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This movie was the subject of all sorts of "bannings", by the Catholic League of Decency, back when it came out. It's a Kazan take on one of Williams' more twisted plays, which makes it just a little... ummm... "twisted". Baby Doll begins with a shot of a lonely house that's seemingly way out in the middle of nowhere. A balding man, dressed in his pajamas and standing in the foreground calls out "Boll Weevil" and a man on the roof of the building calls back "yes sir, Mister Achlee". "Boll" is repairing the roof and Archie Lee {Karl Malden} just wants to make sure he gets it right. On his way back into the house, Archie gives one of the workers a hard time of things and, upstairs, he wanders the hallway, testing doors and calling for "Baby Doll".

Archie finds an open door and sneaks inside the room where he watches a woman, in the next room, through a hole in the wall. Though she's obviously too old to be doing so, Baby is sprawled in a small daybed that bears a real resemblance to a crib, sucking her thumb. Archie spends a bit of time trying to enlarge the hole, which wakes the girl and causes her to run into Archie's room, where she accuses him of being a "Peeping Tom!" in a pleasantly sexy, Southern drawl. Archie snickers a bit while Baby {Carroll Baker} stomps out of the room then follows her out into the hallway where, in the course of the ensuing argument, we learn that it's only a few days before Baby turns twenty and they will finally get to consummate their marriage.

While the argument continues, we find out that Archie Lee hasn't kept his part of the marriage bargain as well as Baby might have liked and she makes fun of his bald spot while they're getting dressed. Downstairs, Aunt Rose is afraid to answer the phone; the ringing scares her. Archie Lee thinks this is just a little silly, so he runs downstairs to scream at the poor old woman until she faces her fears and picks up the telephone. It's the loan company and Karl seems to be having a few problems paying the bills because his cotton Gin company isn't doing so well these days. He doesn't really want to talk to them anyway. When he finally convinces Baby to finish dressing and get into the car, the "employees" all have a lovely time laughing at their argument.

On the way into town they stop at a farm where they discover that Archie's not the only person being put out of business by the new Syndicate gin and argue about whether or not Baby will be cooking when they finally become "fully" married. Archie's late for his doctor's appointment and Baby flirts shamelessly with the dentist across the hall while he's getting his checkup. The doctor gives Archie a sedative and the nurse gives him a hard time. Baby complains constantly while they wait for the prescription and everyone laughs at Archie Lee while the couple argues in the car outside the pharmacy. As they bicker, a furniture truck goes by carrying their furniture and, when they get home, they discover that most everything's been re-possessed. For the hundredth time, Baby threatens to move out and get a job and Archie drives off infuriated.

While the governor congratulates Mister Silva Vacarro {Eli Wallach} on the job he's done with the new Syndicate gin and several of the people he's put out of business are sulking, Archie sneaks into the gin and sets it on fire. Lot's of people stand around with grins on their faces and watch while Silva and his company men struggle, in vain, to quell the flames. Cut to the café where no one seems to be all that upset that Silva's been put out of business.

When Silva realizes that Archie was the only local that wasn't right there in the room, he suspects that he might just be the guilty party and decides that he'll be the guy to process all of his unginned cotton while the Syndicate gin is out of commission. Archie is thrilled to see cotton filled trucks coming down the road to his gin and has Baby "entertain" Mister Silva while he's off taking care of the job. Things get a little steamy between the two and, after a long stream of questions, Silva manages to trick Baby into revealing a few discrepancies in her husband's alibi for the previous evening. Things get steamier still and Baby gets a little "scared" by some of the things that Silva says to her.

Silva quickly realizes pretty quickly that his guess was probably right and, when things in Archie's gin begin to go wrong, takes advantage of the confusion to get his revenge. Baby figures pretty prominently in his revenge plans and doesn't really seem to mind playing her part.

Like just about every other film Kazan put together, the look of this is just amazing. It includes all sorts of beautiful sets rendered in shades of grey and framed with a nicely artistic eye. The movie does have some racist overtones: Silva's a "wop" and the blacks that work on the farm are little better than slaves. The actors that play the lead roles are all pretty excellent: Caroll Baker is suitably innocent, despite being evil incarnate, Malden is perfect as the frustrated and obsessive, older and quite unrequited lover and Wallach does a great job of playing the moderately evil and really pissed off representative of big business.

This ends up as something of a twisted comedy with a genuinely dark undercurrent. It's another excellent film that's unfortunately been swept under the rug. I sincerely doubt that's due to the sexual nature of the movie, it's not that much worse than anything you might see on television these days and certainly not the pornographic thing that the League of Decency made it out to be. It strikes me as really strange that something this good has just simply been forgotten. This does come with a fairly extensive documentary that tells all about the banning as well as the players that put it together and many fun facts about the filming.

Baby Doll garnered Oscar nominations for Best Actress for Carroll Baker, Actress In A Supporting Role for Mildred Dunnock, Cinematography for Boris Kaufman and Writing for Tennessee Williams.

Tennessee Williams