LIZ ON THURSDAY

And it’s Liz posing unhappily on the beach in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer. I’d like to pretend I was so school-boy, hip-literate that I came to the work of Tennessee on it’s own merit, but the truth is that I went to see the movie because my dirty minded little homies told me Liz’s white, one-piece swimsuit became transparent when wet. When I actually shuffled into the cheap seats of the local cinema, I discovered that Suddenly Last Summer was a twisted epic in which Liz on the beach is attracting young boys for her husband Sebastian, and is later threatened with a lobotomy by Sebastian’s mom, played by Katherine Hepburn, who brings in Montgomery Clift (baby) to declare Liz insane when she threatens to blow the whistle on Sebastian’s predatory gaiety. And, after the whole story ended in cannibalism, there was no stopping me. I promptly boarded the streetcar to the glass menagerie. (And, around the same time, I also discovered the work of Hank – the other of the Williams boys.)