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Newman on Heat – The Long, Hot Summer (Ritt, 1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Brooks, 1958)

by Fiona Underhill, Contributor

Charm permeates Paul Newman’s career – his characters exude it, use and abuse it to hustle and swindle and get what they want. Whether it’s the pursuit of money (The Hustler, The Sting, Butch Cassidy) or women (Hud, Sweet Bird of Youth, Somebody Up There Likes Me) or torn between the two (From the Terrace). Arrogance and rebellion are two other characteristics which Newman frequently embodies, very much in contrast to his real persona. And it is usually Newman’s characters who seek out and chase women, but there are rare occasions where it is he who is the prize to be won.

Quick in The Long, Hot Summer is very much a classic Newman character – he’s a chancer, who swans into town and quickly wins over the head honcho Varner. It takes a lot longer for him to win over Varner’s daughter, however. Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is quite the opposite – stoic, quiet, reigned-in and he is the hunted rather than the hunter for once. Both The Long, Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are set in the heat of Mississippi summers – as implied by the name, the former is drawn-out, simmering and smoldering – until there is a literal point of ignition towards the end. The latter takes place in one day, in which tensions broil, thunderstorms rumble and volatile clashes break out. Both are literary adaptations – Cat from a play by Tennessee Williams and Summer from a series of short stories by William Faulkner. The theatrical origins are clear in Cat – it is almost single location and is dominated by characters trapped in hot rooms, shouting at one another.

Newman’s two major roles of 1958 being named Quick and Brick is amusing and extremely apt. Quick is a hunter, a pursuer – he moves around like a big cat – lithe, stealthy, stalking his prey – Clara. His name is also reflected in the fact he’s an itinerant interloper – he moves from town to town, trying to escape his name. Brick stays still - partly due to him breaking his leg, partly his alcoholism making him sluggish. He spends the first half of the film with his back to Maggie – refusing to look at her, as he cradles his whiskey like a baby. It is Maggie who is the cat – prowling and pouncing upon her victim – Brick. Other characters are named in relation to one another – everyone is owned, somebody’s property. Varner calls his daughter Clara “Sister.” In Cat, there is Big Daddy and Big Momma, Mae is “Sister Woman”, Gooper is “Brother Man” and Maggie calls Brick “Boy O’Mine” - which is wish fulfillment on her part.

Patriarchs dominate both stories. Summer has Will Varner (Orson Welles) and Cat has Big Daddy (Burl Ives) – both these men are obsessed with progeny and legacy. They have both built empires and wish to be remembered after their deaths. The only value placed on the main women characters in the two films; Clara in Summer (Joanne Woodward) and Maggie in Cat (Elizabeth Taylor) - is their ability to produce offspring. The only way they know to express paternal love is through money – they don’t understand why they have such ungrateful, resentful children when they’ve been given everything they could want. Brick has the classic “you can’t buy love” argument with Big Daddy towards the end of Cat, whilst in the basement surrounded by overstuffed furniture and antiques from Europe. Clara in Summer refers to herself in terms of money; “I set a high price on myself. A high, high price.” The dichotomy of love vs money has been a running through-line of Newman’s career.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of the few times in Newman’s filmography when it is Newman himself who is the object of desire. It is a rare occurrence when his beauty is acknowledged and he is openly thirsted over by other characters. Whereas, in The Long, Hot Summer, the only direct reference to Newman’s looks is Clara saying he has “cold blue eyes.” Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is perhaps the closest we get to Newman being viewed by the female gaze. This is at least partly due to Brick being written by a gay man (Williams) and – much more so in the play than the film – it emerges that Maggie and Brick’s best friend Skipper fought for his affections. In the play, Maggie says “Skipper and I made love because it made both of us feel a little bit closer to you. We made love to each other to dream it was you, both of us!” There are also opaque references made in The Long, Hot Summer to the possible homosexuality of a character (Clara’s suitor, Alan, who still lives with his mother) – Quick tells Clara “if you’re waiting for him, you’ve got your account in the wrong bank” and Clara says to Alan “do you want me the way a man wants a woman?” Cat pushes the boundaries of what was acceptable for a movie in 1958, but the play is much more explicit, with Brick using the words “queer” and even “sodomy.” Newman is so beautiful in Cat that he is lusted over by both men and women, who are willing to ruin their lives over him.

The first fifteen minutes of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are intense, densely-packed with dialogue, fast-paced and feature some revelatory lines and demonstrations of behavior which tell us everything about Brick and Maggie’s relationship. From Maggie’s attempts to flirt – bending over and saying “are my seams straight?” to Brick aiming his crutch at her like a rifle – it is all so good. Especially Taylor’s heart-breaking facial reactions to Brick harshly cutting her off and putting her down. The dialogue that Maggie exchanges with Brick are the most relatable things ever said to a Newman character: “Why can’t you lose your looks? I think you’ve gotten even better looking.” “If I thought you’d never make love to me again, I’d find the longest, sharpest knife I could and stick it straight into my heart.” These lines embody the exquisite torture of being married to a man who looks like Newman, but who refuses to sleep with you.

One of the very few moments where we catch a glimpse of Brick sexually desiring Maggie is when they have had a blazing altercation and Big Momma comes into the room. Brick goes to hide in the bathroom and on the back of the door, one of Maggie’s nightgowns is hanging. Brick caresses the nightgown, breathing it in. His lips are parted, his fingers tighten around it as he inhales her scent. It’s the horniest moment in either of these films, quite honestly. This was perhaps added in to assuage any doubts about Brick’s sexuality. It shows that he wants her, but it is his self-loathing that is preventing him from following through on this longing. Although the costume design is barely needed to enhance the beauty of the stars, Newman spends the whole of Cat in either cool blue-gray silk pajamas or a robe which is the exact shade of his eyes – the whole team knew exactly what they were doing when they made this movie. Taylor changes out of her clothes mid-argument and then remains in her clingy silk slip for the rest of it, but unfortunately even this does not draw Brick’s gaze.

The hottest scene in The Long, Hot Summer comes after Quick has moved in with the Varners and it’s so hot, he has to take his mattress out onto the balcony to sleep. Quick is shirtless and clutching his pillow and he looks through Clara’s bedroom window. He says something creepy about her looking like a child in her glasses, does some smoldering in her direction while the sweat glistens off his forty-seven stomach muscles in the moonlight and she (understandably) clutches her chest. Of course, the audience’s appreciation of the sexual tension between Quick and Clara is enhanced by our knowledge of what was going on between Newman and Woodward at the time. And this is explored in more depth in Ethan Hawke’s new HBO documentary The Last Movie Stars. Clara’s brother Jody (Anthony Franciosa) literally chases his wife Eula (Lee Remick) around, relentlessly hounding her for sex. She tells him “I wish you’d find some other kind of recreation” and he looks crushed in exactly the same way Maggie does. In one of the heated arguments between Quick and Clara, he tells her that if they were married, she’d “wake up smiling.” Sex is pretty overtly referred to in both films – Clara says to Alan “there’s no sense in pretending that girls don’t think about sex” - it seems acceptable even in the 1950s to say this aloud, as long as it is referring to heterosexual desire, of course.

Despite both Maggie and Clara being horribly mistreated by the men around them, both films do allow them to be feisty in their own ways and they at least attempt to stand up for themselves, however very much still within the traditional confines of the late 50s. Clara’s agency comes from her assertions that she’s smart and funny and she puts her foot down about when she’ll marry and to whom. However, her self-worth is still very much bound up in how good of a wife and mother she will make one day - “the best wife that any man could hope for.” At the grand old age of 23, Clara is frequently treated like a dried-up old maid, mainly by her father, who is extremely impatient about her getting married and having kids. Of course, Quick’s age is never once referenced (despite Newman being 32 at the time of filming).

Both women characters are victim of massive double standards for men and women – Maggie is seen as entirely to blame for the fact that her and Brick are childless and for Brick being an alcoholic. Big Momma (Judith Anderson – will never be over her also playing Mrs Danvers) assumes that it is Maggie who is being ‘difficult’ in the bedroom. Brick’s age is referenced, at least, Big Daddy calls him a “30-year-old child” because he is living in the past and trying to recapture his pro-football days. Despite the close proximity of filming, Newman seems so much older in Cat than he does in Summer. The film opens with Brick attempting to recapture his youth by drunkenly hurdling on the local high school track, which results in him spending the rest of the film in a cast. He then has a literal crutch as well as the alcohol, which he relies on to help silence his internal demons. Skipper had been a crutch too and now he’s gone, so Brick is completely spiraling with guilt and shame. Brick is without doubt one of Newman’s greatest roles – it allowed him to be vulnerable and cry in a way he rarely did. The tears make those blue eyes shine even more insanely brightly and the combination of Newman’s famous blues with Taylor’s violets is almost too much to bear. Brick’s layers are gradually peeled back, first by Maggie and then by Big Daddy, until he is an open wound by the end.

Notions of masculinity and femininity are explored in both The Long, Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The older sons of the patriarchs – Jody in Summer and Gooper in Cat (Jack Carson) are not considered ‘man’ enough to take on the all-important task of succession. This is despite them both seemingly doing exactly what their father wants – marrying, breeding, showing an interest in the business of the estate and so on. It seems the allure of Newman is too powerful, and not just to women – Varner calls Quick “a big stud horse.” Varner and Big Daddy are both openly horny for their daughters-in-law, just one of their many delightful characteristics. Jody’s wife Eula has teenage admirers that come cat-calling for her at night, further cuckolding Jody. Varner’s attitude is very much “boys will be boys.” Both patriarch’s obsession with grandchildren is for entirely selfish reasons – neither Varner or Big Daddy take any pleasure in children – the value of progeny is only to secure succession and notions of empire. They only care about the legacy of their name, and it all comes down to hubris. They only value women as sex objects (Varner has a fancy woman played by Angela Lansbury) or breeders. Women’s only function is to be quietly supportive wives, look pretty and pop out babies.

After basically stalking Clara for most of the film, thinking he can wear her down, Quick gradually learns to respect her as a human and relinquishes her, saying he’ll leave town. This, of course, prompts Clara to want him. Brick’s shows his transformation at the end by backing Maggie up in a lie – that she’s pregnant. After Maggie is abused by Brick’s family throughout, he finally defends her. Quick is probably redeemed as a character more than Brick, surprisingly. Maggie is just one of Brick’s issues to parse through – he has revelations about his father, his best friend, his drinking - he perhaps needs time to fully make things up to Maggie. The sexual politics of both films are questionable, of course, (both women are seen running towards their man at the end, despite how they’ve been treated) but must be viewed through the lens of the American south in the 1950s.

There are many forms of trap in these two films, with thirst being just one of them. Quick tries to ensnare Clara and Maggie tries to entrap Brick. Maggie already has the ‘trappings’ of marriage with Brick, but not the sex. Quick is trapped by his name – but he is too proud and stubborn to change it “that man (his father) sure left his mark on me – I’ve got his name and I can’t run away from that.” Family legacy is the biggest trap over-shadowing both films – as hard as they try, the characters cannot escape their fathers. Brick’s traps take many forms – his youth/football career, his best friend, his father, his wife, the alcohol – but the ultimate trap is himself. That is what he longs to escape from more than anything.

These two roles – both set in the Mississippi summer, both released in 1958, make an interesting contrast for Newman. Quick is by far the more typical Newman man – the arrogant charmer. Brick is a much more complex and vulnerable character and also it is one of the few films that allows Newman to be the object of desire. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a movie in which Elizabeth Taylor received top billing and therefore the audience were allowed to be aligned with her character’s point of view. And that perspective was thirsting after Paul Newman. A Newman film which caters to an audience who lust after men… and for that, we should be thankful.