, turning the charismatic Brando into an
overnight star. Tandy won a Tony Award for her
performance, and Williams was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama.

In 1951, Kazan made Streetcar into a movie. Brando,
Hunter and Karl Malden (as Stanley's friend and
Blanche's love interest) reprised their roles. The
role of Blanche went to Vivien Leigh, the
scenery-chewing star of Gone with the Wind.
Controversy flared when the Catholic Legion of Decency
threatened to condemn the film unless the explicitly
sexual scenes--including the climactic rape--were
removed. When Williams, who wrote the screenplay,
refused to take out the rape, the Legion insisted that
Stanley be punished onscreen. As a result, the movie
(but not the play) ends with Stella leaving Stanley.

A Streetcar Named Desire earned 12 Oscar nominations,
including acting nods for each of its four leads. The
movie won for Best Art Direction, and Leigh, Hunter
and Malden all took home awards; Brando lost to
Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.




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