You won't be disappointed!

just watch it!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Well if this wasn't Eli Wallach's favorite film role I would sure like to know what was. His scenes with Carroll Baker as the Baby Doll of the title were so full of innuendo and steamy desire that as the viewer you simply can't turn away. It's probably no coincidence that the story had it's setting in the sleepy cotton valley of Tiger Tail County. Tiger Tail indeed.I'm curious how Karl Malden managed to land roles like the one he has here as Archie Lee Meighan. He certainly wasn't handsome, so the leading man spot he was sometimes cast in certainly wasn't based on looks. A couple years earlier he portrayed a somewhat mad scientist type who got kind of spooky when he turned on the girl who jilted him in "Phantom of the Rue Morgue". Malden had that same kind of creepy vibe going for him here, especially when he first introduced Baby Doll to Silva Vacarro (Wallach). It's surprising that Vacarro and Archie didn't come to blows in the story with all that went on, that would have been something to see.The unheralded character in all of this has to be Aunt Rose Comfort (Mildred Dunnock). She didn't have much to say but she did it so comically I had to laugh, what with the chocolate candy business at the hospital and all. There was one scene in which she wore a hat and darn if she didn't resemble Harpo Marx. I guess she never did go to work for Silva Vacarro.If you haven't seen the movie before I think you'll probably be mesmerized as I was with the sheer audacity of it all. The middle part of the movie may seem rather slow when Wallach and Baker dominate the screen, but I think that's intensified by one's anticipation for something, anything to happen between the characters. Eventually it does, but not in ways one might expect. You'll just have to see it for yourself.

Perhaps because it's not based on one of his major works, Baby Doll(56) is one of the most successful films adaptations of Tennesese Williams' work. A combination of Tabacco Road, God's Little Acre and Lolita, Baby Doll is a sly, sultry comedy directed with perfect detachment by Elia Kazan. Kazan's attitude is like the townspeople watching the fire;he's an amused observer. The controversy surrounding the film partially explains why the bloated, cameo-studded Around the World in 80 Days won best picture while Baby Doll wasn't even nominated. Decades later it's clear, there wasn't another American film released in 1956 that was as original, daring, entertaining, outrageous or enduring as Baby Doll. The other films nominated for Best Picture of 1956 were Giant, Friendly Persuasion, The Ten Commandments, and The King and I. Kazan, Eli Wallach and Karl Malden were not nominated, but Carroll Baker and Mildred Dunnock were as was Williams' adapted screenplay. The actors here are every bit as impressive as those in Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire(51), and nothing Baker did after Baby Doll comes within striking distance of her performance here. This was Baker's second film;she made her debut in Giant. Praise to Kazan's direction and Williams' dialog. Wallach in his film debut has never been better, his seduction of Baby Doll is breathtaking, and Malden is tremendous as Baby Doll's hapless husband Archie. With authentic atmosphere, arresting compositions and excellent cinematography, Baby Doll is a film classic complete with a controversial past.

I have seen about every Tennessee Williams film, though somehow "Baby Doll" eluded me. Well, sometimes they say "...it's worth the wait" or "...last but not least"--well both phrases seem to have little to do with this film! It is probably the least of the plays translated to film and was a bit of a disappointment.Now if you are looking for sleaze and scandal (something in practically everything Williams wrote), then at least in this sense you won't be disappointed. The film abounds with sexuality, horrible racism, nastiness, a sort of pseudo-pedophilia' and dirt (literally--the home was filthy). It abounds with sexuality and innuendo from start to finish. In this sense, it certainly is entertaining and won't put you to sleep.The problem, then, is that this film is about the least believable of the Williams movies--though "Night of the Iguana" also felt that way to me. The characters just seemed to lack any sense that you might meet such people in real life. It just seemed like sleaze and nastiness for the sheer sake of nastiness--but not at all fun (like "Peyton Place") or examining a darker side of people (like most of Williams' plays). No, instead, the characters just bellowed a lot (particularly Karl Malden who did a great imitation of a walrus in heat) and acted like idiots--not my idea of a good time.By the way, for the ultra-ultra politically correct and easily offended out there, do NOT watch this film. Trust me on this one, folks.

I first saw this film in the late 1960's at one of the great lower Manhattan revival art houses. They were a great place to get an education in cinema, usually showing a double feature for about $2. I must have been about 16 and I thought this film was about the sexiest I had ever seen. I immediately fell in love with Carroll Baker.Seeing it again more than 40 years later, it has lost some of its eroticism, but now I can appreciate Ms. Baker's terrific performance. (I was really surprised when I looked up her age and found that she was really 25 at the time and not 19 as she looks in the movie). In fact, all the main actors, Eli Wallach, Karl Malden and Mildred Dunnock are all wonderful in it.In the 1930's, there were a bunch of screwball comedies usually involving a wealthy man or his son falling in love with a young woman and interacting with her family of offbeat characters (e.g. "You can't take it with you."). Here Williams takes the formula but integrates it into his usual Southern environment and adds healthy douses of talk about sex and seduction. Only the wealthy man (Silva Varcarro) hasn't fallen in love with the young woman, he is just trying to seduce Baby Doll to get revenge for her husband (Archie Lee) setting fire to his cotton gin.The fact that Vacarro is Italian and an outsider in the good old boy community means that he can't get justice through the normal legal channels. He has to seek his revenge through the seduction of Archie Lee's young wife.Archie Lee is both disgusting and pitiable as a Southern aristocrat trying to prove his superiority and breeding, while his financed furniture is being repossessed, his gin mill machinery is broken down, and his wife refuses to let him consummate her marriage. If the film were remade today, I think that in order to enhance the satire and stay true to the spirit of the piece, instead of an Italian suitor, the role would have to be played by a black man. Of course, in 1956, the racists in the South still had enough power to prevent any such movie from even being considered.It is a little ironic that the Klan didn't protest the movie and shut it down because of its wicked satire on Southern well-bred gentlemen and virgin South bells, that was left to Cardinal Spellman and his gang of sexually repressed hypocrites in New York.