The Fugitive Kind (United Artists) (1960)

PUBLICITY MATERIAL Brando, Magnani, Woodward Due In “The Fugitive Kind’ (General Advance) An explosive combination of star and writing talents promise to sear thers. Sohne. Theatre screen next cuentas when Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward open in Tennessee Williams’ shattering drama, “The Fugitive Kind.” The stars are all recent Oscar winners. Maureen Stapleton, Victor Jory, R. G. Armstrong and John Baragrey head the strong supporting cast. A United Artists release, “The Fugitive Kind” was directed by Sidney Lumet from a script by Tennessee Williams and Meade Roberts, produced by Martin Jurow and Richard A. Shepherd. The unmistakable ingredients of excitement and earthiness which Tennessee Williams manages to stir into all of his works is present in “The Fugitive Kind” in a strong brew of violence and romance in a small Southern town. “The Fugitive Kind” is an adaptation of Williams’ own Broadway smash hit “Orpheus Descending.” It marks an unbroken succession of dramatic fireworks that com menced with “The Glass Menagerie” and ran through “A Street The Snakeskin How do you make a snakeskin jacket? This off-beat problem was _presented by playwright Tennessee Williams’ description of the character portrayed by Marlon Brando in the Jurow-Shepherd-Pennebaker film, “The Fugitive Kind,” coming 3 ce Se tosthe @2°.....1 heatre through United Artists release. The description stated simply: “Val (Brando) is wearing a snakeskin jacket.” To Pulitzer Prize winner Williams, the snakeskin jacket symbolized freedom and non-conformity. To Frank Thompson, costume designer for the United Artists release, the snakeskin jacket meant trouble. “After checking all around, I discovered that there was one dealer, located in New York, who had a supply of snakeskins,” Thompson recalls. “But the work just began there.” The story of “The Fugitive Kind” is set in Mississippi. “So I had to find out what sort of snakes are found in that part of the country,” Thompson said. Still FK-25 PAGE 1 4 car Named Desire,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” and “Suddenly Last Summer.” Producers Jurow and Shepherd rocked Hollywood on two fronts in announcing the production of “The Fugitive Kind.” They achieved the near-impossible in gathering such three first-magnitude stars as Brando, Magnani and Woodward for a single motion picture. The producers also decided to steer clear of Hollywood itself by taking their production crew on location in Milton, New York, a_ sleepy Hudson River Valley town which with only a bare minimum of “make-up” was transformed into a perfect replica of a Mississippi Delta hamlet. Marlon Brando plays Val Xavier, toting a guitar and wearing the snakeskin jacket that is the symbol of his individuality. He is running away from himself. Anna Magnani portrays the sombre Lady Torrence, unhappily married and rebelling against the encroachments of age. Joanne Woodward is Carol Cutrere, an uncontrollable, passionate Southern belle, in love with Val in particular and with all men in general. Symbol “Reptilian experts confirmed that we had a choice of two varieties: either python or rattler. At that point I'd been through 50 varieties of the creepers.” Next came the decision to give the nod to the pythons, and the problem of finding skins that matched began. “Looking for two snakeskins that match identically is like looking for two fingerprints that are exactly the same,” Thompson says. “I went through 200 skins before I found three I could use—that’s how many I needed to make the jacket. Then I had to find three more, to make an extra jacket for Brando in case the first one was damaged during shooting. This took four weeks. Despite the difficulties, costume designer Thompson now finds himself a snakeskin enthusiast. “It’s waterproof, flexible, cool. During the ’30s, there was quite a snakeskin craze. Shoes, bags, hats, belts. It wouldn’t surprise me if Brando wearing this jacket starts the whole thing again.” Mat 2C An impassioned romantic scene in Tennessee Williams’ widely acclaimed movie, “The Fugitive Kind,”’ now at the Theatre, stars Joanne Woodward and Marlon Brando. The film co-stars Anna Magnani, offering a trio of Oscar-winners in the top roles. Sidney Lumet directed for United Artists release. Mat 3A Caricaturist Al Hircchfield’s expressive pen captures the essence of Tennessee Williams’ film, “The Fugitive Kind,” due Sle 6 056) 6 Ole e @ at the Theatre through United Artists re lease. Marlon Brando, the snakeskin-jacketed, guitar-playing wanderer finds an ill-starred love in Lady Torrence, played by Anna Magnani. Joanne Woodward is a depraved Southern belle. The setting is the general store in a smoldering Mississippi town. Sidney Lumet directed. The Fugitive Kind" Paced T ennessee Williams’ Prize-Winning Career (Production Feature) “Nothing is more precious to anybody than the emotional record of his youth,” Tennessee Williams declared not long ago. “You will find the trail of my sleeve-worn heart in this play.” The statement of Pulitzer Prize winner Williams serves as an accurate introduction to “The Fugitive Kind,” a play that has meant a great deal to the playwright and which now comes to the screen starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward in a Jurow-Shepherd-Pennebaker film for United Artists release, opening ............ at the steak Reticle Theatre. It is a screenplay with a lengthy history that parallels the development of Williams from obscurity to his present position as perhaps America’s foremost living _ playwright. In the fall of 1939 he wrote a play called “Battle of Angels” produced by The Theater Guild in the winter of 1940—the first full-length Williams work to be professionally staged—and it closed out-of-town in Boston. Williams subsequently went on to write such plays as “The Glass Menagerie” which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” which was voted both the aforementioned awards. But always waiting for him was this early effort at expression. “A play is never an old one until you quit working on it,” Williams has explained. “I never quit working on this one... it never went in the trunk, it always stayed on the work bench.” And one day he began to work on it again, rewriting until almost 75% of the play was new writing and there was a new title, “Orpheus Descending.” He had sat at his typewriter with two figures in mind as he created the characters of “Lady,” the frustrated, bedevilled woman who hires “Val Xavier,” the on-the-road guitar player to work in her Mississippi store. Williams thought of Anna Magnani and Marlon Brando as_ he wrote. They are perhaps his two favorite performers. He had written “The Rose Tattoo” for Magnani to act on Broadway; she played it instead on film and won the Academy Award. Brando, of course, had played Williams’ animalistic “Kowalski” in “Streetcar”—an appearance that brought him stardom. As events developed, neither was present when “Orpheus” reached Broadway. Soon after the Broadway run, Williams was approached by Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd, fresh from their debuts as motion picture producers of the successful and unusual Western starring Gary Cooper and Maria Schell, “The Hanging Tree.” Jurow and Shepherd proposed a film version of “Orpheus Descending” and guaranteed that Magnani would portray the leading role. Williams agreed to work on the screenplay with a collaborator—he suggested talented young TV and stage writer Meade Roberts — and _ also supplied Jurow and Shepherd with still another title: “The Fugitive Kind.” As the film project progressed it soon satisfied Williams’ second casting dream when Brando signed a contract to play “Val,” who wears the snakeskin jacket symbolizing non-conformity. Then a third Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, requested the assignment of “Carol Cutrere,” the depraved Southern belle. The principal changes made in “Orpheus Descending” as Williams and collaborator Roberts created “The Fugitive Kind” were primarily a shifting of a number of sequences out-of-doors to make full use of the potential of director Sidney Lumet’s motion picture camera technique. As to the dramatic content of the material, Williams notes that “on its surface it was and still is the tale of a wild-spirited boy who wanders into a conventional community of the South and created the commotion of a fox in a chicken coop.” The result, on the stage, in the estimation of noted New York drama critic Richard Watts, Jr., was “a deeply moving work of art.” “The Fugitive Kind" Is Star-Studded Entertainment (Prepared Review) Tennessee Williams wrote a hightension, fevered story of sex, violence and romance in the South in “The Fugitive Kind,” the Martin Jurow-Richard A. Shepherd production for United Artists release which opened yesterday at the..... Theatre. In the hands of its three first-magnitude stars, Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward, the script explodes into one of the most penetrating drama studies in recent years. The catharsis of Brando and Magnani begets an electrifying pair of performances, violent, deeply moving and tragic. Seldom have these two Oscar winners offered more striking portrayals. Joanne Woodward as the rebellious Carol Cutrere rocks the screen with her emotional pyrotechnics. The crossplay and entanglements of these superb performers, abetted to a high degree by supporting play ers Maureen Stapleton and Victor Jory, makes for some of the most exciting motion picture viewing ever filmed. The brilliant young director Sidney Lumet has infused the Tennessee Williams Meade Roberts screenplay with a searing insight into the loneliness, degradation and yenality of a town disposed to destroy what it cannot understand. Brando’s Val Xavier is a strange, guitar-playing wanderer who wears a snakeskin jacket as a symbol of his rebel spirit. Magnani is volcanic in her defiant loneliness, while Joanne Woodward proclaims her corruption as though it were a gift from the gods. From these volatile characters Williams and Lumet wreak havoc with your emotions. It is a moviegoing experience you will not soon forget.