Baby Doll and The Ponder Heart

BABY DOLL AND THE PONDER HEART IN THE SUMMER OF 1955 Tennessee Williams submitted the movie script for Baby Doll to Elia Kazan, who had been urging the playwright to make a film of two early one-acts: 27 Wag01l8 Full of Cotton (1945), and The Long Stay Cut Short or The U1l8atisfactory Supper (1946). Although the plots of the two short plays are obviously incorporated into Baby Doll, the publisher's note which points out that the script is "quite different from the two short plays," is accurate. The similarities are basically those of plot; the differences, those of setti...'1g, of the character of Baby Doll, and of her situation. The plot of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton involves the burning of the Syndicate Plantation cotton gin by Jake Meighan and the delivery to him next day of twenty-seven wagons of cotton by the unfortunate superintendent of the Syndicate, Silva Vicarro. Vicarro, having determined from Jake's naIve wife, Flora, that it is Jake who has burnt down his gin, puts into practice the good-neighbor policy announced by Meighan. Vicarro's part in this reciprocal program involves raping and masochistically whipping Flora Meighan while her husband is ginning the twenty-seven wagons of cotton. Part of the satire in the word "comedy" of the subtitle, "A Mississippi Delta Comedy," is that Jake returns home, tired but elated over the prospect of Vicarro's future business, and utterly oblivious to the physically-punished and mentallydistracted condition of his wife.1 In The Long Stay Cut Short Archie Lee and Baby Doll Bowman are dissatisfied with the supper of underdone greens prepared by Aunt Rose and urge with considerable heat that she go to live with one of her other relatives. Not knowing where to go, she remains outside in the face of a rising storm and heavy winds, which push her slight figure out toward the rose bush in the yard. It is not strange that for the movie audience Tennessee Williams altered the two plays. For example, the change of the title to Baby Doll from The Whip Hand, as previously announced, indicates a toning down of the viciousness of Vicarro (Vacarro in the movie); since the corresponding character in the movie never uses his whip, except playfully, it is almost vestigial. Undoubtedly Elia Kazan as director 1. In a review of the play, which was produced at The Playhouse in New York in April, 1955, a critic comments that "Jake finally becomes aware of the situation but realizes that he is beaten." Theatre Artsl XXXIX (July 1955), 17. The playas printed, however, ends with Jake's happily ordering FlOra to hop in the Chevy. He is going to take her to town to see what's on at the movies. 393 394 MODERN DRAMA February also exerted a strong influence. According to Henry Hewes, Kazan "tends to remove a certain anti-social flavor by persuading Williams to make his antagonists more .likable, and by getting him to come up with softening after-thoughts like the suspense ending of Baby Doll, which negates the hardboiled ending of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.2 It is true that Baby Doll is treated with comparative kindness by Vacarro, and that Aunt Rose Comfort McCorkle will apparently find a home as Vacarro's housekeeper. Such changes may be chalked up to the need to lighten repellent action. There are changes in the movie script, however, which do not seem attributable to the influence of Hollywood. One is in the setting. Whereas Archie Lee Bowman's house is a rundown "shotgun cottage" and the Meighan's, although "dolled up" by fluffy window curtains held by baby-blue satin bows, a cottage not much larger, the Meighan's house in the movie script is described as a mansion Witll big porch pillars and "a staircase, much too grand for the present style of the house." The action takes place up and down the stairway, through the rooms of the first and second floor, and even in the attic, where the decrepit condition of the big house results in cracking beams and falling plaster. Another change is in the size and age...