Baby Doll (1956)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m not sure how many Tennessee Williams-inspired 1950s black-and-white dramas I still have to watch, but Baby Doll isn’t going to become one of my favourite Williams adaptations. Much of my reluctance comes from a refusal to engage with a story in which nearly everyone is nasty to everyone else all the time. That gets old, and I’m on the market for more uplifting material at the moment. The story takes us in deep rural Mississippi, where two feuding cotton farmers take escalating means toward each other – one burns the other’s field down, which is met by the other farmer seducing the first farmer’s teenage bride. But don’t feel too sorry for her given the bad treatment she gives to her husband and the overall nastiness of the film. As with other Williams-inspired dramas, Baby Doll was a bit of a sensation back in the 1950s – the topic matter went beyond what was considered acceptable, and having a teenage actress parade in a babydoll nightgown (legend has it that the film named the clothing) while the narrative repeatedly insisted on the seduction of the childlike character had authorities in a moral tizzy. (I suspect it would be even worse today.) Director Elia Kazan handles everything with his usual touch, allowing the three main actors — Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach—to bite into the dramatic material. Baby Doll is a drama all right, but it may take a specific frame of mind to get the most out of it.