Out now from Imprint is a stunning-looking Blu-ray of an oddball 1966 Tennessee Williams adaptation, This Property is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson and Mary Badham. Studios at the time were strip-mining anything Tennessee Williams, and this is “suggested by a one-act play” with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer and directed by Sydney Pollack (The Way We Were, Tootsie, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). Word was that it was a troubled production with an unfinished script and Natalie Wood recalled that, on occasion, actors made up their dialogue on the spot.
Nonetheless, there’s something rather glorious about it, right from the opening with a teenage girl (Mary Badham) walking on the railroad tracks in a ripped gown, wearing tons of costume jewelry, carrying a cracked doll and eating a rotten banana. A little boy (John Provost/Lassie) asks her where she lives and she points to a boarded-up rooming house with a big “This Property is Condemned” sign on it, and begins to relate the tragic tale of her beautiful, doomed sister Alva (Natalie Wood). This whole opening is the one-act play that I reread recently in the collection 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.
Set in Dobson, Mississippi during the Depression, the rooming house is the drinking and carousing heart of the town, filled with railroad men who let off steam there and gaze lustfully at Alva (Natalie Wood), the gorgeous daughter of the boozy owner Hazel (Kate Reid). Mary Badham plays Willie, the tomboy sister of Alva. Into the rooming house comes a stranger- Owen (Robert Redford) who Alva pounces on and sparks fly, but not especially in a good way. Especially when she finds out he is working for the railroad and is there to downsize and hand out pink slips to most of the workers. Alva’s scheming mother Hazel is hell bent on pimping her lovely daughter off to a wealthy older man to insure her own survival, but Alva dreams of escape- especially to New Orleans, where Owen resides, which in her mind is a mythical destination. Charles Bronson plays J.J., who is courting Hazel but is always pawing at Alva (there’s a great skinny-dipping scene where he makes it abundantly clear he has the hots for Alva). And Robert Blake plays another lovesick admirer.
But the film belongs to Natalie Wood who is so spectacularly beautiful and captivating you just cannot take your eyes off her. In a wonderful extra on the disc there is a tribute to her by author Gavin Lambert, who wrote the novel Inside Daisy Clover, adapted into a fabulously sardonic film starring Natalie, and he describes the almost “supernatural” power Natalie had on screen. He also says that what drew audiences to her was her “vulnerability and accessibility,” a quality that made her a unique star. Robert Redford, who actually went to High School with Natalie Wood, was eternally grateful to her for choosing him for Inside Daisy Clover and This Property is Condemned. He had made a name for himself on Broadway, and done some TV but these movies really kickstarted his film career. In a tribute to Natalie on Turner Classic Movies, Redford said, “I adored Natalie Wood. She was incredibly generous- which not many people in our business are. Over the years we enjoyed an incredible friendship.” He was heartbroken over her drowning death at only 43.
Mary Badham, who took the film world by storm at age 9 when she played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, had an incredibly short film career. Besides this movie, and William Castle’s Let’s Kill Uncle, she retired from the business at age 15. But she had such an infectious, natural quality on screen. She’s quite unforgettable.
Natalie Wood wanted desperately to be taken seriously as an actress, and you can witness her incredible talent in films like Splendor in the Grass, Inside Daisy Clover, Love With a Proper Stanger and The Cracker Factory. But in This Property is Condemned she is absolutely luminous on camera. Not surprising, since the cinematography was by the great James Wong Howe (Seconds, Hud, Sweet Smell of Success, Picnic).
This was not a hit at the box office. It only took in 2.6 million and cost 4.6 million. The reviews were lackluster at best. The NY Times critic Bosley Crowther called it “a soggy, sentimental story of a po’ little white-trash gal as ever oozed from the pen of Tennessee Williams or out of the vein of script-writers in Hollywood.” But for those of us who violently loved this movie when it came out or re-watched it endlessly on DVD, seeing it sparkle with such vibrancy and clarity on Blu-ray is a true joy.
I recently watched This Property is Condemned and I thought it was fabulous . I saw it years ago and loved it then. I don’t care what the critics said and may still say.
Tennessee Williams is a poet ! Thanks, Dennis !