All apologies to residents of the southern US states, whom I am about to offend, but I don’t understand the south. Similarly, I rarely connect with the works of Tennessee Williams, one of the most revered authors of that region.
So it was a surprise to me that I was floored by 1956’s Baby Doll. Of the movie’s I have seen adapted from his works, this may be the most Tennessee Williams-ish.
This overheated, oversexed and over-the-top melodrama concerns a love triangle between Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach.
Malden plays a poor, dim bulb of a Southern cotton farmer, and I don’t recall seeing him in a role before where his character had any of those attributes. It is a testament to him as an actor that he is so believable here.
And yet Wallach fares even better here in his movie debut, playing the head of cotton cooperative that has taken over production from most of the surrounding farms. Despite being Jewish, Wallach plays a convincing Sicilian.
Carroll Baker, however, steals the show as the vacuous, manipulative title character. Baker was 25 years old at the time of this production, though her character is supposed to be 19. Quite disturbingly, I thought she looked a few years shy of even being 19.
That’s largely due to her appearance the first time we see her. Malden is spying on her through a hole in the wall of the adjacent bedroom, watching her sucking her thumb while she sleeps in a crib with one of the sides laying down, arms and legs spilling out on all sides.
Malden is perving out from sheer desperation, as Baker is his wife, but she will not consummate their marriage until her 20th birthday, which is the next day. He is also frustrated from his inability to sell his cotton now that Wallach has a lock on the market in the area.
In his frustration, he proceeds to burn down Wallach’s warehouse. As Malden is the only farmer in the area who isn’t part of the collective, it is obvious he committed the arson. And yet Wallach does not have the proof he needs to hold Malden accountable.
Going to Malden’s farm the next day, Wallach makes an arrangement to purchase Malden’s unsold cotton, so as to start replacing what was lost in the fire. Malden is thrilled, but ends up spending most of the day on an errand to get replacement machinery.
This leaves plenty of time for Wallach to seduce Baker, who is obviously flattered by attention from a man of better means and intelligence than her husband. They play childish games like hide and seek. He sometimes catches and tickles her.
But things become more complicated as Wallach begins to reveal an ulterior motive. While he appears to only be after her body, he also increasingly needles her to sign a statement saying her husband had been gone for several hours at the time of the fire. The tension begins to center on which he wants: her virginity or her signature. Maybe he’s after both.
One of the most interesting aspects of this feature is how it captures the racial divide in the South at the time. The opening titles ends the list of actors with “and some people from Benoit, MS” and I assume most of the Black people here were recruited from the local populace. Unfortunately, very few of them are given any lines, but I like how some are around the margins in almost scene. These act as a kind of Green chorus that comments on the insanity of the White leads they are always observing.
There was also a glimpse of separate Black and White water coolers, which I wondered was some sort of joke. I know there were separate water fountains there at the time, which is absurd enough, but separate water coolers?!
The melodrama in Baby Doll is intentionally escalated to high camp to such an extent that I just as easily could have enjoyed it as not. I happened to fall on the right side of the fence, and my eyes were glued to the screen the entire time. It may the most gloriously trashy critically revered movie ever made.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach
Watched on Warner ARchive blu-ray