Chance Wayne (Newman) has only one talent—sexual prowess—and he's been bumming around for several years, satisfying rich women in the hope that he can find fame in Hollywood… He picks up a faded screen star, Alexandra Del Lago (magnificently played by Geraldine Page), who takes constant refuge in vodka, hashish, oxygen masks and young studs… She promises to get him a movie contract, and they drive to his Southern hometown, where he plans to find his sweetheart, Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight), and take her along to Hollywood… He doesn't know that on his last visit he left her pregnant, that she had an abortion, and that her father, the corrupt and vigorous politician Boss Finley (Ed Begley), is out to get him… Through a strong, powerful performance, Newman managed to be a celebrity—dropping names, giving large tips, arrogantly stating: "Just because a man's successful doesn't mean he has to forget his hometown."He's also extremely sneaky and gently tolerant, as he charms Alexandra while recording what she's saying for blackmail purposes… But he's finally pathetic: a desperately insecure man, addicted to amphetamines, attending to Alexandra and performing as a lover at her whim… His mask of swaggering bravura really disappears when he tries to see Heavenly… He becomes confused and desperate—walking with regular steps, rubbing his hands together, pleading urgently over the phone

While setting about Sweet Bird of Youth, be fond of the good fragments before the sum total. There are charming notions in which to take pleasure here: The superior pages of a screenplay modified from Tennessee Williams's play, Ed Begley's crooked village official, and above all Geraldine Page's boozy, embittered, failed movie star. Nonetheless, other than those, the film is a damp melodrama. Richard Brooks tailored and directed this pulpy adaptation of Tennessee Williams's dystopian sensationalist script that's told by and large in sporadic flashbacks that fill the mysterious blanks of the present-day battle of molds.Williams's story, and this is essentially Williams's movie, has the central character, a blonde, blue-eyed, hunky ladies' man played by Paul Newman, in a hotel room in a sweaty, humid, miserable town in Florida, while aging actress Geraldine Page sleeps in the bed. She settles on giving the manly man a leg up for a career in acting. Later on, we determine that he has returned to patch things up with a girlfriend whom he gave a venereal disease, much to the passionate fury and embarrassment of Boss Finley, her father and a commanding political official.This decent but forgettable filmed reading inelegantly adjoins Williams's reflections on the potentially unbearable certainty of our past with affected and glaringly scripted dialogue that is meant for stage and not screen. Williams's lyrical tinges and involvedness are stabilized, and the damaged characters firmed to caricatured fonts, however eloquent and articulate ones.Via alterations and amendments, Knight's dilemma is unquestionably implied as an abortion, the sensational shock of Newman and Page's "contract" are minimized, and when Rip Torn's character alerts powerless Newman that he's about to take away "lover boy's meal ticket," what ensues is nearly laughably construed as misleading.Then again, each person we see visibly acting all the way through the words does a pleasant chore of it. Newman's stage-sharpened buoyancy in the role is subdued but by no means staggers. Begley's hamming does intensify the vigor in a gloomy exercise whose gloom could have been stronger. Additionally of note are Madeleine Sherwood as Boss' vindictive mistress.

"Sweet Bird of Youth" came towards the end of Hollywood's Tennessee Williams cycle of the fifties and early sixties, being preceded by such films as "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly Last Summer", and closely followed by "Period of Adjustment" and "Night of the Iguana". Indeed, Williams is an author whom I know better from the cinema than from the theatre; he lacks the following in Britain that he enjoys in his native America, and performances of his plays here are infrequent. ("Sweet Bird…..", for example, was not performed in London's West End until 1985, nearly 30 years after it was written).The main character is Chance Wayne, a drifter who returns to his Southern home town. He left the town several years ago with high hopes of becoming a Hollywood actor, but he has enjoyed little success, and has ended up as a gigolo, preying on lonely older women. (His name is highly significant. Wayne is a "chancer", one who lives by his wits and enjoys taking risks. The surname at this period would have evoked the great Hollywood star John Wayne, but Chance has had none of his namesake's success).Wayne's latest conquest is a film star named Alexandra del Lago. Alexandra was once beautiful and highly successful, but is now ageing, addicted to drugs and alcohol, lacking in self-confidence and terrified of losing her looks. Wayne is only interested in Alexandra because he wants her to use her influence to advance his stalled acting career; his main purpose in returning home is to rekindle his love affair with his former girlfriend, Heavenly. Heavenly is the daughter of the local political boss Tom Finley, a Huey Long-style politician, who maintains a grip on State politics through corruption and strong-arm tactics. It was Finley who forced Wayne to leave town after he got Heavenly pregnant, a pregnancy which was terminated by abortion.The emotional, passionate nature of many of Williams' characters made his plays very popular with film-makers, but in the fifties the American theatre tended to be more liberal than the American cinema as regards the portrayal of sexual themes, and a number of his plays were somewhat bowdlerised when turned into films. "Sweet Bird of Youth" is no exception. The reasons why Finley ran Chance out of town are not the same in the two versions; in the play he infected Heavenly with a venereal disease, something unmentionable in Production Code Hollywood. (Pregnancy outside marriage and abortion were quite controversial enough). The ending is very much softened compared with the one Williams originally wrote.Paul Newman plays Wayne in the same cool, nonchalant, laid-back style which characterised a number of other his roles. (It was Steve McQueen who earned the nickname "King of Cool", but Newman could have been a pretender to his throne). Several of these were also drifters, such as Cool Hand Luke or Ben Quick in "The Long Hot Summer". For me, however, the real stars of the film are not Newman but Geraldine Page as Alexandra and Ed Begley as Finley. Page (who was nominated for "Best Actress") was excellent as the drunken, self-pitying junkie, and perhaps even better at the end of the film when Alexandra recovers her self-confidence after discovering that her latest film has proved an unexpected success. Begley certainly deserved his "Best Supporting Actor" award for his portrayal of the ranting demagogue Finley; the one nomination which rather surprised me was "Best Supporting Actress" for Shirley Knight (Heavenly), as she did not seem to have all that much to do."Sweet Bird of Youth" is not quite in the same class as some of the other entries in the Williams cycle, such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (which was also directed by Richard Brooks and also starred Newman) or "A Streetcar Named Desire" with its four towering performances in the leading roles. It perhaps represents a rather conservative style of film-making, looking back to the fifties rather than to the stylistic revolution of the late sixties. (After "Night of the Iguana" in 1964 Hollywood was to fall out of love with Tennessee Williams). It is, however, well-made and well-acted, and still remains enjoyable today. 7/10

Geraldine Page, Paul Newman, Madeline Sherwood and Rip Torn all recreate their Broadway roles for the film version of "Sweet Bird of Youth," a 1962 film based on Tennessee Williams' play and directed by Richard Brooks. Again and as usual, some bite has been taken out of the original story in order to get past the censors.Geraldine Page is the drunk, drugged and over the hill movie star Alexandra del Lago, who has picked up with a Hollywood gigolo, Chance Wayne and promised him a film career. At present she's escaping from what she perceives as a disastrous comeback. Chance returns with her to his home town, yearning for the respectability and success that has eluded him. Instead he runs into trouble from his ex-girlfriend's crooked politician father, Tom Finley (Ed Begley) and Finley's son, Tom Jr. (Rip Torn) who want him out of town because of what happened to Heavenly (Shirley Knight). In the play, Chance has given Heavenly a venereal disease; in the film, she's had an abortion. Chance desperately tries to see and speak with Heavenly, appealing to her Aunt Nonnie (Mildred Dunnock), but it leads to more trouble than he bargained for.Page is a powerhouse as Alexandra, more glamorous than we're used to seeing her and as sloppy a drunk and druggie as you'll ever find. Alexandra's a selfish user, and she's got the technique down pat. The role of Chance, another selfish user, came fairly early on in the handsome Newman's career - he came very close to being typecast as these fast-talking amoral men. In those days, Newman struggled with a lack of emotional availability and these roles fit him beautifully. Thankfully he grew to encompass parts in films such as he had in "The Verdict" and became one of our greatest American actors. Madeline Sherwood, so effective in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," is equally good here as Boss Finley's girlfriend; her scene with Begley in her hotel room is truly terrifying. Begley is fantastic, mean as dirt, as is Torn as his equally cruel son. And "Desperate Housewives" fans will be interested to see a slim, pretty Shirley Knight as Heavenly, a somewhat vapid role for such a strong actress.The DVD has a screen test for Chance by Rip Torn, who would later marry Page. He and Page perform a scene between Alexandra and Chance from the play - though the scene is in the film, it has been changed slightly. It's total stage acting, quite different from the film, but both are excellent, Torn giving Chance a lot of intensity. Though in those days he was very good-looking, he probably didn't come off as enough of a boy toy for the producers. It's a very interesting extra and well worth seeing, as is this somewhat watered-down "Sweet Bird of Youth."