50 Fun Facts About Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Which star played Maggie in the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, returning to the set weeks after being widowed?

Elizabeth Taylor lost her husband, producer Mike Todd, in a plane crash days into the shoot and was back at work within a month. She later called Maggie a high point of her career.

Which actor earned his first Oscar nomination playing Brick Pollitt in the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Paul Newman was cast because the director felt the camera could rest on his silent face for minutes at a time. He was not yet a big star, and the Oscar went to David Niven.

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, what was a drunken Brick Pollitt doing when he broke his ankle?

Jumping hurdles at night on his old high-school track was Brick's drunken bid to relive his athletic glory. The 1958 film opens with the stunt, while the play only reports it.

Tennessee Williams so disliked the 1958 film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that he reportedly did what?

Williams is said to have told the queue to leave, warning people lining up that the picture would set the industry back 50 years. Audiences ignored him, and it became one of the biggest hits of 1958.

Which folk singer played Big Daddy both on Broadway and in the 1958 film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Burl Ives is better known to millions as the voice of Sam the Snowman, narrator of the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Big Daddy was his most notable Broadway role.

Which illness is Big Daddy really dying of in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof while his family pretends otherwise?

Cancer is the truth that everyone except Big Daddy and Big Mama knows from the start. Brick finally blurts it out in anger at the end of the second act.

Which word for lying does Brick Pollitt use for everything that disgusts him in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Mendacity is Brick's name for the dishonesty he sees in everyone around him, and his stated reason for drinking. Big Daddy answers that Brick's real disgust is with himself.

The film rights to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof were bought as a vehicle for which star, who then quit Hollywood?

Grace Kelly retired from acting at 26 to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco, and the director lined up to guide her, Joshua Logan, lost interest in the project.

What false claim does Maggie make at the end of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to secure Brick's inheritance?

She is pregnant, Maggie announces, and Big Daddy and Big Mama believe her although Gooper and Mae know it is a lie. In the 1958 film she offers the news as her birthday present.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won Tennessee Williams which honor in 1955, his second after A Streetcar Named Desire?

A Pulitzer Prize went to the play only after the board's chairman overrode a jury that ranked it the weakest of five finalists. Williams called it his personal favorite among his plays.

In which US state does the Pollitt family plantation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lie, on rich Delta land?

Mississippi was also the birthplace of Tennessee Williams, who was born in the town of Columbus while his grandfather was rector of its Episcopal church.

Which sport made Brick Pollitt of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a hero before he turned to drink?

Football bound Brick to his closest friend, and after college the two men set up a professional team of their own. Maggie travelled to its away games while Brick was injured.

Which friend's death, after a phone call Brick hung up on, haunts him throughout Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Skipper never appears on stage, yet Maggie and Big Daddy each force Brick to talk about him. Big Daddy argues that Brick's refusal to hear that last call is what destroyed his friend.

Which crop made Big Daddy Pollitt of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof one of the richest planters in the Delta?

Cotton pays for all 28,000 acres the Pollitts own, and the fight over who will run the business once Big Daddy is gone drives the whole plot.

Which theme of the stage play did the 1958 film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof remove almost entirely?

Homosexuality was off limits under Hollywood's Hays Code, so Brick's feelings for his dead friend were recast as hero-worship. The change left Tennessee Williams unhappy with the screenplay.

Which film star played Maggie in the 2013 Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, staged at her request?

Scarlett Johansson asked for the production after winning a Tony for A View from the Bridge. She first considered The Glass Menagerie, until her Brick, Benjamin Walker, suggested Maggie suited her better.

Which actor played Big Daddy in Broadway's 2008 all-Black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and then in London?

James Earl Jones had waited since 1995, when a staging planned around him found no Broadway house willing to take it. The production finally arrived 13 years later and recouped its costs within 12 weeks.

The whole action of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof plays out over what span of time, with no gaps between acts?

A single evening is all it takes: each act begins at the moment the one before it ends, so stage time and real time match. The occasion is Big Daddy's 65th birthday party.

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brick Pollitt keeps drinking until he feels what, his signal of oblivion?

A click is Brick's word for the moment the alcohol switches off his thoughts and brings him peace. Until it comes he cannot stop, which is why he keeps hobbling back for another glass.

Which harmless diagnosis is Big Daddy falsely given after his medical tests in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

A spastic colon is the comforting story, and Big Daddy greets it as a new lease on life after three years of fearing the worst. Only he and Big Mama believe it.

Which profession does Gooper Pollitt follow in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, handy for his designs on the estate?

Lawyer Gooper is the elder son, with five children and a sixth on the way, yet Big Daddy still prefers the brother who ignores him to the one who fawns.

Which nickname do the Pollitts of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof give Mae, the ambitious wife of Gooper?

Sister Woman is matched by the family's name for her husband, Brother Man. Mae earns little affection under either title: she listens at doors to report on Brick's drinking.

Every scene of the stage play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof unfolds in which room, where the injured Brick is stuck?

An upstairs bedroom, shared uneasily by Brick and Maggie, holds all three acts because his broken ankle keeps him from the party below. The family has to come up to him.

What does Maggie lock away in the final moments of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to bargain with Brick?

His liquor goes under lock and key, to be handed back only when Brick has helped turn her announcement into the truth. The curtain falls as she switches off the light.

Which prop is taken from Brick several times in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to make him answer?

A crutch props Brick up after his injury, and he drops it or has it snatched away at least five times in the first two acts. Maggie and Big Daddy each hold it back to force an answer from him.

In the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where do Brick and Big Daddy finally reconcile among stored antiques?

The cellar scene was added for the screen, since the play stays in one room throughout. It is crammed with treasures Big Mama bought on a European tour, beside a giant cutout of Brick in his playing days.

In the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, what is all that Big Daddy's wandering father left him?

An old suitcase, worn out by a hobo's life, is Big Daddy's proof that his father gave him nothing. Brick replies that the old man also left him love, which Big Daddy never gave his own sons.

Which Broadway director persuaded Tennessee Williams to rewrite the third act of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Elia Kazan wanted Big Daddy back on stage, a more sympathetic Maggie and a change of heart in Brick. Williams complied, then published both endings together with a note defending his own.

Which actress created Maggie in Broadway's original Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, earning its cast's only Tony nomination?

Barbara Bel Geddes became a household name decades later as Miss Ellie Ewing, matriarch of the television saga Dallas.

Which actor created Brick in Broadway's original Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but turned down the 1958 film?

Ben Gazzara broke through in the part, with a young Cliff Robertson as his understudy. He reached cinema audiences soon afterwards as the soldier on trial in Anatomy of a Murder.

Which director of the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof rewrote the script without ever having seen the play?

Richard Brooks feared a cinema crowd would hoot at a man who kept refusing his beautiful wife, so he gave Brick a new motive: blaming Maggie for his friend's death.

Which director was first assigned to the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but left after script disagreements?

George Cukor walked away over how the script would treat the play's most sensitive theme, and the producers weighed Joseph Mankiewicz before settling on a replacement.

Which studio released the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, its most successful picture of that year?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer saw the film top the US box office for weeks and finish third among all the releases of 1958. It earned the studio a profit of more than $2.4 million.

Which film beat Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to the Best Picture Oscar, part of a then-record nine-award sweep?

Gigi won every one of its nine nominations, while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof converted none of its six. Both pictures came from the same studio.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof's screen Big Daddy won his Oscar the same night for which other 1958 film?

The Big Country, an epic western, brought him Best Supporting Actor as Rufus Hannassey. His Big Daddy went unnominated, and the Tennessee Williams film left empty-handed.

Which Australian-born stage actress played Big Mama in the 1958 film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Judith Anderson was already famous for tormenting a young bride as Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper in Hitchcock's Rebecca. She admitted around this time that she seldom saw a film herself.

Which film star played Maggie in the 1976 television Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite her real-life husband?

Natalie Wood starred with Robert Wagner as Brick in a British-made production that American viewers saw as an NBC special. Maureen Stapleton played Big Mama.

Which stage legend played Big Daddy in the 1976 television Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in a series bearing his name?

Laurence Olivier admitted he had stood aloof from television for too long, then starred in all but one of the plays in his Granada anthology.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, like much of Tennessee Williams's work, belongs to which American literary genre?

Southern Gothic stories dwell on madness, decay and despair, with the past pressing hard on the present. Williams became a cornerstone of the genre in his thirties with The Glass Menagerie.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof takes its epigraph from which poet's famous plea to his dying father?

Dylan Thomas urged his father to fight the approach of death rather than accept it quietly, the same defiance Big Daddy shows. Williams set lines from the poem at the head of the play.

Maggie's Diana trophy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was won in her college days at which sport?

Archery fits her: Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt, and critics read the bow-and-arrow prop as a sign that Maggie is the hunter in her marriage.

Which future television star did the makers of the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof consider for Brick?

William Shatner had just made his first major film, The Brothers Karamazov, for the very director who took on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Star Trek was still eight years away.

Before he owned the plantation in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy worked on it in which job?

Overseer was his post under the pair of bachelors who once owned the place. He now holds it himself, along with most of the land for miles around.

Which actress played Mae in both the original Broadway cast and the 1958 film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Madeleine Sherwood had created Abigail in Arthur Miller's The Crucible two years before the play opened. Television viewers later knew her as the Reverend Mother in The Flying Nun.

Which sitcom star played Big Daddy in the 1974 Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Fred Gwynne stood 6 ft 5 in, a height that had helped win him the part of Herman Munster in The Munsters. The revival used a text Williams had revised from start to finish.

Which future TV detective took over as Brick when the original star left Broadway's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Jack Lord went on to play Steve McGarrett, head of the state police unit in Hawaii Five-O, for all twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened in March 1955 at which Broadway theater, razed in 1982 despite protests?

The Morosco fell to make way for a Marriott hotel after a protest campaign led by Joe Papp failed to save it. Death of a Salesman had premiered on the same stage in 1949.

Three Players of a Summer Game, the story behind Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, first appeared in which magazine?

The New Yorker printed the short story in its issue of November 1, 1952, and Williams then spent 1953 to 1955 reworking it into a three-act play.

At the start of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Big Daddy has just come back from tests at which real clinic?

Ochsner is a real New Orleans institution, opened in 1942 and now a health system with hospitals across its region.

The director and leading man of the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reunited for which other Tennessee Williams film?

Sweet Bird of Youth followed in 1962, and the actress who played Mae joined the pair again. The leading man had already created his role in the Broadway original three years before.