 | This article possibly contains original research .(June 2014) |
| Stanley Kowalski | |
|---|---|
 Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski from the stage version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1948). | |
| First appearance | A Streetcar Named Desire |
| Created by | Tennessee Williams |
| Portrayed by | |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Spouse | Stella Kowalski |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Blanche DuBois (sister-in-law) |
| Nationality | Polish-American |
| ||
|---|---|---|
Stanley Kowalski is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire .
Stanley lives in the working-class Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans with his wife, Stella ( née DuBois), and is employed as a factory parts salesman. He was an Army engineer in World War II, having served as a Master Sergeant. He is a controlling, hard-edged man, with no discernible capacity for empathy, forgiveness, or patience, and no apparent family ties of his own, although he once mentions a cousin. He also has a vicious temper and fights with his wife, sometimes leading to instances of domestic violence, which mirror those of the older married couple who live upstairs, the Hubbells. Near the beginning of the play, Stanley announces that Stella is pregnant.
Stanley's life becomes more complicated when Stella's sister Blanche shows up at their door for a seemingly indefinite "visit". He resents the genteel Blanche, who derides him as an "ape", and calls him a "Polack". She flirts with him but attempts behind his back to get Stella to leave the marriage, intensifying his resentment. She poses a threat; in his mind to both his regimented, hedonistic lifestyle and his marriage and concomitant control of his wife. He determines to eliminate this perceived threat and take his revenge.
Stanley starts asking questions from a seedy street merchant, Shaw, who knew Blanche in her old life. Stanley already knows Blanche is staying with the Kowalskis because she is homeless; her family's ancestral mansion, Belle Reve, has been mortgaged. He learns from Shaw that she was paid to leave Mississippi to quell gossip about her many affairs, which she began after her husband, a closeted homosexual, committed suicide. Overjoyed to have the upper hand, Stanley tells Mitch about Blanche's past, which causes Mitch to end the budding relationship which would have seen Blanche leave the Kowalski household and marry Mitch and replace his dying mother as the object of his love. Stanley's cruelty infuriates the hapless Stella.
That night, Stella goes to the hospital to give birth. Stanley goes out and gets drunk in celebration, and returns home. He finds a similarly drunk Blanche, lost in fantasies of soon-to-be happy times, benefit of Shep Huntleigh.
Mitch, possibly emboldened himself with some liquor, had earlier visited after Stanley and Stella left, and told Blanche that she was not good enough to meet his mother but demanded some sexual attention as that is all she is apparently good for. She told him to get out or she'd scream fire, and he left.
Stanley drunkenly fondles Blanche, who rejects him and affects in high dudgeon. He traps her in the bedroom and easily disarms her after she breaks a bottle to use as a weapon. She collapses and the scene ends with her impending rape. This final assault on what she had left of her dignity sends Blanche over the edge into a nervous breakdown. Blanche tells Stella but Stanley lies to his wife and denies Blanche's claim. Weeks later, Stella has Blanche committed to a mental institution at Stanley's insistence.
In the original play, Stella refuses to allow herself to believe Blanche (with the support of Eunice Hubbell) and stays with Stanley, although she seems to need to convince herself. In the 1951 film adaptation, however, due to the demands of the censors, Stella leaves him and takes their child. Most later film and television versions restore the original ending.
When developing the character, Williams frequently changed what Stanley's ethnicity would be. Originally the story was set in Chicago and he was written as an Italian American named Lucio. [1] Another draft, set in Atlanta, had the character named Ralph and be an Irish American. [2] In order the draft names were: Lucio, Stanley Landowski, Jack, Ralph, Ralph Stanley, and Ralph Kowalski, prior to the final one. [1]
No copies of the play drafts mention what Kowalski's line of work is. According to author Joseph W. Zurawski, Stanley appeared to be an office worker instead of a blue collar worker. [1]
He was most famously portrayed by Marlon Brando opposite Jessica Tandy's Blanche in the play's initial Broadway production and, several years later, opposite Vivien Leigh with his Oscar nominated performance in the 1951 film adaptation.
Others who later played the role include: Anthony Quinn, who succeeded Brando on Broadway and played opposite Tandy's successor, Uta Hagen; James Farentino (opposite Rosemary Harris) on Broadway in 1973; Treat Williams (opposite Ann-Margret) in the 1984 TV movie; [3] and Alec Baldwin (opposite Jessica Lange), both on Broadway in 1992 and in the 1995 TV movie. [4]
In 1976 Rip Torn played Stanley opposite his wife Geraldine Page as Blanche in a Chicago production that was described as raw, dangerous and threateningly realistic, pushing the Streetcar script to the farthest reaches of urban violence and unabated naturalism. [5]
Aidan Quinn and Christopher Walken both played the role opposite Blythe Danner's Blanche in two different stage productions. The three actors and both productions, however, received mixed to middling reviews. [6]
In 1990, Bruce Payne played a Kowalski-esque character in the music video for Neil Young's song Over and Over. [7]
The name is used for lead character Detective Stanley Kowalski, portrayed by Callum Keith Rennie, in the 1994–1999 television series Due South ; in the series, the character's ex-wife is Stella Kowalski.
Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor. Widely regarded as one of the greatest cinema actors of the 20th century, Brando received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Brando is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley.
Jessie Alice Tandy was a British actress. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, also winning for The Gin Game and Foxfire. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Nobody's Fool. At 80, she became the oldest actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.
Kim Hunter was an American theatre, film, and television actress. She achieved prominence for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which she reprised for the 1951 film adaptation, and won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Karl Malden was an American stage, movie and television actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946 and 1947. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee, who called her "a profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre.
Stella Adler was an American actress and acting teacher.
Patricia Claire Bloom is an English actress. She is known for leading roles on stage and screen and has received two BAFTA Awards and a Drama Desk Award as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and a Tony Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
"A Streetcar Named Marge" is the second episode of the fourth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on Fox in the United States on October 1, 1992. In the episode, Marge wins the role of Blanche DuBois in a community theatre musical version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Homer offers little support for his wife's acting pursuits, and Marge begins to see parallels between him and Stanley Kowalski, the play's boorish lead male character. The episode contains a subplot in which Maggie Simpson attempts to retrieve her pacifier from a strict daycare owner.
Blanche DuBois is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Williams' play; A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.
Jocelyn Brando was an American actress, best known for her role as Katie Bannion in the film noir The Big Heat (1953). She was the sister of Marlon Brando.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothic drama film adapted from Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. It is directed by Elia Kazan, and stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. The film tells the story of a Mississippi Southern belle, Blanche DuBois (Leigh), who, after encountering a series of personal losses, seeks refuge with her sister (Hunter) and brother-in-law (Brando) in a dilapidated New Orleans apartment building. The original Broadway production and cast was converted to film, albeit with several changes and sanitizations related to censorship.
Stella Kowalski is one of the main characters in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire. She is the younger sister of central character Blanche DuBois and wife of Stanley Kowalski.
A Streetcar Named Desire is an opera composed by André Previn in 1995 with a libretto by Philip Littell. It is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams.
Due South is a Canadian crime series with elements of comedy. The series was created by Paul Haggis, produced by Alliance Communications, and stars Paul Gross, David Marciano, Gordon Pinsent, Beau Starr, Catherine Bruhier, Camilla Scott, Ramona Milano, and later Callum Keith Rennie. It ran for 67 episodes over four seasons, from 1994 to 1999.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1995 American drama television film produced and directed by Glenn Jordan and starring Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, and Diane Lane. It aired on CBS on October 29, 1995. Based on the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, it follows a 1951 adaptation starring Marlon Brando and a 1984 television adaptation. The film was adapted from a 1992 Broadway revival of the play, also starring Baldwin and Lange.
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1984 American TV movie directed by John Erman and based on the 1947 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Ann-Margret and Treat Williams and premiered on ABC on March 4, 1984.
Marlon Brando was an American actor and considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century.
Margaret "Peg" Hillias was an American actress of stage, film and television.
Blanche Marvin, also known as Blanche Zohar, is an American-born theatre critic, producer, writer, and former actress and dancer who is based in the United Kingdom.
