Customer Reviews

When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of "A Streetcar Named Desire"

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The title of this book is by no means deceiving in it's pulp/tabloid style. The author, while having done much research, revels in his own streaming opinions about Williams, Brando, 'Streetcar' and more importantly, what he 'thinks' happened based on pure speculation. Theres no doubt the simple facts of this production and its titan creators is enough to be compelling material but I often found some of the belittling commentary irritating.
An entire paragraph on Brando's "bubble butt" or describing LAST TANGO IN PARIS as "limp-dick cinema" should give the reader some idea of the level of cattiness married to erudition you have here. If you are looking for less of a 'personal' contribution from the author I would recommend Donald Spoto's book on Williams and Peter Manso's on Brando (the latter cited repeatedly in this book).
If you are simply looking for an information-laden, STAR magazine read for the summer...you've come to the right place. Or, if you're like me, you want any kernal of wisdom not already covered in other tomes (i.e. Kazan's A LIFE) you may turn over a few stones between the speculation and hetero-phobic opinions.

This is a fantastic book; I devoured it in one sitting. It details everything you'd ever want to know about Tennessee Williams' famous play, and the resulting movie, as well as subsequent appearances on stage and TV. The intriguing anecdotes regarding Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kazan, and others connected with "Streetcar" will keep you engrossed for hours. I've read Mr. Staggs' previous books, and enjoyed them very much. I must say, though, that he really outdoes himself with When Blanche Met Brando. He delivers the definitive word on "Streetcar" in all its incarnations. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Broadway and Hollywood history!

I enjoyed Sam Staggs' book about "Streetcar!" However, I didn't find it as thorough as his other books about "All About Eve" and "Sunset Boulevard." There were plenty of details about the Brando-Tandy & Brando-Leigh versions of "Streetcar," but hardly a mention of the Ralph Meeker and Anthony Quinn/Uta Hagen productions of "Streetcar...!" There was one humourous mention of Judith Evelyn as Blanche, but I would have been more interested in hearing about these two versions rather than all the other operatic and various foreign productions of "Streetcar"!

I was thrilled to discover a book dedicated entirely to the history of this seminal piece of theatre. Imagine my disappointment when I found the author constantly injecting himself into the proceedings and peppering his prose with cheesy "insights," mainly about Brando's sex appeal or catty tangents that don't further one's understanding of the play/film. The editors must have been asleep at the wheel on this one as the book hopscotches around and, sadly, gives short shrift to the actual writing of the play. Ultimately the title's promise of something "Scandalous" is never really delivered, aside from some scandalously bad writing. The upside to this book is that it is meticulously researched and does contain some revelatory moments, especially interviews with long-forgotten actors, designers and behind-the-scenes players that helped shape the legend of "Streetcar."

Delicious informative and very well researched. This is a great history in a fun format of the Best theatrical and film work ever produced.

I don't want to be harsh, but here goes.
'Exhaustively researched' is accurate, given the bibliography he consulted and referenced whatever he could mine from a daunting pile of works. One is grateful it all seems to be compiled in one volume but in the end was it necessary?

Staggs can't help but butt in with his personal opinions and unfounded speculation every now and again and you know he is scraping the bottom of the barrel when he starts obssesively listing every actress who ever played Blanche, tried on her costume or even contemplated playing Blanche, any headline that was ever printed that used the phrase 'kindness of strangers' and perhaps the most pitiful excuse ever to keep going with the topic, going so far as to invent backstage gossip.


I don't know if this amounts to a whole pile of beans or not, but you do feel that he took the lazy tabloid route and picked the film to pieces looking for scandal that wasn't really there. The author sheepishly admits as much. There have been brilliant assessments of Streetcar that have appraised the play, the social undercurrents and madness which inspired it, and it's impact to the public. Don't look for it here. This book doesn't have this solid foundation of academic scholarship or critique. It's thesis is mere curiosity. It's more of a complete idiots guide that goes in all directions rather than an studied annotation. Maybe it is simply that the story of putting Streetcar out on film isn't as fascinating as Gone With the Wind (see the excellent 'Scarlett, Rhett and a Cast of Thousands) but still there is good stuff there, only it might have come off better had the material been given more thought and placed in context.

With regards to Vivien Leigh, not much is actually said. Of course she did have a mental breakdown afterwards but Staggs completely misses how dangerously close she came into the psyche of Blanche in real life, or why. Likewise no assessment of Brando, and his interpretation of Stanley other than he might have wanted to bed Leigh (but then, what man wouldn't?) . The book seems to run out of steam after the intial foray into the shooting schedule. Even Tenessee Williams creative role is glossed over.

It seems inevitable the reader will, by the end, finish by sighing 'so what?' I know I did. It's an exhausting and dare I say it, in the end, pointless read. I kind of prefer my stories to have at least a moral to them. In then end it's All About Staggs Desire To Know Everything About Streetcar than anything else.

This is the third of an apparent series. Perhaps Staggs will keep going on a fourth? What next.. Lolita?

Having been in love with Tennessee Williams works, particularly a Streetcar Named Desire, this book was a thrill to read. A man who has obviously done his research covers every nuance of the play and film.

I am now proud to know how everything was produced, the stories behind everyone from the costumer to the producer to actors, and continue to recognize them in other films. He gives you a view of many many different Blanches and productions, as well as a through view of the most famous ones.

And unlike the Tennessee Williams bio. by Donald Spoto, it rejoices the play rather than tries to find the negative.

It is everything you wanted to know about the play and more. And all in all the author clearly demonstrates a love for the play, and all it's beautiful details.

i enjoy sam staggs retelling of history. it is so obvious that he loves the films he researches. and it's just as obvious that he's a gay as a bunch of purple tulips!

i read through this book a good three times because the amount of research and interaction with the information is so dense that you just don't catch all of it the first time.

which film is next in his lexicon--'the women'--of course!

Like other reviewers, I was delighted to find a book dedicated to the fabulous "Streetcar named Desire". The book doubtlessly is entertaining, at least most of the time. The style is chatty, the author indulges in rumors, anecdotes and gossip, never hesitating to give a highly subjective viewpoint. As he doesn't pretend to be objective, I didn't mind too much, though I would have preferred more information and less gossip. Still, most of it was amusing to read. I don't know much about Brando and the author's chit-chatty information about him made Brando come to life for me. - Sometimes, I was a bit lost when the author seemed to forget that not everybody is as familiar with all Hollywood personalities or wannabee personalities. His overly familiar way of talking about people I never heard of, the lack of at least one or two sentences of background information, made some passages unclear to me.

What I thoroughly enjoyed were the interpretations of the play and its characters, some by the author himself, some quoted from others. I would have liked more of this. Also, his description of mimic and camera work during the first scene of the movie was very perceptive. I watched this scene right afterwards and did see it with different eyes. Again, more of that would have been great. Those - in my opinion - were the best parts of the book.

As mentioned by another reviewer, the information about Vivien Leigh and her being affected by playing Blanche was highly insufficient. It is such a fascinating topic and one that would have deserved more coverage. I was disappointed by the lacklustre handling of this topic. Also, less rehashed gossip and more information would have improved the chapter on Vivien Leigh tremendously.

Generally, I was often surprised - and disappointed - by the author's choice of what to cover in great detail and what to cover only cursorily. I didn't need to know every memo, phone call and detail of the preproduction phase. Many of the actor biographies were extremely boring. If someone did nothing interesting apart from having a tiny part in Streetcar named Desire, I don't want to read about that person's life in detail. The chapter on several actresses who played Blanche or could have played Blanche was tedious. The author gives descriptions of several actresses and how they got to play Blanche. Most of the time, these descriptions weren't interesting, they didn't contain any additional information except for "XY always wanted to play Blanche and then played her in XY theatre on this date." This doesn't make good reading. It could have been limited to the few interesting background stories.

Sometimes, the writing seemed utterly unstructured. Anecdotes are written down without a combining element, without any attempt to get some nice writing style into them. Three sentences about a Karl Malden anecdote are written at the end of a one-page paragraph with Brando anecdotes, then a new paragraph is started. The Karl Malden anecdote is out of place and one wonders whether nobody edited this book. Small things like this appear repeatedly, making for uninspired writing. This contrasts with several other chapters, giving the impression that the author didn't care about all of his topics.

So, in total, this book is a mixture of highly entertaining, at times witty observations and bland listings of uninteresting facts or gossip. It did give me new information about the play, the movie and some of the actors, but in my opinion it suffers too many weaknesses to be recommendable.