A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Two weeks ago, one of my Best Bets was the one-week showing of National Theatre at Home’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois. Tonight, TCM presents the brilliant, incendiary 1951 movie version, in which the fragile Blanche is played by Vivien Leigh, with Kim Hunter as her sister, Stella. And at the center of this film, of course, is Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. Brando’s naturalistic style of acting changed movies, and influenced generations of actors. Watch it anew, and it's still easy to understand why. Karl Malden co-stars. Elia Kazan directs. And when this Tennessee Williams play premiered on Broadway in 1947 and ran for two years, Kazan was the director for the stage version as well, and Brando, Hunter, and Malden all acted together for the entire run. So for them, the roles captured on screen already had been performed hundreds of times on stage – 855 times, to be precise. But for Vivien Leigh, it was a first-time job: on Broadway, the leading lady was Jessica Tandy, the one central player to be replaced for the movie version. But Leigh, who had starred in Gone with the Wind a dozen years earlier, was an excellent choice for a faded, narcissistic Southern belle. And when Leigh was offered the role of Blanche, she didn’t. Blanch, that is…