Sweet Bird of Youth

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This article is about the Tennessee Williams play. For the music group, see Sweet Bird of Youth (band)

Sweet Bird of Youth is a play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town with a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis, hoping she can help him to break into the movies. Back in his home town, he runs into the girl whose father, the sheriff, had run him out of town years before.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production history 2.1 Broadway 2.2 London 3 Film and television adaptions

[edit] Plot

The play begins with the protagonist, Chance Wayne, drinking coffee in a hotel room in St. Cloud, Florida, while Princess Kosmonopolis, alias of aging actress Alexandra del Lago, sleeps in the bed in the room. Princess agrees to help Chance start a career in acting. Later, we discover that Chance has come back to reconcile with Heavenly Finley, a girlfriend to whom Chance caused to have a venereal disease, much to the chagrin of Boss Finley, her father and a powerful figure in the town. In the end, Chance fails to reconcile with Heavenly and it is implied that he is castrated at the hands of Boss Finley in retribution for corrupting his daughter.

[edit] Production history

Sweet Bird of Youth (film)
original movie poster
Directed by	Richard Brooks
Produced by	Pandro S. Berman
Written by	Richard Brooks
Starring	Paul Newman Geraldine Page Ed Begley Shirley Knight
Music by	Bronislau Kaper
Cinematography	Milton R. Krasner
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	1962
Running time	120 min
IMDb profile

[edit] Broadway

The original production was produced on March 10, 1959 by Cheryl Crawford at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York City. Directed by Elia Kazan, it starred Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Sidney Blackmer, Madeleine Sherwood, Diana Hyland, Logan Ramsey, John Napier, and Rip Torn. Bruce Dern also played a small role. The production was nominated for 4 Tony Awards, including Best Actress for Geraldine Page. The play ran for 375 performances.

A revival opened on December 29, 1975 at the Harkness Theatre, in a production directed by Edwin Sherin, starring Christopher Walken as Chance Wayne and Irene Worth as Princess Kosmonopolis. Irene Worth won the 1976 Tony Award for Best Actress.

[edit] London

It took 26 years for Sweet Bird of Youth to reach London's West End. It opened on July 8, 1985 at the Haymarket Theatre in a production directed by Harold Pinter and starring Lauren Bacall and Michael Beck with James Grout.

[edit] Film and television adaptions

In 1962, the play was made into a film starring Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Madeleine Sherwood, Ed Begley, Rip Torn and Mildred Dunnock. The movie was adapted and directed by Richard Brooks.

It won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ed Begley), and was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Geraldine Page) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Shirley Knight).

Sweet Bird of Youth was made for television in 1989, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mark Harmon, Valerie Perrine, Ronnie Claire Edwards and Rip Torn. It was adapted by Gavin Lambert and directed by Nicolas Roeg.

In an early scene of the film Death Becomes Her, Meryl Streep performs in a song-and-dance number from Songbird!, a parody musical adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth.

The Plays of Tennessee Williams

Adam and Eve on a Ferry, And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens, At Liberty, Auto Da Fé, Baby Doll (screenplay), Battle of Angels, Beauty Is the Word, Camino Real, Cairo! Shanghai! Bombay!, Candles to the Sun, The Case of the Crushed Petunias, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Chalky White Substance, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, Creve Coeur, The Dark Room, Demolition Downtown, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, The Fat Man's Wife, The Frosted Glass Coffin, Fugitive Kind, Garden District, The Gentleman Callers (screenplay), The Glass Menagerie, Grand, Hello from Bertha, A House Not Meant to Stand, I Can't Imagine Tomorrow, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, Kingdom of Earth / Seven Descents of Myrtle, Kirche, Kŭche und Kinder, The Lady of Larkspur Lotion, The Last of My Solid Gold Watches, Lifeboat Drill, The Long Goodbye, Lord Byron's Love Letter (libretto), The Magic Tower, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Moony's Kid Don't Cry, The Mutilated, The Night of the Iguana, Not about Nightingales, The Notebook of Trigorin, Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws, The One Exception, Orpheus Descending, Out Cry, The Palooka, A Perfect Anaysis Given by a Parrot, Period of Adjustment, The Pink Room, Portait of a Madonna, The Purification, The Red Devil Battery Sign, The Rose Tattoo, Something Unspoken, Slapstick Tragedy (The Mutilated and The Gnädiges Fräulein), Something Cloudy, Something Clear, Spring Storm, Stairs to the Roof, Steps Must be Gentle, A Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly, Last Summer, Summer and Smoke, Summer at the Lake, Small Craft Warnings, Sweet Bird of Youth, Tiger Tail, This Is (An Entertainment), This is Peaceable Kingdom/Good Luck God, This Property is Condemned, Three Players of a Summer Game, Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton, The Two-Character Play, Vieux Carré, Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis?, You Touched Me

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