Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman star in this classic drama based on Tennessee Williams' play. The film follows events which transpire one long, hot Southern evening when the family of plantation patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives) gathers in Mississippi to celebrate his 65th birthday, despite his ailing health. Both of the big man's sons are there for the party, but only one of them - lawyer Gooper (Jack Carson) - is keen to inherit the family fortune; the other, Brick (Newman), a former high school athlete who now drinks constantly and refuses to sleep with his wife Maggie (Taylor), couldn't care less. Nevertheless, Maggie would like to see some of the money, believing that it might offer some recompense for the coldness of her marriage, and Big Mama (Judith Anderson), the boys' mother, has always favoured Brick out of the two. As the night wears on, the temperature rises, skeletons emerge from closets, and the family tensions get closer and closer to breaking point.