| |
Baby Doll: Excuse me, Mr. Vacarro, but I wouldn't dream of eatin' a nut that a man had cracked in his mouth.
Silva Vacarro: You've got many refinements.
Baby Doll: Thank you.
|
Silva Vacarro: Your husband sweats more than any man I know, and now I can understand why.
|
Baby Doll: I feel so weak. Oh, my head is buzzy.
Silva Vacarro: Fuzzy?
Baby Doll: Hmm. Fuzzy and buzzy. My head is swingin' round. Must have been that swingin' that done it.
|
Archie Lee Meighan: Today is the fifth day of November. Tomorrow is the sixth day of November, and the day after that is November seventh. And you know what day that is, don't you? November seventh is your 20th birthday.
Baby Doll: Ain't that sweet of you to remember. Where's my birthday present?
Archie Lee Meighan: Oh, you'll get your birthday present, providin' you haven't forgotten the agreement between us, which comes due on that day.
Baby Doll: Oh, the agreement?
Archie Lee Meighan: Yeah, the agreement, that you swore on a Bible to keep your side of... Have I ever laid hands on you since we've been married?
Baby Doll: Yeah, as often as possible.
|
Baby Doll: Listen here, Archie Lee. I've been to school in my life - and I'm a magazine reader!
|
Baby Doll: Well, let's go in now. We got nothing to do but wait for tomorrow and see if we're remembered or forgotten.
|
Archie Lee Meighan: Is that what they call a Mona Lisa smile you got on your puss?
|
Baby Doll: I don't want to be in the same room with a man that would make me live in a house with no furniture! My daddy would turn over in his grave if he knew, he would just turn over in his grave.
Archie Lee Meighan: If your daddy turned in his grave as often as you say he'd turn in his grave, that old man would plow up the graveyard.
|
Description
Scandalous in its time, still steamy today: Tennessee Williams' ribald tale of Mississippi child bride (Carroll Baker) and the men (Karl Malden, Eli Wallach) who lust after her. Year: 1956 Director: Eli Kazan Starring: Carl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
Amazon.com essential video
An earlier Elia Kazan film, the 1949 Pinky, now seems dated because its "scandalous" subject, miscegenation, has become a social nonissue. If anything, the reputation of this legendary 1956 romp about a child bride in the Deep South has shifted the other way; the ripe image of Carol Baker as a mentally challenged nymphet who sucks her thumb as she lures grown men into her crib (an actual crib!) would probably be hounded off the screen today. When it was originally released the film won a "condemned" rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency, but it isn't as explicit as that might suggest. Current audiences are likely to be shocked not by what's actually shown, but by the mere fact that the movie is a comedy, in effect a sex farce, adapted by Tennessee Williams from a couple of his raunchier one-act plays. Karl Malden is the divine cream puff's sad-sack husband, who has agreed to keep hands off until she turns 19; Eli Wallach is a high-stepping rival in the cotton business who harbors no such scruples. --David Chute
|
|