How long is suddenly last summer

Photos Top cast Edit. Katharine Hepburn Mrs. Venable as Mrs. Montgomery Clift Dr. Cukrowicz as Dr. Albert Dekker Dr. Hockstader as Dr. Mercedes McCambridge Mrs. Holly as Mrs. Maria Britneva Lucy as Lucy. Sheila Robins Dr. Hockstader's Secretary as Dr. Hockstader's Secretary as Sheila Robbins. Grace Denbeigh-Russell Asylum patient as Asylum patient uncredited. Brenda Dunrich Nurse as Nurse uncredited. Anthony Lang Inmate as Inmate uncredited.

Aileen Lewis Nurse as Nurse uncredited. Joseph L. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. John Cukrowicz Montgomery Clift , a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans, Louisiana mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian's mysterious death that she witnessed while on vacation together in Spain the previous summer. Did you know Edit. Trivia Because of years of alcoholism and prescription drug abuse, Montgomery Clift was considered uninsurable due to chronic ill health.

Ordinarily, that would have meant he would have been fired and replaced, but his good friend Dame Elizabeth Taylor saved his job by insisting she would not do this movie without him. Goofs Although set in , costumes, hairstyles and makeup worn by Elizabeth Taylor were all contemporary in Quotes Catherine Holly : Is that what love is? Connections Edited into This Is It User reviews Review.

Top review. Unsung, surreal masterpiece. Screenwriter Gore Vidal takes Tennessee Williams' one-act play and runs with it, fleshing out the central characters and expanding the story's central arc. Vidal had the seemingly impossibly task of taking a tale involving homosexuality, incest, pedophilia, and even cannibalism and presenting it all in a manner that would be acceptable to the rigid Production Code, yet still coherent to the average film audience.

Not only did Vidal succeed victoriously, but the slightly ambiguous nature of the film's climax and denouncement actually makes the twice as unsettling and disturbing. With relatively few characters to populate the story the performances are absolutely crucial, and the tight-knit cast delivers the goods in spades.

Long after many of her acting contemporaries of the thirties and forties had been forgotten, Katharine Hepburn continued to reign supreme on the silver screen and her sublime performance as the manipulative and cunning Mrs.

Venable ranks among Hepburn's best work of the decade. The wounded vulnerability of a post-car accident Montgomery Clift serves him well in a difficult role as the middle man between the film's leading ladies, and the still-handsome actor provides a humane, completely genuine performance that supplies viewers with level-headed window into the off-kilter story. The film's biggest surprise, however, is the exceptional portrayal of Elizabeth Taylor in the film's central performance.

Behind the scenes, however, the troubled production mirrored the horror on screen. Producer Sam Spiegel enlisted literary queen Gore Vidal to write the screenplay, and to ensure the film made it past the censors, Vidal had to meet with a priest biweekly to show him drafts of the script. Vidal, however, refused to make the film an anti-gay polemic, and so the film is rife with gay subtext. Publicity shots, however, revealed his face, and he resembles a pre-accident Monty Clift.

According to Hollywood legend, Taylor actually saved Clift from choking on a tooth lodged in his tongue. He required extensive plastic surgery on his once flawless face and as a result of the physical and emotional tolls of the accident — as well as his lifelong struggle with his sexuality — Clift became increasingly dependent on pills and alcohol.

He wrote but one poem a year, on the summer vacations he and she took together. Make no mistake: Sebastian and Violet Venable are the most disturbing mother-son combination in mid-century cinema, except for maybe Norman Bates and that drag voodoo mannequine he keeps locked away in the closet along with his sexuality. They were a couple, and as such, she mourns Sebastian as a widow.

The truth that her son was not as pure as she would have others believe. The truth that she and Catherine were basically whoring themselves out to attract young boys and men for him. Pretty sordid stuff, right? So how did Vidal and co. And was a simpler, more naive time. Speaking before his death in with The Hollywood Reporter , Vidal discussed running into a policeman shortly after the release of Suddenly Last, Summer:.