The Fugitive Kind (United Artists) (1960)

STRUCK BY LIGHTNING! t. BSR PR 2 Cols. x 126 Lines—252 Lines (18 Inches) | ~ THREE ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS... THE PULITZER PRIZE AUTHOR -»e AND NOW THE SCREEN IS ADVERTISING | | | | Based on the play ORPHEUS DESCENDING by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS — Directed by SIDNEY LUMET | | Produced by and . HERD Released thru sc sunngMAUREEN STAPLETON + VICTOR JORY * sammy» TENNESSEE WILLIAMS om MEADE ROBERTS | | __ tanaet MARTIN JUROW oe RICHARD A. SHEPHERD son ie wens | Based on the play “ORPHEUS DESCENDING” by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS oveied by SIDNEY LUMET « produces ty MARTIN JUROW ano RICHARD A. SHEPHERD Reieased thru UNITEDERVARTISTS + LH [A T R F | [dices gteers © ye 2 Cols. x 126 Lines—25 Lines (18 Inches) TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' Tue Fucmve Krad also starrin MAUREEN STAPLETON VICTOR JORY Screenplay by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS ans MEADE ROBERTS Mat 207 SYNOPSIS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ MOST SHATTERING STORY! (Not for Publication ) Val Xavier (MARLON BRANDO), an on-the road guitar player whose trademark in the nightspots of New Orleans was his snakeskin jacket, leaves that life behind him. His rattletrap car breaks down in the small Mississippi town of Two Rivers, where one of the few kind people, Vee Talbott (MAUREEN STAPLETON), wife of the brutal Sheriff (R. G. ARMSTRONG), knows of a job for him as clerk at the Torrance Mercantile store. Lady Torrance (ANNA MAGNANTI) is a lonely woman, married to the bitter and cancerdoomed Jabe Torrance (VICTOR JORY). She is attracted to the strange-talking Val and gives him the job. But Lady isn’t the only woman attracted to Val. Carol Cutrere (JOANNE WOODWARD), outcast daughter of the best family in town, knows Snakeskin from New Orleans—though he won't admit it. She tries to take Val for her own in a touching moment at Cypress Hill Cemetery, but Val is true to his declaration that “I don’t go that route any more.” Jabe senses the relationship between Lady and Val almost before it actually exists. They are drawn together gradually, reaching a peak when Lady takes Val to the burned-out wine garden her father had owned at Moon Lake. It was de stroyed by vigilantes years before because her father sold liquor to Negroes. Her father died in the blaze. Lady asks Val to live at the store and sleep in the alcove back of the staircase. Instead, Val taps the cash register for a gambling stake and plans to leave town. When he returns late that night after a winning streak, to get his guitar and replace the money he took, Lady faces him and calls him a thief. Speaking from his New Orleans experiences, Val tells Lady what he sees in her: “A not-soyoung and not-so-satisfied woman that hired a man off the highway to do double duty without paying overtime .. .” In anguish Lady confesses “T need you ... to go on living!” The sound of one human being crying out in desperation for another touches Val. Gently he leads her through the curtain into the alcove. Jabe’s capacity for cruelty is displayed several weeks later when he tells Lady that he was leader of the vigilantes who destroyed her father. The focus of Lady’s life, aside from Val, has been the confectionery being built in back of the store—much like her father’s wine garden. Lady now is determined that the confectionery must open while Jabe is upstairs, dying and seeing that Lady will not be defeated by the forces of the town again. While she is off making her frenzied preparations for the opening of the confectionery, Val is unjustly accused of ‘messin’ with the Sheriff’s wife.” He is threatened with violence if he isn’t out of the town by sunrise. He tells Lady he must leave. The argument that ensues is interrupted by Nurse Porter (VIRGINIA CHEW), who sardonically announces that she knows Lady’s secret: Lady is pregnant, and not by Jabe. Val must leave but asks Lady to meet him out of the state. Their moment is destroyed by Jabe, bent on burning the confectionery by tossing flaming torches of newspapers down onto the arbor. Hysterically, Lady runs upstairs to stop him, Val fights the flames with his snakeskin jacket. Jabe shoots and kills Lady. A hostile crowd gathers and batters down the door. Carol, who has come back for Val, shouts for him not to look back, but Val turns for an instant to try and find Lady. And then—amid the flames and the cruel mob—there is no escape for him. In the smoldering ruins, Carol walks alone. She finds Val’s snakeskin jacket. “Wild things leave skins behind them,” she says, “. . . so that the fugitive kind can always follow their kind. . .” And then she leaves this memory of a wine garden and goes away from the town. RUNNING TIME: 135 MINUTES PAGE 1 7 : tHE Si QRY