Tennessee Williams and Company: His Essential Screen Actors

by John DiLeo

Tennessee Williams and Company: His Essential Screen Actors takes a critical look at eleven actors and their roles, bonded by their sustained artistic and professional association with Williams, specifically the success, and sometimes failure, of their interpretations of his characters for the screen. The results include some of the more remarkable performances in movie history, from Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in "A Streetcar Named Desire" to Anna Magnani in "The Rose Tatto"o and Geraldine Page in "Sweet Bird of Youth". DiLeo takes you through the entire careers of these eleven indelible stars, while giving his main attention to their Williams performances. From the underrated (Joanne Woodward in "The Fugitive Kind", Madeleine Sherwood in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") to the overrated (Elizabeth Taylor in "Suddenly, Last Summer", Paul Newman in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"), Tennessee Williams and Company takes an entertaining and intensely detailed ride alongside some of the most inexhaustibly fascinating actors and actresses of our screen heritage, each of them challenged by the unforgettable characters of the one and only Tennessee Williams.

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2010

About the author

John DiLeo is the author of eight books about classic movies: AND YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW CLASSIC MOVIES (1999, reissued in 2013), 100 GREAT FILM PERFORMANCES YOU SHOULD REMEMBER BUT PROBABLY DON'T (2002), SCREEN SAVERS: 40 REMARKABLE MOVIES AWAITING REDISCOVERY (2007), TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND COMPANY: HIS ESSENTIAL SCREEN ACTORS (2010), SCREEN SAVERS II: MY GRAB BAG OF CLASSIC MOVIES (2012), TEN MOVIES AT A TIME: A 350-FILM JOURNEY THROUGH HOLLYWOOD AND AMERICA 1930-1970 (2017), THERE ARE NO SMALL PARTS: 100 OUTSTANDING FILM PERFORMANCES WITH SCREEN TIME OF TEN MINUTES OR LESS (2022), and NOT EVEN NOMINATED: 40 OVERLOOKED COSTARS OF OSCAR-WINNING PERFORMANCES (2024).

Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, John currently resides in Milford, PA. He went to Ithaca College and received a B.F.A. in Theatre Arts. After thirteen years of on-and-off stage acting, and one film credit (THE JERKY BOYS), he switched to writing about film.

John has been a contributing book reviewer for the Washington Post‘s Book World and frequently hosts classic-film series, appears on radio programs, conducts film-history seminars, and has been an annual participant in the Black Bear Film Festival in the Poconos where he conducted onstage interviews with Farley Granger (2005), Arlene Dahl (2006), Marge Champion (2010), Keir Dullea (2014), Jane Powell (2015), Rex Reed (2016), Tab Hunter (2017), Lorna Luft (2018), and Jane Alexander (2018). His website is johndileo.com and he's on Instagram at john.dileo.12.

Born in 1961 in Brooklyn, John was raised on Long Island and graduated from Ithaca College in 1982 with a B.F.A.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I didn't think I was a fan of Tennessee Williams. And, maybe I am not. But, this book was a really interesting read. I guess, in Tennessee Williams case, I like the movies better than the books!