Synopsis
Gigolo and drifter Chance Wayne returns to his home town as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra Del Lago, whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. Chance runs into trouble when he finds his ex-girlfriend, the daughter of the local politician Tom "Boss" Finley, who more or less forced him to leave his daughter and the town many years ago.
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Cast
- Paul NewmanChance Wayne
- Geraldine PageAlexandra Del Lago
- Shirley KnightHeavenly Finley
- Ed BegleyTom 'Boss' Finley
- Rip TornThomas 'Tom' J. Finley, Jr.
- Mildred DunnockAunt Nonnie
- Madeleine SherwoodMiss Lucy
- Philip AbbottDr. George Scudder
- Corey AllenScotty
- Roy GlennCharles
Recommendations
- 88
Chicago Tribune
It's a good transcription, though sadly bowdlerized. [02 Jul 2000, p.29] - 70
Variety
Sweet Bird of Youth is a tamer and tidied but arresting version of Tennessee Williams' Broadway play. It's a glossy, engrossing hunk of motion picture entertainment, slickly produced by Berman. - 60
Los Angeles Times
Just like the play, the first half is a delicious, hotel-room-set duel of desperate characters, while the second half goes awry. [01 Dec 1989, p.F18] - 50
The New Yorker
Hysterical twaddle. - 50
Time Out
Brooks' direction seems a little too stolid for all the sleazy, flaming passions. - 40
Chicago Reader
[Brooks's] second Williams adaptation (1962) is literally a form of emasculation that offers little indication of what made the original play interesting (especially in Elia Kazan’s stage production), despite the fact that Paul Newman and Geraldine Page are called on to reprise their original roles—as a hustler returning to his southern hometown and a Hollywood has-been—and do a fair job with Brooks’s hopeless script. - 40
The New York Times
Sweet Bird of Youth, for all its graphics and the vigorous performance of its top roles, has the taint of an engineered soap opera, wherein the soap is simply made of lye, that's all. - 40
TV Guide Magazine
Most of it comes across as overheated nonsense, but Page's egomaniacal telephone soliloquy at the film's climax is reason enough to tune in.
