"A compelling, comprehensive narrative about how and why Williams's plays were uniquely situated for adaptation by the Hollywood film industry during the 1950s and 1960s. The authors' meticulous scholarship includes caches of previously undocumented production material, making the book required reading for film aficionados as well as devotees of Tennessee Williams."

—Rex Reed, film critic

"Hollywood's Tennessee tells the unchronicled story of the making and the producing of Williams's films. It brings fascinating backstage news, a treasure trove of invaluable information. Hollywood's Tennessee is essential to filling out the picture of the greatest American playwright of the twentieth century."

—John Lahr, senior theatre critic, New Yorker

No American dramatist has had more plays adapted than Tennessee Williams, and few modern dramatists have witnessed as much controversy during the adaptation process. His Hollywood legacy, captured in such screen adaptations as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer, reflects the sea change in American culture in the mid-twentieth century. Placing this body of work within relevant contexts ranging from gender and sexuality to censorship, modernism, art cinema, and the Southern Renaissance, Hollywood's Tennessee draws on rarely examined archival research to recast Williams's significance.

Providing not only cultural context, the authors also bring to light the details of the arduous screenwriting process Williams experienced, with special emphasis on the Production Code Administration—the powerful censorship office that drew high-profile criticism during the 1950s—and Williams's innovative efforts to bend the code. Going well beyond the scripts themselves, Hollywood's Tennessee showcases findings culled from poster and billboard art, pressbooks, and other production and advertising material. The result is a sweeping account of how Williams's adapted plays were crafted, marketed, and received, as well as the lasting implications of this history for commercial filmmakers and their audiences.