Amazon.com reviews for
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

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Elizabeth Taylor Collection (vhs):

Amazon.com video review: Three Elizabeth Taylor films have been collected in this interesting boxed set. Taylor won an Oscar for Butterfield 8, in which she plays a good-time girl who wants to give up hooking because she's found a wealthy john who seems to want her, in this adaptation of a John O'Hara novel. Father of the Bride (remade 40 years later with Steve Martin) is really Spencer Tracy's movie, but Taylor shows a deft hand at light comedy as the daughter about to disrupt her old man's whole life by getting married. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof stars Taylor as Maggie the Cat, trying to make a man out of her husband Brick (Paul Newman) and negotiate the treacherous political shoals in the home of Big Daddy (Burl Ives), in this film version of Tennessee Williams's hit play. --Marshall Fine

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (dvd):

Amazon.com Essentials: Elizabeth Taylor has never been sexier than as Tennessee Williams's hot-blooded Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt, prowling around her boudoir in a slinky white slip. That's how you know her alcoholic, ex-football-player husband, Brick (Paul Newman), must have more than just his leg in a cast. It's the 65th birthday of wealthy (but dying) southern patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives), and his sons Gooper (Jack Carter) and Brick have come to suck up to him for $10 million in inheritance money. Gooper is a family man and father to a brood of "no-neck monsters"; youngest boy Brick is papa's favorite (as if you couldn't tell from the fellow's names), but hasn't sired progeny. Maggie is definitely in heat, but Brick refuses to sleep with her because he suspects her her of being unfaithful with his best friend, who recent committed suicide. Although toned down for the movies, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is vintage Tennessee Williams. The film was directed by Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood, Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry). --Jim Emerson

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (vhs):

Amazon.com Essentials: Maggie is the feline in question, as portrayed by a smoldering, angry Elizabeth Taylor. Paul Newman is her ex-athlete husband, Brick Pollitt, an alcoholic who frustrates and disappoints his wife and his overbearing father. Burl Ives is Big Daddy, the vulgar patriarch of this positively gothic Southern family whose children return to the nest like vultures when they learn he is dying of cancer. Infidelities, addictions, latent homosexuality, depression, unrequited love, and mendacity are woven into this still-powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Though it was somewhat whitewashed by Hollywood, the sentiment remains powerful because of the provocative performances. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Actor and Actress for Newman and Taylor. --Rochelle O'Gorman