On Blu-ray: Baby Doll (1956) Terrorizes the Catholic Legion of Decency

 

Baby Doll (1956) is an outrageous, erotic, woozy ride. Condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, it consistently pushed the limits of respectability and almost entirely through the power of suggestion. Screenwriter/Playwright Tennessee Williams had plenty to write about life in a heated Southern milieu, and this was one of his boldest statements. The film is now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive. 

Carroll Baker is the titular Baby Doll Meighan, a nineteen-year-old who is married to the scummy and horny cotton miller Archie (Karl Malden). She was his child bride; it was her dying father’s way of ensuring she was cared for, but the pair has struck a bargain that they won’t go to bed until she’s twenty. 

However, now that they’re one sleep away from the big day, Baby Doll is reluctant to fill her side of the bargain. Of course Archie is eager to make things official with his bride, but he’s distracted by crime: he burns down the cotton mill of his competitor, the Italian immigrant Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach). 

Vacarro quickly figures out the cause of his misfortune and he comes to the Meighan residence to get proof, knowing that the community around him will not protect him and that he needs all the evidence he can get. He attacks with charm. Baby Doll is home alone, so he attempts to woo the information out of her. 

Accustomed to being leered at by the disheveled and vile Archie, she’s confused and excited by the attentions of this slick and handsome man in black. They both enjoy what turns into an afternoon of seductive games. Of course Vacarro is laser-focused on getting a signed confession from Baby Doll and protecting his interests, but he finds himself increasingly delighted by their erotic interactions. Flustered and stunned by the methods of this man with gentlemanly tendencies and dignity, Baby Doll begins to realize she couldn't tolerate Archie ever touching her. 

It’s all a heated mess of desires, with Baby Doll the only innocent (even her elderly Aunt Rose Comfort [Mildred Dunnock] proves herself to be greedy and dishonest); though over the course of a day she grows up a lot. Archie is all greed and lust; there’s no nuance. On the other hand, Vacarro is complicated. While he’s ferociously focused on his own interests, he has the sense to slow down and appreciate the charm of the woman he is seducing, and somehow manage to have it both ways. 

The featurette Baby Doll: See No Evil is included in the special features on the disc. It includes interviews with Baker, Wallach, and Baker. In a jaw dropping moment, Baker says she was surprised that the film was viewed as scandalous. 

Baker herself said that they were all probably so wrapped up in the process of filming that they didn’t process the reality of what they were making. Talk about being absorbed. I don’t see how anyone involved with Baby Doll could have missed how outrageous it was, because every moment of this film throbs with eroticism. I have often wondered how it was ever made in the conformist climate of the 1950s. Did the studio see the name Tennessee Williams and think “prestigious playwright, we’re good”? 

Even at the time it was made, Baby Doll tread a complicated path: while it aroused moral indignation, it also won major attention during award season. In a way it isn’t hard to understand. It’s simply a great film: entertaining, phenomenally acted, beautifully staged by director Elia Kazan, and full of brilliant insights about human desire. 

In addition to the featurette, the special features on the disc include a trailer for the film. Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection .

On Blu-ray: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell and Karl Malden in The Hanging Tree (1959)

As Gary Cooper neared the end of his career he appeared tired, ill, and not quite himself due to a facelift that might not have turned out the way he’d hoped. While he no longer had the bashful, baby-giraffe-lashed sex appeal of his youth though, he was still magnetic. He aroused different emotions, but they were no less intense. It is this Cooper that you see in his final western, The Hanging Tree (1959), which has now made its debut on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.

While Cooper spent much of career in a cowboy hat, it was as a rider of the plains, not as a doctor lancing a carbuncle on Karl Malden’s behind. That’s just what he does here as Dr. Joseph Frail, a medical man with a dark past who sets up shop in a Montana gold camp.

The mysterious Frail has lives by a varied moral code, frequently giving in to his anger, but protective in his own way of those who are vulnerable. When he takes a sluice thief on the run Rune (Ben Piazza) into indentured servitude, it seems a foul move, until you realize the boy would probably die without the protection and productive life Frail offers him. His protection of stagecoach hold-up victim Elizabeth Mahler (Maria Schell) is less complicated; she arouses his sense of chivalry, and while a romance must inevitably develop between the star and leading lady, his paternal impulses as well.

With her wet, icy blue eyes and soulful demeanor, Schell is out of place in the Wild West. She also seems a better match for Rune, who matches her energy and naivety. While the pair bond over their determined and businesslike pursuit of gold, they are both beholden to Frail, to whom they are aware they owe their survival.

In a complicated role that inspires a mix of amusement and revulsion, Karl Malden injects much-needed energy as a miner who is capable of decency, but imprisoned by his desires. George C. Scott is also a stand-out, in his debut role, as a fiery preacher who is Frail’s nemesis.

The film is ultimately an intriguing oddity. It doesn’t quite gel, but its disparate elements entertain in their own way. It is a decent farewell to cowboy Cooper.

The disc includes a trailer for the film.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

Karl Malden, 1912-2009

Goodbye to Karl Malden, a deeply respected and respectable actor who had a legendary career on the silver screen, television and the stage. A whole generation knew him as the long-time pitchman for American Express, but he started his career in New York, onstage. Though he had a small role in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), Malden didn’t find screen success until after his service in World War II. His breakout role was in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a performance which won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Kazan also directed him in his other Oscar-nominated performance in On the Waterfront (1954). Though he had an overall aura of solid decency, Malden was a diverse actor. He could play that good guy role better than anyone, as he showed in Streetcar, Waterfront and the Bette Davis thriller Dead Ringer (1964), but he could also play sleazy, as he did in Baby Doll (1957) and he was downright despicable in the Troy Donahue potboiler Parrish (1961). Later in his career, he had a five year run as Detective Lt. Mike Stone on the television police drama The Streets of San Francisco, a role which earned him four Emmy nominations (he finally won in 1984 for the television miniseries Fatal Vision). Malden was married to Mona Greenburg for over 70 years. They had two daughters together, one of whom co-authored his 1997 autobiography, Where Do I Start?. His unique presence, visage and intelligent intensity have contributed to so many great, enduring screen moments. May he rest in peace.