The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is vintage Tennessee Williams. Published in 1950, his first novel was acclaimed by Gore Vidal as "splendidly written, precise, short, complete, and fine." It is the story of a wealthy, fiftyish American widow recently a famous stage beauty, but now "drifting." The novel opens soon after her husband's death and her retirement from the theatre, as Mrs. Stone tries to adjust to her aimless new life in Rome. She is adjusting, too, to aging. ("The knowledge that her beauty was lost had come upon her recently and it was still occasionally forgotten.")
With poignant wit and his own particular brand of relish, Williams charts her drift into an affair with a cruel young gigolo: "As compelling, as fascinating, and as technically skillful as his play" (Publishers Weekly).
Release Date: December 28, 1961
Release Time: 103 minutes
Cast:
Vivien Leigh as Karen Stone
Warren Beatty as Paolo di Leo
Lotte Lenya as Contessa
Coral Browne as Meg
Jill St. John as Barbara
Jeremy Spenser as Young man
Stella Bonheur as Mrs. Jamison-Walker
Peter Dyneley as Lloyd Greener
Carl Jaffe as Baron Waldheim
Harold Kasket as Tailor
Viola Keats as Julia McIlheny
Cleo Laine as Singer
Bessie Love as Bunny
Elspeth March as Mrs. Barrow
Henry McCarty as Campbell Kennedy
Warren Mitchell as Giorgio
John Phillips as Tom Stone
Paul Stassino as the Barber
Ernest Thesiger as Stefano
Mavis Villiers as Mrs. Coogan
Jean Marsh (non-speaking) as a party guest and object of Paolo's attentions
Awards:
1961 Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Lotte Lenya - Nominated
1962 Golden Globes
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture - Lotte Lenya - Nominated
Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth.
Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, after years of obscurity, at age 33 he became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. This play closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, he attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century, alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
Much of Williams' most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
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