Natalie Wood Robert Redford Charles Bronson
Directed by Sydney Pollack
It started out as a simple as a 20 minute one-act play entitled “This Property is Condemned” that Tennessee offered to Richard Burton to direct with Burton's current wife, Elizabeth Taylor, in the lead role. Instead, the Burtons passed on the short play and decided to do a longer one - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) for director Mike Nichols.
That would have been the end of “This Property is Condemned” except for Paramount Studios, which bought the rights and developed it into a feature length film. Natalie Wood, who had longed for a role in a Tennessee play, was cast and at least 12 screenwriters toiled on the script before a final version emerged.
Predictably, Williams wouldn't have anything to do with it, which wasn't unusual for him. He was known to despise every film adaptation of his work with the exception of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) starring Vivian Leigh and a young Warren Beatty. Then changing his mind and publicly rebutting his initial distain.
In spite of Williams' non-involvement, the film version of “This Property is Condemned” does contain original dialogue from his play.
The assorted screenwriters fill in the middle with a story about Hazel Starr (Kate Reid), the owner of a Mississippi boarding house for railroad men, and her beautiful daughter, Alva (Natalie Wood), whose role is to entertain the male boarders.
Alva desperately wants to flee her miserable existence and sees an escape route out of town in the form of Owen Legate (Robert Redford), a railroad efficiency expert. Set during the Depression we soon realise the love story is ill fated.
Wood had enough clout in Hollywood to pick her leading man so chose Redford who had just appeared with her in Inside Daisy Clover (1965)
Redford, in turn, recommended his former acting buddy, Sydney Pollack, as director. The film was shot on location in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi with some additional scenes in New Orleans at such famous settings as Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on Basin Street. The color cinematography by James Wong Howe was muted in order to evoke the mood of the Depression.
The residents of Bay St. Louis didn't want to be associated with a Tennessee Williams play or a Hollywood production and made life difficult for the filmmakers. Charles Bronson aggressively lobbied for a larger role in the film to no avail and producer Ray Stark interfered with Pollack's creative decisions on the set.
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