Baby Doll Elia Kazan Views

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Baby Doll is a 1956 black comedy [1]/drama film directed by Elia Kazan.[2][3] It was produced by Kazan and Tennessee Williams, and adapted by Williams from his own one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.[4] It stars Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach, in his feature-film debut, and features Mildred Dunnock and Rip Torn.

Although the film's title card says Tennessee William's Baby Doll , and the film is based on Williams' one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, in his autobiography director Elia Kazan claimed that Williams was only half-heartedly involved in writing the screenplay, of which Kazan himself actually wrote the majority.[10] The film was shot in Benoit, Mississippi in the J.C. Burrus house, built in 1848, the only antebellum house in Bolivar County. Other locations were Greenville, Mississippi and New York City.[10] According to Kazan, Williams did not stay long while the film was shooting in Benoit, because of the way people looked at him.[10] Some locals were used for minor roles, and one, Boll Weevil not only acted but was the production unit's utility man as well.[10]

The working titles for the film included the name of the play and Mississippi Woman ; actress Carroll Baker claims that Kazan changed the title to Baby Doll as a present to her.[10] Although Baker was Kazan's first choice for the role, Williams would have preferred to see Marilyn Monroe get the part.[10]

Among Kazan’s most controversial films, this dynamic and intensely cinematic adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ provocative study of sexual desire inflamed a passionate outcry from the Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency, who tried to derail the film by branding it with their lowest rating of “C,” for “condemned.” Centered around Carroll Baker’s still shocking performance as the thumb-sucking yet sexually precocious Baby Doll and principally shot in rural Mississippi, Kazan’s mid-career masterpiece offers one of the finest renditions of the psychosexual territory of Williams’ mysteriously deep, Deep South. Print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive.