"Rose Tattoo" Author Tells Of Filming, The Key West Citizen (Article, 1954)
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"Rose Tattoo" Author Tells Of Filming
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD -- Let's have a talk with Tennessee Williams.
The highly successful playwright has been lingering in Hollywood to oversee his latest film investigation of Southern culture, "The Rose Tattoo." He watched on the set as Burt Lancaster, Anna Magnani and Marisa Pavan shouted through a frantic scene. When it was over, he retired to a dressing room to chat.
Williams speaks quietly and articulately and wears a rather heavy mustache. He was dressed in what you might call a Howard Hughes outfit--a well-worn tweed sport coat, sand tan trousers and sneakers. He said he had seen three weeks of the filming in Key West and two weeks here, making it the longest stretch he has experienced on a picture.
He said he had learned much and could direct one of his stories. "But why should I, when I have such able men as Elia Kazan and Danny Mann?" he said. The latter is directing "Tattoo."
This is his fourth screen play. He has an original which Kazan will make next summer at Warners. I asked him about the two others he did at Warners.
"I wasn't happy with 'The Glass Menagerie.'" he admitted. "After I left the project they made a lot of changes I didn't approve of. They were mostly concessions to popular tastes. But the mistake was that popular tastes have matured and are no longer what the studios think they are."
He said he objected to scenes showing Gertrude Lawrence at a hall in earlier years--"They were trying to get a 'Gone With the Wing' effect."
On the other hand, he was pleased with "A Streetcar Named Desire," which won Vivien Leigh an Oscar.
"They filmed it as I had written it," he remarked. "We had to make one change because of censorship. We couldn't mention homosexuality as a human problem. The screen should be allowed to deal in all human problems, as long as they are done in good taste."
