LIFE LIST UPDATE – No. 941: Watch 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

(Editor's Note: This post was meant for publication on Monday, but I couldn't get it online due to technical difficulties. Enjoy even though it's a few days late.)

I scratched another item off my “life list” on Monday of last week when I finally took the time to watch the classic movie, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

This 1951 movie is based on Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play (which I haven’t read), and I added this movie to my “life list” last year because it (and the play) are considered Southern classics.

For those of you unfamiliar with “A Streetcar Named Desire,” it’s about a young married couple, Stanley and Stella Kowalski, who live in a small apartment in New Orleans in the late 1940s. Stella’s sister, Blanche DuBois, comes to visit, and tempers and passions begin to flair amidst the couple’s band of friends and neighbors. The movie climaxes when Stella has Stanley’s baby, and Stanley rapes Blanche, who has a nervous breakdown and is committed to a mental hospital.

The motion picture version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” was directed by Elia Kazan, and Williams worked with Oscar Saul on the screenplay. Marlon Brando played the role of Stanley, and Kim Hunter played Stella. Vivien Leigh starred as Blanche DuBois, and Karl Malden played Harold “Mitch” Mitchell. Other cast members included Rudy Bond, Nick Dennis, Peg Hillias, Wright King and Richard Garrick.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” won four Academy Awards in 1952, but not for Best Picture, which went to “An American In Paris.” It won in the categories of Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black and White. The Library of Congress included it in the National Film Registry in 1999, and in 1998 the American Film Institute ranked it No. 45 on its list of “100 Years… 100 Movies” best-of list.

I’d always wondered about where the title of this movie comes from, and you find out pretty quick during the movie. The title is a reference to the streetcar route, “Desire,” that takes Blanche to the Kowalski apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue in the French Quarter. It turns out that this was a real streetcar route at one time, but it was shut down and converted into a New Orleans city bus route in 1948.

Beforehand, I also knew that this movie was well known for the famous scene in which Marlon Brando screams “Stella!” from the street to his wife who is in a neighbor’s upstairs apartment. This iconic scene is often parodied in other movies and TV shows, and it has even inspired an annual contest in New Orleans called the “Stanley & Stella Shouting Contest.” Held each year during the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, men and women alike have been signing up to compete in this contest since 1997.

In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off my “life list,” and I recommend that you watch “A Streetcar Named Desire” if you’ve never seen it. How many of you out there have ever watched it? What did you think about it? Did you like it or not? Let us know in the comments section below.