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♪♪ (theme plays: dramatic instrumental) ♪♪
♪♪
I have tricks in my pocket.
I have things up my sleeve.
But I am the opposite of a stage magician.
He gives you illusion which has the appearance of truth,
and I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
To begin with, I turn back time.
I reverse it to that quaint period,
the '30s,
when the huge middle class of America was matriculating
in a school for the blind.
Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes,
and so were having their fingers pressed forcibly down
on the fiery brail alphabet of a dissolving economy.
In Spain there was revolution.
Here there was only shouting and confusion.
In Spain there was Guernica.
Here there were disturbances of labor,
sometimes pretty violent,
in otherwise peaceful cities such as Chicago,
Cleveland and St. Louis.
This is the social background of the play.
The play is memory.
Being a memory play,
it is dimly lighted.
It is sentimental.
It is not realistic.
(fiddle playing)
In memory,
everything seems to happen to music.
That explains the fiddle in the wings.
I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it.
The other characters are my mother, Amanda,
My sister, Laura,
and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes.
He is the most realistic character in the play,
being an emissary
from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from.
But since I have a poet's weakness for symbols,
I use this character also as a symbol.
He is the long-delayed, but always expected,
something that we live for.
There is a fifth character in the play,
but he only appears
in this larger-than-life-size photograph.
This is my father, who left us a long time ago.
He was a telephone man
who fell in love with long distances.
He gave up his job
with the telephone company
and skipped the light fantastic out of town.
The last we heard of him
was a picture postcard from Mazatlan,
on the Pacific Coast of Mexico,
containing a message of two words.
"Hello.
Goodbye."
And no address.
AMANDA WINGFIELD: You know, Laura,
I had the funniest experience in church last Sunday.
The church was full except for one pew way down front,
and in that was just one little lady.
So I smiled at her very sweetly and I said,
"Excuse me.
Would you mind if I shared this pew?"
"I certainly would," she said.
"This space is rented."
(laughing)
That's the first time I ever knew
the Lord rented space.
These Northern Episcopalians.
I can understand certain Episcopalians,
but the Northern ones, no.
Oh, honey.
Don't push your food with your fingers.
If you must push your food with something,
The thing to use is a crust of bread.
Oh, tom.
You must chew your food.
Honey, animals have secretions in their stomachs
that allow them to digest their food without mastication.
But human beings must chew their food
before they swallow it down.
Chew, hmm?
Chew.
Honey,
Eat leisurely, hmm?
Eat leisurely.
A well-cooked meal has many delicate flavors
that must be held in the mouth for appreciation,
not just gulped down.
Hmm?
So chew.
Chew.
Don't you want to give your salivary glands
A chance to function?
TOM WINGFIELD: Mother.
I have not enjoyed
one bite at this dinner
because of your constant directions on how to eat it.
It's you that makes me rush through meals
with your hawk-like attention to every bite I take.
It's sickening.
It spoils my appetite,
all this discussion of animal secretions,
salivary glands, mastication.
Temperament like a metropolitan star.
(singing)
You're not excused from the table.
I'm getting a cigarette.
You smoke too much.
Mother,
I'll bring in the coffee.
AMANDA: No, no, no, no, You sit down.
I'm going to be the colored boy tonight
and you're going to be the lady.
LAURA WINGFIELD: Well, no, I'm already up.
AMANDA: Well, resume your seat.
Resume your seat.
Keep yourself fresh and pretty for the gentlemen callers.
LAURA: I'm not expecting any gentlemen callers, mother.
AMANDA: Well, honey, the nice thing about them
is sometimes they come when they are least expected.
Why, I remember one Sunday afternoon in blue mountain
when your mother was a girl.
Such a convocation stomped on our porch,
with chocolate and...
TOM: I know what's coming.
LAURA: Yes, but let her tell it.
TOM: Again?
LAURA: She loves to tell it.
AMANDA: And on that
Sunday afternoon in blue mountain
when your mother was a girl,
she received 17 gentlemen callers.
Sometimes there weren't enough chairs
to accommodate them all,
and we had to send a colored boy
over to the parish house to fetch the folding chairs.
TOM: And how did you entertain those gentlemen callers?
Well, I happened to understand the art of conversation.
I bet you could talk.
AMANDA: Well, I could, I tell you.
All the girls in my day could.
TOM: Yes?
AMANDA: Yes.
We knew how to entertain our gentlemen callers.
It's not enough for a girl to be possessed
of a pretty face and a graceful figure,
although I wasn't slighted in either respect.
She also had to have a nimble wit
and a tongue to meet all occasions.
What did you talk about?
AMANDA: Things of importance going on in the world.
Well, never anything coarse or common or vulgar,
because my callers were gentlemen,
Some of the finest men on the Mississippi delta.
Planters and sons of planters.
There was young Champ Laughlin.
He later became
Vice-president of the Delta Planters' Bank.
And the Cutrere brothers.
(laughing)
Wesley and Bates.
Now,
Bates was one of my own bright particular beaus,
but he got into a fight
with that wild Wainwright boy.
They shot it out on the floor of the Moon Lake Casino.
Bates was shot right through the stomach.
Died in the ambulance
on the way to Memphis.
He left his widow well provided for too.
Some 8,000 or 10,000 acres -- no less.
And he never loved that woman.
She just caught him on the rebound.
They found my picture on him the night he died.
(sniffling)
(sighing)
And that boy.
That boy that every girl in the delta
had set her cap for.
That beautiful, brilliant young dixie boy
from Greene County.
Why did he leave his widow?
He never married.
What's the matter?
You sound as if all my old admirers
had turned up their toes to the daisies.
Isn't this the first one you mentioned
that still survived?
Well, he made an awful lot of money.
He went north to Wall Street and he made a fortune.
And I could have been Mrs. J. Duncan Fitzhugh,
mind you.
And what did I do?
I just went out of my way and picked your father.
Mother, let me clear the dishes.
AMANDA: No, no, no, no.
You go over there
and you study your typewriter chart.
You practice your shorthand a little.
Keep yourself fresh and pretty,
because it's almost time
for our gentlemen callers to start arriving.
Now, how many do you think
We're going to entertain today?
LAURA: I don't believe that we'll be receiving any, mother.
AMANDA: Not any?
Not one?
Oh, you must be joking.
Not one single gentleman caller?
What's the matter?
Has there been a flood or a tornado?
LAURA: It's not a flood.
It's not a tornado, mother.
I'm just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain.
Mother's afraid I'm going to be an old maid.
♪♪ (background music: jazz instrumental) ♪♪
(footsteps)
(chiming)
(tapping of typewriter keys)
Hello, mother.
I was just--
Yes.
You were just practicing your typing, I suppose.
Yes.
AMANDA: Deception, deception, deception.
LAURA: How was the D.A.R. meeting, mother?
AMANDA: D.A.R. meeting?
LAURA: Didn't you go to the D.A.R. meeting, mother?
AMANDA: No.
I didn't go to any D.A.R. meeting.
I didn't have the strength.
I didn't have the courage.
I just wanted to find a hole in the ground
and crawl in it and stay there
for the rest of my entire life.
LAURA: Why did you do that, mother?
Why?
How old are you, Laura?
mother, you know my age.
I was under the impression you were an adult.
It seems I was entirely mistaken.
Please don't stare at me, mother.
AMANDA: What are we going to do?
What is going to become of us?
What is the future?
Mother, has something happened?
Has something happened, mother?
AMANDA: I'll be all right in a minute.
I am just bewildered by life.
mMother, I wish that you would tell me what has happened.
I went to the D.A.R., as you know--
I was to be inducted as an officer--
and I stopped by
Rubicam's Business College on the way
to tell them about your cold and ask how you were doing there.
LAURA: Oh.
Yes.
Oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I went straight
to your typing instructor,
and I introduced myself as your mother.
She didn't know who you were.
"Wingfield?" she said.
"Why, we don't have any such scholar
enrolled in this school."
I assured her she did.
I said, "Why, my daughter Laura has been coming here
since early January."
"I don't know," she said,
"Unless you mean that terribly shy little girl
that dropped out after only a few days attendance."
"No," I said. "I don't mean that one."
"I mean my daughter Laura,
"Who's been coming here every day for the past six weeks."
"Well, excuse me," she said,
and she got down the attendance record.
There was your name,
Unmistakable, printed,
and every time you had been absent.
And I still told her she was wrong.
I said, "oh, no.
"There must be some mistake.
There must be some mix-up in the records."
"Oh, no," she said.
"I remember her perfectly now.
"She was so shy,
"and her hands shook
"so that her fingers wouldn't strike the right keys.
"And then when we gave her a speed test,
"she just fell apart completely and was sick to her stomach
"and had to be carried to the washroom.
"After that she never came back anymore.
"We called the house every day,
but we never got any answer."
That's when I was working all day long,
I suppose, down at that department store,
demonstrating those...
I was so weak I couldn't stand up.
I had to sit down
while they gave me a glass of water.
Fifty dollars tuition.
It's not even the money so much,
but it's all my hopes of any kind of a future for you
just gone out the spout, just gone out the spout like--
Laura, don't you play that Victrola!
Now, what have you been doing every day
when you have gone out of this house
telling me you were going to business college?
I just went out walking.
That's not true.
Yes, it is, mother. I just went walking.
Walking? Walking?
In winter?
Deliberately courting pneumonia in that light coat?
Now, where were you walking to?
All sorts of places.
Mostly in the park.
Honey, even after you started catching that cold?
Mother, it was the lesser of two evils.
I couldn't go back.
I threw up on the floor.
So, from half-past 7:00 in the morning
till after 5:00 in the afternoon,
you mean to tell me
you went walking around in the park in order
to make me believe you were still going to business college?
LAURA: Mother, it wasn't as bad as it sounds.
I went inside places to get warmed up.
Inside where?
LAURA: I went to the art museum
and the bird house at the zoo.
I visited the penguins every day.
Some days I did without lunch and I went to the movies.
But lately in the afternoons,
I've been going to that place called the jewel-box,
that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers.
Honey,
you did all this to deceive me?
For deception?
Now, why?
Why? Laura, why?
Mother, when you are disappointed,
you get that awful suffering look on your face
like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum.
I couldn't face it.
I couldn't.
(sighing)
So,
what are we going to do now, honey,
for the rest of our lives?
Hmm?
We just going to sit down in this house
and watch the parades go by?
Amuse ourselves with the little glass menagerie?
Eternally play those worn-out phonograph records
your father left
as a painful reminder of him?
We can't have a business career.
No.
We can't do that.
That just gives us indigestion.
So what is there left for us
but dependency all our lives?
Laura.
Honey,
I know so well what happens to unmarried women
who are not prepared to occupy a position in life.
I've seen such pitiful examples of it in the South --
barely tolerated spinsters living on some brother's wife
or sister's husband,
tucked away in some little mousetrap of a room,
encouraged by one in-law to go visit another in-law,
little birdlike women without any nest,
eating the crust of humility all their lives.
Now, is that the future
we have mapped out for ourselves?
(sighing)
I swear,
I don't see any other alternative.
I don't think
that's a very pleasant alternative.
Of course, some girls do marry.
My goodness, Laura.
Haven't you ever liked some boy?
Yes.
Yes, mother.
I liked one once.
You did?
LAURA: I came across his picture a while ago.
He gave you his picture too?
No. It's in the yearbook.
Oh.
It was a high-school boy.
Yes.
His name was Jim.
Here he is in the Pirates of Penzance.
AMANDA: The what?
LAURA: The operetta the senior class put on.
He had a wonderful voice.
I used to sit across the aisle from him
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the auditorium.
Here he is with a silver cup for debating.
You see his grin?
AMANDA: So he had a grin too.
LAURA: He used to call me blue roses.
AMANDA: Now,
Why did he call you such a silly name as that?
LAURA: When I had that attack of pleurosis
and I was out of school for a while.
When I came back, he asked me what the matter was,
and I said, "pleurosis."
Only he thought that I said
AMANDA/LAURA: Blue roses.
LAURA: So that's what he always called me after that.
Whenever he would see me,
He would holler, "Hello, blue roses."
I never cared very much for the girl that he went out with,
Emily Meisenbach.
She was the best-dressed girl at Soldan,
but she never struck me as being sincere.
I read once in the newspaper that they were engaged.
That was a long time ago.
They're probably married by now.
AMANDA: Oh.
That's all right, honey.
It's all right.
You know, sometimes when little girls
are not cut out for business careers,
they end up married to very nice young men,
and I'm just going to see that you do that too.
LAURA: Mother.
AMANDA: What?
LAURA: I'm crippled.
AMANDA: Shh!
Now, don't use that word.
How many times have I told you never to use that word?
You are not crippled.
You just have a little defect.
Now, if you had lived in the days when I was a girl,
and we went out to dances every night,
and we had those long graceful skirts sweeping the ground,
it might even have been considered an asset.
Honey,
when you have a little disadvantage like that,
you just have to cultivate something else
to take its place.
You have to cultivate charm
or vivacity
or...
charm.
That's the one thing your father had plenty of.
Charm.
After the fiasco at the Rubicam's Business College,
the idea of getting
a gentleman caller for Laura
began to play a more and more important part
in mother's calculations.
It became an obsession.
late that winter and in the early spring,
realizing that extra money would be needed
to properly feather the nest and plume the bird,
she began conducting
a vigorous campaign on the telephone,
roping in subscribers
to one of those magazines for matrons called
The Homemaker's Companion,
The type of journal which features
the serialized sublimation of ladies of letters
who think in terms of delicate cup-like breasts,
slim, tapering waists,
rich, creamy thighs,
eyes like woodsmoke in Autumn,
fingers that soothe and caress like strains of music,
bodies as powerful as Etruscan sculpture.
AMANDA: Ida Scott?
Oh!
This is Amanda Wingfield.
Well, now, Ida,
I have just been looking in my little red book here,
and I see where your subscription to the companion
is just about to run out,
and it's just when that wonderful new serial
by Bessie Mae Harper is starting.
Hmm.
It's the first thing she's written
since honeymoon for three,
and that was unusual, you know.
Well, Ida, this one is even lovelier.
It's all about the horsey set on Long Island,
and this debutante is thrown from a horse
while she's taking him over the jumps
in the, uh, uh,
regatta.
Well, her spine is injured.
That's what the horse did.
He stepped on her.
And the only surgeon in the whole wide world
who can keep her from being permanently paralyzed
is the man she's engaged to be married to.
And he's tall and he's blonde and he's--
What?
Oh, no, honey.
Don't let them burn.
You just go and you take a look in the oven.
I'll just sit here and hold on.
You know what that woman did?
She hung up on me.
(man singing in foreign language on radio)
♪♪
So?
TOM: Shh!
AMANDA: Son, do me a favor.
TOM: What?
(clanging)
AMANDA: Comb your hair.
Well, you look so pretty when your hair is combed.
There's only one respect
in which I would like you to emulate your father.
TOM: What respect is that?
AMANDA: The care he took of his person.
Never allowed himself to be untidy.
TOM: Mother, please go busy yourself with something else.
I'm trying--
AMANDA: Sit up straight
So your shoulders don't stick out like a sparrow's.
Now, you know, I have seen a medical chart,
and I know what that posture does to your internal organs.
If you sit up, I'll show you.
You see?
Your stomach presses in on your lungs
and then your lungs press in on your heart.
And then your poor little heart gets discouraged
because it doesn't have any room left
to go on beating for you.
TOM: What in Christ's name am I supposed to do?
AMANDA: Don't you dare talk to me like that.
What is the matter with you?
Have you gone out of your senses?
TOM: Yes, I have.
That's true.
You've driven me out of them.
What is the matter with you lately,
You big, big idiot?
Look.
Mother, I have got no thing,
no single thing in this house that I can call my own.
AMANDA: Lower your voice.
TOM: Yesterday you confiscated my books.
I certainly did.
I took that awful novel back to the library,
That horrible book by that insane Mr. Lawrence.
Well, I can't control the output of a diseased mind
or the people that cater to them,
but I won't have that filth in my house.
No, no, no.
House? House?
Who pays the rent on the house? Who makes a slave of himself?
AMANDA: Don't you dare talk to me like that.
TOM: No, that's true, mother. I mustn't say things.
I've just got to keep my mouth shut.
AMANDA: Let me tell you something--
TOM: I don't want to hear any more.
AMANDA: You are going to hear more.
TOM: No, I will not hear more. I am going out.
AMANDA: You are going to listen to me!
TOM: Out, out, out!
AMANDA: You are going to listen to me!
I have had enough of your impudence.
And another thing.
I am just at the end of my patience.
TOM: And what do you think I'm at, mother?
Aren't I supposed to have any patience
to reach the end of?
I know it seems unimportant to you, mother,
What I'm doing, what I want to do,
having little difference between them.
You don't think that.
No, I think you were doing something you're ashamed of,
and that's why you acted like this.
Well, I don't believe
that you go every night to the movies.
Nobody goes to the movies night after night.
Nobody in their right mind
Goes to the movies as often as you pretend to.
And people do not go to movies at almost midnight,
and movies do not let out at 2:00 a.m.
You come in here,
stumbling and muttering to yourself like a maniac,
and you get three hours sleep
and then you go to work.
Now, I can imagine what you're doing down there,
moping and doping, because you are in no condition.
TOM: No. That is true, mother.
I am in no condition.
Tom.
How dare you jeopardize your job and jeopardize our security?
Now, how do you think we would manage
if anything happened--
TOM: Listen, mother.
Do you think I'm crazy about the warehouse?
Wo you think I am in love with the continental shoemakers?
Do you think I want to spend 55 years
down in that celotex interior with fluorescent tubes?
Look, mother.
I would just rather somebody pick up a crowbar
and batter out my brains than go back mornings,
but I go.
Every morning that you come in yelling
that goddamned, "Rise and shine.
Rise and shine."
I think to myself how lucky dead people are.
But I get up.
I go.
For $65 a month,
I give up all that I ever dreamed of doing
and being ever,
and yet you say that self,
self is all I think of?
Listen to me, mother.
If self is what I thought of, I would be where he is:
Gone,
as far as the system of transportation reaches.
Don't grab at me, mother.
AMANDA: I'm not grabbing at you.
I just want to know where you're going.
I am going to the movies.
I don't believe that lie!
No?
Well, you're right, mother.
I'm going to opium dens.
Yes, mother. Opium dens.
Dens of vice and criminals' hangouts.
Mother, I am a hired assassin.
I joined the Hogan gang.
I carry a tommy gun in a violin case
and I run a stream of cathouses in the valley.
They call me killer.
Killer Wingfield.
See, I'm leading a double life, really.
A simple, honest warehouse worker by day,
but by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, mother.
I go to gambling casinos.
I just spin away a fortune on the roulette table, mother.
I wear a patch over one eye
and a false mustache
and sometimes I put on green whiskers.
On those occasions, they call me El Diablo.
I could tell you many things to make you sleepless, mother.
My enemies plan
to dynamite this place some night.
They are going to blow us all sky-high!
And will I be glad?
I'll be very happy.
And so will you be.
You will go up, up, up
over Blue Mountain on a broomstick
with 17 gentlemen callers!
(panting)
You ugly, babbling old witch!
(rattling)
(sobbing)
I will never speak to you again as long as I live
unless you apologize to me.
(clattering)
Tom?
(rattling)
Tom?
What are you doing?
Looking for a door key.
Where have you been all this time?
I have been to the movies.
All this time at the movies?
This was a very long program.
There was a Garbo picture and a newsreel
and a Mickey Mouse and a Travelogue
and a preview of coming attractions.
There was an organ solo
and a collection for the milk fund,
simultaneously,
which ended up in a terrible fight
between a fat lady
and an usher.
Did you have to stay through everything?
TOM: Of course.
Oh, and I forgot.
There was a stage show.
The headliner on this stage show
was Malvolio the magician.
He performed wonderful tricks, many of them,
such as pouring water back and forth between two pitchers.
First it turned into wine, then it turned into beer,
then it turned into whisky.
Now, I know that it was whisky that it finally turned into,
because he needed someone
to come up out of the audience to help him,
so I came up.
Both shows.
Kentucky straight bourbon.
Very generous fellow.
He gave souvenirs.
This
is his magic scarf.
You can have it, Laura.
You wave it over
a canary cage.
they turn into a bowl of goldfish.
And you wave it over a goldfish bowl
and they fly away canaries.
But the wonderfullest trick of all
was the coffin trick.
We nailed him
into a coffin,
and he got himself out without removing one nail.
Now, there is a trick that would come in handy for me.
Get me out of this 2x4 situation.
Shh! Tom.
What are you shushing me for?
LAURA: Shh. You'll wake up mother.
Goody, goody.
Pay her back for all those
Rise and shines, rise and shines.
You know, Laura,
it don't take much intelligence
to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin.
But who ever got himself out of one
without removing at least one nail?
Rise and shine.
TOM: I will rise,
but I won't shine.
Laura, go tell your brother to rise and shine.
Go tell your brother his coffee's ready.
LAURA: Tom?
(knocking)
Tom.
It's nearly 7:00.
Don't make mother nervous.
Tom.
Speak to mother this morning.
Make up with her.
Apologize.
Speak to her.
TOM: She won't to me.
It's her that started not speaking.
LAURA: If you would only say that you're sorry,
she'd start speaking.
TOM: My not speaking,
is that such a tragedy?
LAURA: Please, Tom.
AMANDA: Laura,
are you going to do what I asked,
or do I have to get dressed
and go out myself?
LAURA: Going, going.
Just have to get on my coat.
Butter and what else?
AMANDA: Just butter. And tell them to charge it.
Mother, they make such faces when I do that.
AMANDA: Sticks and stones may break our bones,
but the expression on Mr. Garfinkel's face
won't harm us.
Tell your brother his coffee's getting cold.
Tom, do what I ask, will you?
AMANDA: Laura!
LAURA: Will you, Tom?
AMANDA: Go now or just don't go at all.
Going, going.
(panting)
Ahh!
Laura!
AMANDA: Laura!
I'm all right.
I slipped, but I'm all right.
AMANDA: Ooh.
If anybody falls down this landing
and breaks their leg,
the landlord ought to be sued for every cent he's got.
(sighing)
Well.
Who are you?
(door slamming)
(Tom coughing)
(slurping)
(sighing)
Mother?
I apologize, mother.
I'm sorry for what I said --
for everything that I said.
I didn't mean it.
My devotion has made me a witch,
so I make myself hateful to my children.
No, you don't.
Well, I worry so much, I can't sleep,
so it just makes me nervous.
TOM: I know that, mother.
AMANDA: Tom.
Now, you know I have had
to fight a solitary battle all these years.
But you are my right-hand bower.
Now, don't you fail me.
Don't you fall down.
TOM: But I try, mother.
AMANDA: Tom, if you try, you will succeed.
You are just full of natural endowments.
Honey, both of my children are.
They're just very precious children,
and I have so much to be thankful for.
Now, would you just promise me one thing?
TOM: What, mother?
AMANDA: Will you promise me
that you won't ever become a drunkard?
TOM: I promise I'll never become a drunkard, mother.
AMANDA: Come on.
Have some Purina.
TOM: No, thanks, mother.
Just coffee.
Uh, some Post Toasties?
Some, uh, uh, Wheaties?
TOM: No.
No, thanks, mother.
Just coffee's fine.
AMANDA: Honey, you can't work all day long
on an empty stomach.
Now, you've got 10 minutes.
Tom, now don't go, honey.
Drinking too-hot liquids makes cancer of the stomach.
Now, here, put some milk in it.
TOM: No, thanks.
AMANDA: Well, just to cool it off.
TOM: No, no, thank you, mother.
I want it black.
AMANDA: I know, but it's not good for you like that.
Well, you know,
we have to build ourselves up in these trying times we live in,
when all we have to depend on is each other.
And that's why it's so important to...
Tom.
Sit down.
Come sit down, honey.
Move your coffee.
Tom.
Now,
I sent out your sister
because I wanted to discuss something with you.
If you hadn't spoken to me, I was going to speak to you.
TOM: Well, what is it, mother, that you want to discuss?
Laura.
Laura?
Tom, now, you know how Laura is.
She's so quiet, but still waters run deep.
She notices things,
and I think she broods about them.
Now,
I came here the other day, and she was crying.
What about?
You.
Me?
Now, she has this idea
that you are not happy here.
What gave her that idea?
What gives her any idea?
But, honey,
you have been acting kind of strange lately.
Tom, I am not criticizing, mind you.
Now, I know that your ambitions
do not lie at the warehouse,
and like everybody else in the whole wide world,
you, too, have had to make sacrifices.
Tom, life is not easy.
It calls for spartan endurance.
Tom.
Tom, i--
there are just so many things in my heart
that I cannot describe to you.
Now, I never told you,
but I did love your father.
I know that, mother.
But when I see you,
and you're taking after his ways,
and you're staying out all night
and you had been drinking the other night
when you were in that terrifying condition--
and now Laura tells me that you hate this apartment
and you go out nights to get away from it.
Now, is that true?
No.
Mother,
You say there's so much in your heart
that you can't describe to me.
Well,
That's true of me, too, mother.
there's so much in my heart that I can't describe to you.
So let's just respect each other's--
Honey.
Why are you so restless?
Where do you go to nights?
I go to the movies.
Why do you go to the movies so much?
I go to the movies because I like adventure,
and adventure is something I don't get much of at work,
so I go to the movies.
Honey,
you go to the movies entirely too much.
I like a lot of adventure.
Well, most young men find adventure in their careers.
Most young men are not employed at warehouses.
The world is full of young men who are employed at warehouses
and offices--
and do all of them find adventure in their careers?
Well, they do or they do without.
Not everybody in the whole wide world
has a craze for adventure.
Mother, man is by instinct a lover,
a hunter and a fighter,
and none of those instincts get much play at a warehouse.
- Man is by instinct-- - Yes!
Don't you quote instinct to me!
Now, instinct is something people have got away from;
It belongs to animals.
Christian adults don't want it.
What do Christian adults want, then, mother?
Things of the mind and of the spirit.
Only animals have to satisfy their instincts.
Now, surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs.
They're monkeys and pigs.
Well, I reckon they're not.
Tom, you must be joking.
That's not what I wanted to talk to you about.
TOM: I haven't got time.
AMANDA: You've got five minutes.
You want me to punch in red at the warehouse?
AMANDA: Tom, I must talk to you about Laura.
All right. What about Laura?
We have got to be making
some plans and provisions for her.
Well, she's older than you.
Tom, nothing is happening for her.
She just drifts along
doing nothing.
Well, I reckon she's the type that people call home girls.
Honey, there's no such type.
And if there is, it's a pity
unless the home is hers with a husband in it.
What?
AMANDA: Oh, Tom.
Tom, I can see the handwriting on the wall
As plain as I can see the nose on my face.
More and more,
You remind me of your father.
Well, well.
He was going out all night long
without any explanation,
and then one day he was just gone,
goodbye,
and leaving me with the bag to hold.
Now, I saw that letter you got
from the merchant Marines.
Well, I saw it.
And I know what you're dreaming of.
I'm not standing here blindfolded.
All right.
Do it,
but not until you have somebody to take your place.
What do you mean?
AMANDA: I mean
when Laura has somebody to take care of her,
when she's married, with a home of her own,
independent.
Then you can go wherever you like:
On land, on sea, wherever the wind blows you.
But until that time,
you have got to take care of your sister.
Now, Tom, I don't say me
because I'm old and I don't matter.
But I say your sister,
because she's young and she's dependent.
But, mother, what can I do about it?
You can overcome selfishness.
Tom!
Self, self, self!
- That's all you ever think about. - Tom!
Tom, now, wait.
No, Tom.
Wait, wait.
I didn't say what I was in mind to ask you.
TOM: Mother, I'm too late to--
AMANDA: Put on your muffler.
Put on your wool muffler.
Tom, Tom, Tom.
Now, down at the warehouse,
aren't there some nice young men?
TOM: No!
AMANDA: Oh, there must be some.
Just, please, find one who's clean-living,
Who doesn't drink,
and ask him out for your sister.
TOM: What?
AMANDA: For your sister.
For me.
To get acquainted.
TOM: Oh, my gosh.
AMANDA: Oh, will you?
Will you?
Will you, dear?
TOM: Yes.
Voice of AMANDA: Ella?
Ella Cartwright?
Well, this is Amanda Wingfield!
Well, now, first, Ella,
how is your kidney problem?
It's come back?
Oh, Ella.
You are a Christian martyr.
No, no.
That is what you are.
You are a Christian martyr.
Well, now, Ella,
I have been looking through my little red book here,
and I see where your subscription
to the companion has run out.
And it's just when that wonderful serial
by Bessie Mae Harper is starting.
It's the one that's all about
the horsey set on Long Island and--
you have?
You've already read it?
Well, how do you think it turns out?
Well, no.
Bessie Mae Harper never lets you down.
Well, Ella, you have to--
Ella, you have to have complications.
You can't have a story without complications.
But Bessie Mae Harper always leaves you
with such an uplift.
Ella, what's the matter?
Well, you sound so mad.
(sighing)
You mean because it's only 7:00 in the morning?
Oh, Ella.
I'm sorry.
I forgot you never got up before 9:00.
Well, I forgot anybody in the whole wide world
was allowed to sleep as late as that.
Well, I can't say anything but I'm sorry,
Can I?
You will?
You will take that subscription from me anyhow?
Well, bless you.
Bless you.
Bless you, Ella.
Bless you, Bless you.
TOM: Across the alley from us was the Paradise Dance Hall.
On evenings in spring
the windows and doors would be open
and the music would come outside.
Sometimes they would turn out all the lights
except for a large glass sphere which hung from the ceiling.
It would turn slowly about
and filter the dust with delicate rainbow colors.
Then the orchestra would strike up a waltz or a tango,
something that had a slow and sensuous rhythm.
Couples would come outside
to the relative privacy of the alley.
You could see them kissing
behind ash pits and telephone poles.
This was compensation for lives that passed like mine,
without any change or adventure.
Adventure and change were imminent in this year.
They were waiting behind the corner
for all these kids.
Suspended in the mist over Berchtesgaden,
caught in the folds of chamberlain's umbrella.
In Spain there was civil war;
here there was only hot swing music and liquor,
dance halls, bars and movies and sex,
which hung in the gloom like a chandelier
and fluttered the world
with brief, deceptive rainbows.
all the world was waiting for bombardment.
AMANDA: Tom.
Tom!
Where are you?
TOM: I came out to smoke, mother.
AMANDA: Well, you smoke too much.
A pack a day at 15¢ a pack?
Now, how much would that be in a month?
So, 15 times 30.
Well, it wouldn't be too much,
but it would be enough to go towards
a night school course in accounting
at the Washington U.
Now, wouldn't that be lovely?
TOM: I'd rather smoke.
AMANDA: I know.
That's the tragedy of you.
(sighing)
This fire escape landing
is a poor excuse for that porch we used to have.
What are you looking at?
The moon.
Is there a moon this evening?
Oh.
So there is,
just a little silver slipper of a moon.
Well, did you make a wish on it?
TOM: Mm-hmm.
AMANDA: What did you wish for?
TOM: That's a secret.
AMANDA: All right.
I won't tell you what I wished for.
I can be just as mysterious as you can.
TOM: I'll bet I can guess what you wished for.
Why, now, is my head transparent?
TOM: You're not a sphinx.
AMANDA: No, I don't keep secrets.
I'll tell you what I wished for.
I wished for success and happiness
for my precious children.
That's what I wish for every time there's a moon,
and when there isn't a moon, I wish for it too.
TOM: I thought perhaps you wished for a gentleman caller.
Now, what makes you say that?
TOM: Oh, you don't remember asking me to fetch one?
AMANDA: I remember suggesting it would be nice for your sister
if you brought home some nice young man.
I made that suggestion more than once.
Yes, you made it repeatedly.
Well?
We are going to have one.
AMANDA: What?
A gentleman caller.
Do you mean that you have asked
some nice young man to come over?
Yep.
I have asked him to dinner.
- You really did? - I did.
AMANDA: Did he accept?
He did.
- He did? - He did.
Oh, isn't that lovely?
Yes. I thought you would be pleased.
Well, now, this is definite?
Pretty definite.
- Well, how soon? - Pretty soon.
AMANDA: Well, how soon?
Quite soon.
How soon?
Very soon.
Tom, every time I want to know something, you go on like that.
TOM: What do you want to know?
Well, guess. Just go on and guess.
You want to know
when the gentleman caller's coming to dinner?
He's coming tomorrow.
- Tomorrow? - Yes.
I can't do anything by tomorrow.
I can't do anything about tomorrow.
TOM: Why not?
That doesn't give me any time.
TOM: Time for what?
Preparations.
You should have called me the minute you invited him,
the minute he accepted.
Mother, you don't have to make any fuss.
Of course I have to make a fuss.
I can't have a man coming into a place
that's all sloppy.
It has to be thrown together properly.
I have to do some fast thinking by tomorrow night.
TOM: Mother, I don't see
why you have to think at all.
That's because you just don't know.
You just don't know, that's all.
I cannot have a gentleman caller coming
into a pigsty.
Oh!
Let me see.
Oh!
I wonder how that old lace tablecloth
is holding up after all these years.
Oh!
Tom, we can't wear anything.
We haven't got it.
We haven't got anything to wear.
Mother, this is no boy to make a fuss over.
I don't know how you can say that when this is
the first gentleman caller your little sister has ever had.
Now, come on inside.
TOM: What for?
AMANDA: Because I want to ask you a few things.
Mother, if you are going to make a fuss,
I will call the whole thing off.
Mother, I will tell him not to come.
AMANDA: You can't do that.
People hate broken engagements.
Then they've got no place to go.
Now, come on inside.
Now, sit down.
Any particular place that you'd like me to sit?
Sit anywhere.
Now, look at that.
Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever seen in your life?
What am I going to do with that?
Oh, I know.
I can get a bright piece of cretonne.
Now, that won't cost too much.
And I made the down payment on a floor lamp,
So I'll have that sent out.
And I can put a bright color on that chair.
Oh, I wish I had time to paper the walls.
Now, what is his name?
TOM: His name is O'Connor.
O'Connor?
He's Irish?
Tomorrow's Friday.
That means fish.
I'll make that salmon loaf with the mayonnaise dressing.
Now, where did you meet him?
TOM: At the warehouse. Where else would I meet him?
I don't know.
Does he drink?
Why do you ask me that?
Because your father did.
TOM: Don't get started on that.
AMANDA: He drinks, then.
TOM: Not that I know of.
AMANDA: You have got to find out.
The one thing I do not want for my daughter
Is a man who drinks.
You're not being the tiniest bit premature?
Mr. O'Connor has not yet arrived on the scene.
He will tomorrow night to meet your sister.
And what do I know about his character?
What are you doing?
AMANDA: I hate that cowlick.
I wish it would stay back by-- oh, Tom, will you--
mother,
lots of boys meet girls
who they don't marry.
You know, you have always had me puzzled
because you cannot stay on one subject.
What I want to know is
what is his position down at the warehouse?
His position is that of a shipping clerk.
Shipping clerk?
Well, that sounds pretty important to me.
Well, that's what you'd be if you had any get-up.
Now, how much does he earn?
TOM: I would judge his salary to be approximately $85 per month.
So, $85 a month?
Well, that's not princely.
It's 20 more than I make.
Oh-hoo.
How well I know that.
Eighty-five dollars a month.
A family man can't get by on $85 a month.
Um, Mr. O'Connor is not a family man.
Well, he might be one day, mightn't he?
I see.
Plans and provisions.
You know, Tom,
you are the only young man I know
that ignores the fact
that the future becomes the present,
the present the past,
and the past turns into everlasting regret
unless you plan for it.
I'll think that over and see what I can make of it.
Don't be supercilious with your mother.
Now, tell me some more about Mr. O'Connor.
Mr. O'Connor.
We've got to have another name besides mister.
James D. O'Connor.
The "D" is for Delaney.
Delaney?
He's Irish on both sides and he doesn't drink?
Shall I call him up and ask him?
Tom!
TOM: No, I'll call him and ask him.
AMANDA: You can't do that.
You've got to be discreet about that subject.
Why, when I was a girl in Blue Mountain,
and it was suspected that a young man was drinking
and some girl--
some girl was receiving his attentions,
then if some girl was receiving his attentions,
she would go
to the minister of his church and ask about his character.
Or her father.
If her father were living,
it was his duty to go
to the minister of his church and ask about his character.
Now, that is how young girls from Blue Mountain
were kept from making tragic mistakes.
Then, how did it happen
that you made such a tragic mistake,
Mother?
AMANDA: That face fooled everybody.
All he had to do was grin
and the world was bewitched.
I think there's nothing more tragic
than a young girl just putting herself
at the mercy of a handsome appearance.
And I hope that Mr. O'Connor is not too good-looking.
As a matter of fact, he isn't.
He has rather a large nose,
which he compensates for by not having much of a chin.
He's not right-down homely, is he?
Not right-down homely.
Medium homely, I'd say.
Well, if a girl had any sense,
she would look for character in a man anyway.
That's what I've always said.
You always said that.
You have always said that?
Yes.
Well, now, how could you always say that
If you never even thought about it?
Mother, don't be so suspicious.
I am.
I am suspicious of every word
that comes out of your mouth when you're talking to me.
Now, tell me some more about this young man.
Now, is he up-and-coming?
TOM: Yes.
I think he really goes in for self-improvement.
AMANDA: What makes you say that?
TOM: He goes to night school.
AMANDA: Night school?
What does he do at night school?
TOM: He studies radio engineering and public speaking.
AMANDA: Public speaking?
Now,
that shows he intends to be an executive.
And radio engineering.
Well, that's coming, hmm?
TOM: I'm afraid it's here.
AMANDA: Those are very illuminating facts,
facts that any mother should know
about any young man who's coming to call on her daughter,
serious or not.
TOM: One little warning, mother.
I didn't tell him about Laura.
I didn't let on that we had dark ulterior motives.
I simply said,
"Why don't you come over for dinner?"
He said, "okay."
And that was the whole conversation.
AMANDA: I bet it was too.
Sometimes you can be eloquent as an oyster.
However, when he sees how sweet and how pretty that child is,
He's going to be so glad
he was invited over here to have some dinner.
TOM: Mother,
You won't expect too much of Laura, will you?
AMANDA: I don't know what you mean.
TOM: Mother, Laura seems all those things to us
because she's ours and we love her.
We don't even notice she's crippled anymore.
AMANDA: Hush.
Don't use that word.
TOM: Laura is crippled.
She is.
Face facts.
And that's not all.
AMANDA: What do you mean, that's not all?
TOM: Laura is very different from other girls.
AMANDA: I know that, and I think the difference is all in her favor.
TOM: No, not quite all.
Mother, in the eyes of others,
strangers,
she is terribly shy.
She lives in a world of her own,
and that can make her seem peculiar to other people.
AMANDA: Don't use that word "peculiar."
TOM: She is peculiar.
AMANDA: Well, I don't know in what way she's peculiar.
TOM: Mother, she lives in a world of little glass ornaments.
She sits and plays those old phonograph records.
That's about all.
AMANDA: Where are you going?
TOM: I'm going to the movies.
AMANDA: Laura?
LAURA: Yes, mother?
AMANDA: Honey, leave that ironing and come on out here.
Come on.
Honey, come on out and make a wish on the moon.
LAURA: The moon?
AMANDA: See?
Just a little silver slipper of the moon.
Now, honey, here.
Look over your left shoulder and make a wish.
Now, honey.
Wish.
LAURA: What shall I wish for, mother?
AMANDA: Happiness.
Just a little bit of good fortune.
The following evening I brought Jim home to dinner.
I had known Jim slightly in high school.
Jim was the only person at the warehouse
with whom I was on friendly terms.
I was valuable to him
as someone who could remember his former glory,
who had seen him win basketball games
and the silver cup in debating.
He knew of my secret practice of retiring to a cabinet
to work on poems when business was slack at the warehouse.
He called me Shakespeare.
And while the other boys in the warehouse
regarded me with a suspicious hostility,
Jim took a humorous attitude towards me.
Gradually his attitude affected the others,
and their hostility wore off,
and they also began to smile at me,
as people smile at an oddly fashioned dog
who trots across their path at some distance.
I knew that Jim and Laura had known each other in high school,
and I had heard Laura speak admiringly of Jim's voice.
I didn't know whether Jim remembered her or not,
for in high school Laura had been as unobtrusive
as Jim had been astonishing.
if he did remember her at all,
it was not as my sister,
for when I asked him to dinner he grinned and said,
"You know, Shakespeare,
I never thought of you as having folks."
He was about to discover that I did.
(thunder rumbling)
AMANDA: Now, hold still.
Honey, why are you trembling so?
LAURA: Mother, you have made me so nervous.
AMANDA: How have I made you nervous?
LAURA: By all this fuss.
You make it seem so important.
AMANDA: Laura, I don't understand you.
Every time I try to do anything
that is the least bit different for you,
you just seem to set yourself against it.
Now, turn around.
Look at yourself in the mirror.
Come on, look.
Oh, no.
Wait, wait.
I forgot something.
LAURA: What is it?
AMANDA: A couple of little improvements.
Now, when I was a girl, we called these "gay deceivers."
LAURA: Mother, I won't wear these.
AMANDA: Of course you'll wear them.
LAURA: Well, why should I?
AMANDA: Honey, to tell you the truth,
you are a little bit flat-chested.
LAURA: Well, you make it sound like we're setting a trap.
AMANDA: We are setting a trap.
All pretty girls are a trap,
and all men expect them to be.
Now, come on.
Turn around.
Look at yourself in the mirror.
Now, look.
Look.
Now, isn't that lovely?
You look just like an angel on a postcard.
Now.
You run on out,
and I'm going to dress myself all up.
You're going to be astonished at your mother's appearance.
AMANDA: You know,
I found an old dress in a trunk.
(laughing)
I had to do a lot to it.
You know, laura,
It broke my heart when I had to let it out.
(thunder rumbling)
Oh, my!
Is that thunder?
Oh, my lord.
All right.
Now, Laura, take a look at your mother.
Oh, no.
Wait.
Now look.
Take a look at your mother now.
Oh, mother.
How lovely.
Well, it used to be.
It used to be.
It had a lot of flowers all over it,
but they got kind of tired,
so I had to take them all off.
I led the cotillion in this dress
a long time ago,
and I won the cakewalk at Sunset Hill.
And I wore it
to the governor's ball in Jackson.
Oh, laura.
You should have seen your mother.
She just sashayed around that ballroom just like that.
I had it on
the night I met your father.
I had malaria fever too.
The change of climate from east Tennessee to the delta
had weakened my resistance.
Not enough to be dangerous,
but just enough to make me restless and giddy.
Oh, it was lovely.
Invitations just poured in from all over.
And my mother said,
"Honey, you can't go any place.
"You've got a fever.
You've got to stay in bed."
And I said I wouldn't,
and I just took quinine,
and I kept on going and going.
Dances every evening,
and in the afternoons,
long drives in the country.
And picnics.
Oh, Laura.
That country.
So lovely in May,
all lacy with dogwood
and simply flooded with jonquils.
And my mother said,
"Honey, you can't bring any more jonquils in the house."
And I said, "I will."
And I just kept on bringing them in.
Every time I saw them, I'd say,
"Stop.
I see jonquils."
I'd make my gentlemen callers get out of the carriage
and help me to gather some.
It got to be kind of a joke.
They'd say, "Look out.
"Here's comes that girl.
"We're going to have to spend
the rest of the afternoon picking jonquils."
My mother said,
"Honey, you can't bring any more jonquils in the house.
We don't have enough vases to hold them all.
I said, "That's all right.
I'll hold some myself."
Malaria, fever,
your father
and jonquils.
(thunder rumbling)
Ooh.
Oh.
I hope they get here before it starts to rain.
I gave your brother a little extra change
so he and Mr. O'Connor could take the service car home.
LAURA: Mother?
AMANDA: Mm?
LAURA: What did you say his name is?
AMANDA: Uh, O'Connor.
Why?
LAURA: What is his first name?
AMANDA: Ooh, honey, I don't remember.
Oh, yes, I do.
It was Jim.
Is he the one that Tom used to go to high school with?
AMANDA: He didn't say.
I think he just met him at the warehouse.
Tom and I both used to know Jim O'Connor
in high school.
if that is the one Tom is bringing home to school,
you will have to excuse me.
I won't come to the table.
Now, what kind of silly talk is this?
LAURA: You asked me once
if I ever liked a boy.
Remember, I showed you his picture?
AMANDA: You mean the boy in the yearbook?
LAURA: Yes, mother.
That boy.
AMANDA: Oh, Laura.
Were you in love with that boy?
LAURA: I don't know, mother.
I just know that if it was him,
I couldn't sit at the table.
AMANDA: Well, it won't be him;
it's not in the least bit likely.
But even if it were, you will come to the table.
You will not be excused.
(sighing)
LAURA: I would have to be, mother.
AMANDA: Laura, I don't intend to humor your silliness.
Now, I've had enough from you and your brother.
Now, you just come on over here
and sit yourself down
and compose yourself until they get here.
Now, your brother has forgotten his key,
So you're going to have to let them in when they arrive.
LAURA: Oh, no, mother, please.
You answer the door.
AMANDA: But I haven't even finished
the mayonnaise dressing for the salmon.
LAURA: Mother, please, you answer it.
Don't make me do it.
AMANDA: Laura, Laura.
Honey, please, be reasonable.
What is all this fuss about?
He's just one gentleman caller, darling, that's all.
Just one.
(doorbell ringing)
(gasping)
Mother.
AMANDA: Laura, honey!
The door.
LAURA: Mother, you--
You answer the door.
AMANDA: What is the matter with you, you silly thing?
LAURA: Mother, please, you answer it.
Please.
AMANDA: Why have you taken this moment to lose your mind?
Now, go to the door.
LAURA: I can't.
AMANDA: Why can't you?
LAURA: I'm sick.
AMANDA: You're sick?
Am I sick?
You and your brother have me puzzled to death.
You could never act like normal children.
Will you give me one good reason
why you should be afraid to go to a door?
(doorbell ringing)
Laura, go to the door!
Laura Wingfield,
you march straight to that door.
(knocking)
LAURA: Yes, mother.
AMANDA: Honey,
I have to put courage in you for living.
TOM: Laura,
This is Jim.
Jim, this is my sister, Laura.
I didn't know Shakespeare had a sister.
How are you, laura?
LAURA: How do you do?
JIM O'CONNOR: Well, I'm okay.
Your hand is cold, Laura.
LAURA: Yes, well,
I've been playing the Victrola and--
JIM: Oh.
You must have been playing classical music on it.
You ought to put a little hot swing on to warm you up.
What's the matter?
TOM: With Laura?
Laura's terribly shy.
JIM: Shy, huh?
You know, it is unusual to meet a shy girl nowadays.
(clearing throat)
I don't believe you ever told me you had a sister.
TOM: Now you know.
I have one.
Here's the post dispatch.
You want a piece of it?
JIM: Yeah.
TOM: What piece?
Comics?
JIM: Comics?
Sports.
Oh, well.
I see that dizzy dean is on his bad behavior.
TOM: Mm-hmm.
JIM: Where are you going?
TOM: Out on the terrace to smoke.
Shakespeare.
I'm going to sell you a bill of goods.
What goods?
Course I'm taking.
Hmm?
A course in public speaking.
You know,
you and me, we're not the warehouse type.
TOM: Thanks.
That's good news.
But what has public speaking got to do with it?
It fits you for executive positions.
I tell you, it's done a hell of a lot for me.
In what respect?
In all respects.
Ask yourself,
what's the difference
between you and me and the guys in the office down front?
- Brains? - No.
Ability?
No.
Then what?
Well, primarily, Shakespeare,
It amounts to just one single thing.
What is that single thing?
Social poise --
the ability to be able to square up to somebody
and hold your own on any social level.
AMANDA: Tom?
Yes, mother?
AMANDA: Is that you and Mr. O'Connor?
TOM: Yes, mother.
AMANDA: You all make yourselves comfortable.
TOM: Yes, mother.
AMANDA: Ask Mr. O'Connor if he'd like
to wash his hands.
JIM: No, thank you, ma'am.
Took care of that already down at the warehouse.
Tom.
TOM: Mm-hmm?
Mr. Mendoza's been speaking to me about you.
Favorably?
What do you think?
Well--
You're going to be out of a job if you don't wake up.
I am waking up.
You show no signs.
The signs are interior.
I'm planning a change.
I am right at the point of committing myself
to a future which doesn't include Mr. Mendoza
or the warehouse
or even a night-school course in public speaking.
What are you gassing about?
I'm tired of the movies.
JIM: The movies?
Yes, movies.
Look at them.
All those glamorous people out there having adventures,
hogging it all,
gobbling the whole thing up.
You know what happens?
People go to the movies instead of moving.
Hollywood characters are supposed to have
The adventure for everyone in America,
While everyone in America just sits in a dark room
and watches them have them
until there's a war.
That's when adventure becomes available to the masses.
everyone's dish, not only Gable's.
Then the people in the dark room can come out of the dark room
and have a little adventure for themselves.
Goody-goody.
It's our turn now to be exotic, far off.
But, uh, I am not patient,
and I'm not going to wait until then.
I am tired of the movies and I am about to move.
Move?
- Yes. - When?
Soon.
JIM: Where?
TOM: I am starting to boil inside.
I know that I seem dreamy,
but whenever I pick up a shoe,
I just shudder a little, thinking how short life is
and what am I doing?
Whatever that means, I know it does not mean shoes,
except as something to wear on the traveller's feet.
Look.
"The Union of Merchant seamen"?
Yes.
I paid my dues last month instead of the light bill.
You're going to regret it when they turn the lights off.
I won't be here.
What about your mother?
I'm like my father.
The bastard son of a bastard.
Did you notice how he's grinning in his picture in there?
He's been absent going on 16 years.
You're just talking,
You drip.
What is your mother going to say about that?
TOM: Mother is not acquainted with my plans.
AMANDA: Tom?
Yes, mother?
Where are you all?
We're on the terrace, mother.
Well,
why don't you all come on inside?
Mother, you look so pretty.
You know,
that is the first compliment you have ever paid me.
I wish you'd look pleasant
when you're about to say something pleasant,
so i'd know to expect it.
Mr. O'Connor.
Well, how do you do, ma'am?
AMANDA: Well, well.
So this is Mr. O'Connor.
Well, introductions are entirely unnecessary,
because I've heard so much about you from my boy.
I finally said to him, I said,
"Tom, why don't you bring
"This paragon home to supper finally?
"I want to meet this nice young man from the warehouse
instead of just hearing you sing his praises all the time."
I don't know why my son is so standoffish.
That is not southern behavior.
Well, let's sit down.
(sighing)
Let's sit down.
You know, Tom,
I think we could use a little air in here.
You want to leave the door open?
I felt a nice fresh breeze a while ago.
I don't know where it's gone to.
It's so warm already, and it's not even summer yet.
We're going to burn up when summer finally gets here.
However, we are having a light supper this evening.
I think light things are better for this time of year,
like light clothes are
and light food.
Light clothes --
What warm weather calls for.
Because, you see, our blood gets so thick in the winter
that it takes a little while for us
to re-adjust ourselves when summer comes.
But it comes so quickly.
I just wasn't prepared for it.
Just good heavens!
All of a sudden it was summertime.
So I just ran to the trunk
and pulled out this light dress.
It's terribly old.
It's practically historical.
But it feels so good and cool, you know?
TOM: Mother?
AMANDA: Hmm?
How about supper?
Well, honey,
You have to ask sister about supper.
Well, you know sister
is in full charge of supper.
You just tell her
you hungry boys are waiting for her, hmm?
Well, run on, sweetie.
Did you meet Laura?
JIM: Well, she came to the door.
AMANDA: She let you in, hmm?
JIM: Yes, ma'am.
AMANDA: She is pretty, isn't she?
Oh, yes, ma'am.
AMANDA: You know, it is so rare for a young girl
who is as sweet and as pretty as Laura is
to also be domestic.
But Laura is, thank heavens.
Not only sweet and pretty,
but also very, very domestic,
because I am not at all.
I could never make a thing but angel food cake.
But, of course, in the South, you know,
we had so many servants.
Gone, gone, gone.
All vestiges of gracious living
just gone completely.
See, I wasn't prepared
for what life had in store for me,
because all my gentlemen callers
were planters and sons of planters,
so naturally I thought I would marry one,
and I was just going to raise my family
on a large plot of land with lots and lots of servants.
But man proposes
and woman accepts the proposal,
to vary that old saying a little bit.
Well, I married no planter.
I married a man who worked for the telephone company,
that gallantly smiling gentleman over there.
Telephone man who fell in love with long distance.
And now he travels,
and I don't even know where.
Oh, well.
Now, why am I going on about my tribulation?
Now, you tell me about yours.
Because I hope you don't have any.
Tom!
TOM: Yes, mother?
AMANDA: Well, honey, what about supper?
TOM: Well, it appears to me
that supper's on the table, mother.
AMANDA: Well, so it is.
Oh!
Oh, now, isn't that lovely?
Now, where's Laura?
TOM: Well, Laura's not feeling too well.
She says she thinks
she'd better not come to the table.
AMANDA: Laura!
Mr. O'Connor?
Right here.
Laura?
Honey?
We can't say grace
until you come to the table.
Oh, my Hod!
Oh, no!
Tom, take her over to the sofa.
Oh, Laura.
Honey, you are ill.
Oh, sweetheart.
Standing over that hot stove
has just made her ill.
I told her it was just too warm, but--
Oh, Mr. O'Connor. here.
You just--
Oh, please.
Come sit down.
Would you like a little dandelion wine?
JIM: Well, all right, ma'am.
Thank you.
AMANDA: Tom, is she all right?
TOM: Yes, mother.
(thunder rumbling)
Ooh!
Looks like we're going to have some rain.
(breathing heavily)
AMANDA: Tom.
Would you say grace?
TOM: No, thanks.
AMANDA: Honey, now,
what do we say before we sit and have some dinner?
We say grace, don't we?
(Amanda laughing)
JIM: That's the kind of thing.
AMANDA: Oh, Mr. O'Connor.
I haven't had such a lovely evening
in a very long time.
JIM: Well, well, Mrs. wingfield.
Let me give you a toast.
Here is to the old South.
AMANDA: To the old South.
JIM: Hey, Mr. Lightbulb.
AMANDA: Well.
Now, where was Moses when the lights went out?
Do you know the answer to that one, Mr. O'Connor?
JIM: No, ma'am, I don't.
What is the answer to that one?
AMANDA: Well, I did know one answer, but it wasn't very nice,
so I thought maybe you might know another one.
JIM: No, ma'am, I don't.
AMANDA: Well, it's a good thing I put this candle on the table.
I just put it on for decoration,
but it's nice when it proves useful too.
Now, if one of you gentlemen could provide me with a match,
then we can have a little illumination.
JIM: Well, I believe I can do that, ma'am.
Well, uh,
I guess it must be a burnt-out fuse.
Do you know anything about burnt-out fuses,
Mr. O'Connor?
JIM: As a matter of fact, I do, ma'am.
Where's the fuse box?
AMANDA: Oh, you have to know that too?
Well, it's over there in the kitchen.
Don't stumble over anything, because it's dark out there.
(clattering)
Oh, my Lord.
Wouldn't it be awful if we lost him?
Mr. O'Connor, are you all right?
JIM: Yes, ma'am.
I'm all right.
AMANDA: You know, Mr. O'Connor,
I think electricity is a very mysterious thing.
Of course, you know,
the whole universe is mysterious to me.
Now, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin that tied a key to a kite?
I would love to have seen that.
He must have looked pretty silly.
Did you find it all right?
JIM: Yes, ma'am, I did,
but them fuses looked okay to me.
AMANDA: Tom.
Yes, mother?
Do you remember that light bill I gave you a few days ago,
the one I got the notice about?
You mean last month's bill?
You didn't neglect it, did you?
Well, I--
You did. I might have known.
JIM: Well, maybe Shakespeare wrote a poem on that light bill.
AMANDA: Maybe he did too.
However, it was nice of them to let us finish our dinner
before they plunged us into everlasting darkness.
Now, Tom, as a penalty to your negligence,
you may help me with the dishes.
JIM: Oh, well, can I be of some help, ma'am?
AMANDA: Oh, no. I couldn't have that.
JIM: I ought to be good for something.
AMANDA: What did I hear?
JIM: "I ought to be good for something."
That's what I thought I heard.
Laura is all by her lonesome out there in the front.
Would you like to keep her company?
I can give you
this lovely old candelabrum for light.
It used to stand on the altar
of the Church of the Heavenly Rest--
Would you--
And it melted a little out of shape
when the church burnt down.
You see, the church was struck by lightning
one spring, and Gypsy Jones,
who was having a revival meeting in the village,
said that the church was struck by lightning
because the Episcopalians were having card parties
right there in the church.
JIM: Is that so, ma'am?
AMANDA: I never say anything that isn't so.
JIM: Oh, I beg your pardon.
AMANDA: Well, i'd like for Laura to have a little dandelion.
You think you could manage both of those?
JIM: I can sure try, ma'am.
Well, um, Tom.
You get into your apron.
Well, how are you feeling?
Any better?
LAURA: Yes.
Thank you.
JIM: Good.
Oh, here.
This is for you. it's a little dandelion wine.
Oh. Thank you.
You drink it,
but don't get drunk.
Say, where am I going to put these candles?
LAURA: Oh, anywhere.
JIM: Well, how about right here on the floor?
You got any objections?
LAURA: No.
JIM: I'll just spread some newspaper out here
to catch the drippings.
Say, I like to sit on the floor.
Do you mind if I do?
No.
(sighing)
Would you hand me a pillow?
Thanks.
(sighing)
Well, how about you?
Don't you like to sit on the floor?
Yes.
Well, why don't you, then?
I will, I will.
Here, take a pillow.
Well, now,
I can't even see you if you sit way over there.
I can see you.
Yeah, but that's not fair.
I'm right here in the limelight.
Yeah, that's better.
Now I can see you.
You comfortable?
Yes, thank you.
So am I.
I'm as comfortable as a cow.
Say, Laura,
would you care for a stick of chewing gum?
No, thank you.
Well,
I believe I will indulge.
Say, just imagine the fortune made
by the guy that invented the first piece of chewing gum.
Amazing, huh?
You know that
The Wrigley building is one of the sights of Chicago?
I saw it the summer before last at the century of progress.
Did you take in the century of progress?
No, I didn't.
Well, it was a wonderful exposition, believe me.
You know what impressed me the most?
The hall of science.
It gives you an idea
of what the future will be like in America.
Oh, and it's a lot more wonderful
than the present time is.
Hmm.
Say, Laura.
Your brother tells me you're shy.
Is that right?
Um,
I don't know.
You know,
I judge you to be an old-fashioned type of girl.
Oh, and I think that's a wonderful type to be.
I hope you don't think I'm being too personal.
Do you?
Mr. O'Connor,
I believe that I will have a piece of chewing gum,
if you don't mind.
Oh.
Mr. O'Connor,
Have you kept up with your singing?
Singing? Me?
Yes.
I remember what a beautiful voice you had.
You heard me sing?
Oh, yes.
Very often.
I don't suppose that you remember me at all.
You know, as a matter of fact,
I did think I'd seen you somewhere before.
You know, it was almost like
I was about to remember your name,
but the name I was about to remember wasn't a name,
so I stopped myself before I said it.
Wasn't it blue roses?
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
Blue roses.
I didn't connect you with high school somehow or other,
but that's where it was.
It was high school, huh?
I didn't know you were Shakespeare's sister.
Gee, I'm sorry.
Oh, no. That's all right.
I didn't expect you to.
We barely knew each other.
Yeah, but we did have a speaking acquaintance.
Yes, we spoke to each other.
Didn't we have a class in something or other together?
Yes, we did.
What class was that?
It was singing.
Chorus.
I sat across the aisle from you
in the auditorium
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Oh.
I remember you now.
You're the girl that used to always come in late.
Yes.
Well, I had that brace on my leg back then.
It was so hard for me getting up the stairs.
It clumped so loud.
JIM: I never heard
Any clumping.
LAURA: To me it sounded like thunder.
JIM: I never even noticed.
LAURA: Everybody was seated when I came in the room.
I had to walk in front of all those people.
My seat was in the back row.
I had to go clumping up the aisle
with everybody watching.
JIM: Oh, you shouldn't have been self-conscious.
I know.
But I was.
Yeah.
I remember you now.
I used to call you blue roses.
Well, I hope you didn't mind.
LAURA: Oh, no.
I liked it.
You see, I wasn't acquainted with many people.
I remember you kind of always stuck by yourself.
Well, I never had very much luck
making friends.
I don't know why you wouldn't.
Well, I started out badly.
You mean being a--
Yes, well,
it always, um,
stood between me and other people.
Now, you shouldn't have let it.
I know.
But I did.
So you were shy with people.
Well, I tried not to be, but I never could--
JIM: Overcome it?
No, I never could.
Yeah.
I guess being shy is one of those things
you kind of have to work out of gradually.
I guess that it takes...
Time.
Say.
You know something, Laura?
People aren't so dreadful when you get to know them.
That's what you have to remember.
And everybody has problems, not just you.
Practically everybody has problems.
See, you think of yourself
as being the only one who's disappointed.
Well, you look around you a little bit.
What do you see?
A lot of people just as disappointed as you are.
You take me, for instance.
Laura, when I graduated high school,
I sure thought
I'd be a lot further along than I am now.
You remember that wonderful write-up I had in The Torch?
LAURA: Yes, I do.
JIM: Remember it said that I was bound to succeed
in anything that I wanted to?
What's that?
Oh.
LAURA: Here you are inThe Pirates of Penzance.
JIM: Oh, my.
The Pirates.
♪♪ Oh
♪♪ Better far to live and die
♪♪ Under the brave black flag
♪♪ I fly
♪♪ To play a sanctimonious part
♪♪ With a pirate head ♪♪
I sang lead in that operetta.
LAURA: So beautifully.
JIM: Oh.
LAURA: Oh, yes, beautifully.
Beautifully.
JIM: You heard me, then, huh?
LAURA: I heard you all three times.
JIM: No.
LAURA: Yes.
JIM: You mean you saw all three performances?
LAURA: Yes.
JIM: What for?
LAURA: Well, I wanted to ask you to autograph my program.
JIM: So, why didn't you ask me?
LAURA: Well, you were always surrounded by your own friends--
JIM: You should have just come right up and said,
"Hey, here's my program."
LAURA: I thought that you might think that I was--
JIM: Thought I might think you was what?
LAURA: Oh, um...
JIM: Oh, oh.
Yeah, I was beleaguered by females in those days.
LAURA: You were terribly popular.
JIM: Yeah.
LAURA: You had such a friendly way.
JIM: Oh, I was spoiled in high school.
LAURA: Everybody liked you.
JIM: Including you?
LAURA: Yes.
Yes, I did too.
JIM: Well,
hand me that program, Laura.
There you are.
Better late than never.
LAURA: Oh, my.
What a surprise.
JIM: Well, my signature's not worth very much right now,
but maybe some day it will increase in value.
You know, being disappointed is one thing;
being discouraged is something else.
Well, I may be disappointed, but I am not discouraged.
So.
You finished high school.
LAURA: Well, I got bad grades on my final examinations.
JIM: You mean you dropped out?
LAURA: I didn't go back.
How's Emily Meisenbach getting along?
That krauthead.
Why do you call her that?
That's what she was.
You mean you're not still going together?
Oh, I never even see her.
I read in the personal section
that you were engaged.
Yeah.
Well, I was not impressed by that propaganda.
Then it wasn't the truth?
Oh,
it was only true in Emily's optimistic opinion.
So, what have you been doing since high school?
Nothing much.
Must have been doing something.
Yes.
Well, then, such as what?
I took a business course
in business college.
You did? How did that go?
Not very well. I had to drop out.
It gave me indigestion.
Oh.
Yeah.
So, what are you doing now?
Well,
I don't do anything much.
Oh, please don't think
that I just sit around doing nothing.
My glass collection takes a good deal of time.
Glass is something that
you have to take very good care of.
I'm sorry.
What did you say about glass?
Collection. I said that I have one.
Laura,
you know what I judge to be the trouble with you?
Inferiority complex.
You know what that is?
That's what they call it when a fellow low rates himself.
Oh, I understand it because I had it too.
Uh-huh.
Only my case was not as aggravated as yours seems to be.
I had it
until I took--
I had it until I took a course in public speaking.
I developed my voice
and I learned that I had an aptitude for science.
You know, until that time,
I never thought of myself as being outstanding
in any way whatsoever.
Now, I've never made a regular study of this,
mind you,
but I have a friend who says I can analyze people
better than doctors who make a profession of it.
I don't claim it's necessarily true,
but I can sure guess a person's psychology.
Excuse me, Laura.
I always take it out when the flavor's gone.
I'll just wrap it up here in a piece of newspaper.
I know what it's like
when you get it stuck on your shoe.
Yeah.
That is what I judge
to be your principal trouble:
lack of confidence in yourself as a person.
Now, I'm basing that fact on a number of your remarks
and on certain observations I've made.
For instance,
you know that clumping you say was so awful in high school?
You say you dreaded going up stairs.
You see what you did?
Hmm?
You dropped out of school.
You gave up an education all over a little clump,
which, as far as I can see, is practically non-existent.
Oh.
A little physical defect is all you have.
Hardly noticeable, even,
magnified 1,000 times by your imagination.
My strong advice to you:
you've got to start thinking of yourself
as superior in some way.
LAURA: In what way would I think?
JIM: Oh.
Oh, man alive.
Laura, look around you a little.
Hmm?
What do you see, huh?
A whole world full of common people,
all of them born, all of them going to die.
Now, which of them has 1/10 of your strong points?
Or mine, hmm?
Or anybody else's, for that matter?
You see,
everybody excels in some one thing,
some in many.
Take me, for instance.
Now, my interest happens to lie in electrodynamics.
I'm taking a course in radio engineering
on top of a fairly responsible job
in the warehouse.
I'm taking that course and I'm studying
public speaking
because I believe in the future of television.
I want to be ready to go right on up with it.
See,
I'm planning on getting in on the ground floor.
I've already made all the right connections.
The only thing that remains now
is for the industry itself to get underway full steam.
You know, knowledge.
Zip.
Money.
Zip.
Power.
Wham!
It's the cycle that democracy's built on.
You must think I think an awful lot of myself.
Oh, no, I don't.
Okay.
Now,
How about you?
There must be some one thing you take more interest in
than anything else in the world.
LAURA: Yes.
Well, such as what?
Well, I do, as I said, have my glass collection.
JIM: You do, huh?
What kind of glass is that?
Little articles of it.
Ornaments, mostly.
Most of them are little animals
made out of glass --
The tiniest little animals in the world.
My mother calls them my glass menagerie.
Here's an example of one,
if you'd like to see it.
This is one of the oldest.
He's nearly 13.
Oh, be careful.
If you breathe, it breaks.
JIM: Oh, I better not take him, then.
I'm kind of clumsy with things.
LAURA: Oh, no.
I trust you with it.
There.
You're holding him gently.
Hold him up in the light.
He just loves light.
See how the light
just shines through him?
Yeah.
He sure does shine.
LAURA: I shouldn't be partial,
but he's my favorite one.
What kind of animal is this supposed to be?
Haven't you noticed the single horn on his forehead?
A unicorn, huh?
Uh-huh.
A unicorn.
Aren't they supposed to be extinct in the modern world?
I know.
Poor little fellow.
Must feel kind of lonesome.
Well, if he does, he doesn't complain about it.
He stays on the shelf
with all the other horses that don't have horns.
They seem to get along nicely together.
How do you know?
LAURA: Well,
I haven't heard any arguments.
No arguments, huh?
Well, that's a good sign.
Where will I put him?
Oh,
you can put him anywhere.
They all like a change of scenery
every once in a while.
JIM: They do.
Oh.
Hey.
Look how big my shadow is when I stretch.
LAURA: Oh.
Oh, my, yes.
It stretches clear across the ceiling.
(jazz instrumental)
Where's the music coming from?
LAURA: It comes from the Paradise Dance Hall
across the alley.
♪♪
Say, how about cutting a rug a little,
Miss Wingfield?
Or is your program all filled up?
Let me have a look at it there.
Oh.
Every dance is taken.
Well, I'll just have to scratch some of them out.
A waltz.
I can't dance.
There you go with that inferiority stuff.
No. I never danced in my life.
JIM: Come on. Try.
LAURA: I'm afraid that I would step on you.
Well, I'm not made out of glass.
How do I start?
Hold your arms out a little.
Like this?
A little higher.
All right, Laura.
Now, don't tighten up.
That's the principal thing about it.
Just relax.
I'm afraid that you can't budge me.
Well, you bet I can.
My goodness.
Yes, you can.
JIM: Okay.
Let yourself go, Laura.
Just let yourself go.
LAURA: I'm trying.
JIM: Not so stiff, now.
Easy does it.
There you go.
LAURA: Oh, my.
Oh, my goodness.
JIM: That's it.
You're doing it now, Laura.
LAURA: I am.
There we go.
That's better.
LAURA: Oh.
JIM: That's it, Laura.
Now we're doing it.
LAURA: I am.
(clattering)
JIM: Is it broken?
LAURA: Now he's just like all the other horses.
JIM: What do you mean?
He lost his--
LAURA: He lost his horn.
It doesn't matter.
Maybe it's a blessing in disguise.
JIM: I bet you'll never forgive me.
That was your favorite piece of glass.
LAURA: I don't have favorites much.
It's no tragedy.
Glass breaks so easily
no matter how careful you are.
The traffic jars the shelves and things fall off.
JIM: Still,
I'm awful sorry that I was the cause of it.
LAURA: I'll just imagine that he had an operation,
and the horn was removed
to make him feel less freakish.
But now
he'll feel more at home with the other horses.
Well, I'm glad to see that you have a sense of humor.
You know,
You're different than anybody I know.
Do you mind me saying that?
I mean it.
You make me feel sort of--
I don't know how to say this.
I'm usually pretty good at expressing things.
This is something I don't know how to say.
Did anybody ever tell you that you were pretty?
You are,
and in a different way than anybody else,
and all the nicer because of the difference.
Oh, I wish you were my sister.
I'd teach you to have confidence in yourself,
because being different is nothing to be ashamed of,
because other people aren't such wonderful people.
They're 100 times 1,000.
You,
you're one times one.
They wander all over the earth.
You just stay right here.
Why, they're as common as weeds.
But you, you're blue roses.
Blue is wrong for roses.
But it's right for you.
You're pretty.
In what respect am I pretty?
Why, in all respects.
Your eyes, your hair, your hands are pretty.
Do you think I'm saying this
just because I was invited to supper
and I have to be nice?
Oh, I could do that.
I could tell you all kinds of things without being sincere.
But I'm talking to you sincerely.
I happened to notice
You have this inferiority complex
that keeps you from being comfortable with people.
Somebody ought to build your confidence up.
Way up.
Somebody ought to make you proud
instead of shy and turning away and blushing.
Somebody ought to...
JIM: Somebody ought to kiss you, Laura.
(creaking)
I shouldn't have done that.
That was way off the beam.
Would you care for a cigarette?
You don't smoke, do you?
How about a mint?
Peppermint lifesaver.
Look, my pocket's a regular drugstore.
Here.
Laura, if I had a sister like you,
I'd do the same as Tom.
I'd invite fellows home here to meet you.
Well, maybe I shouldn't be saying that.
That might not have been the idea in having me over.
Well, what if it was?
Now, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just that...
in my case,
I'm not in a position to do the right thing.
I can't ask you for your number and say that I'll phone.
I can't call you and ask you for a date.
Well,
I just thought I'd better explain the situation
in case you misunderstood and I hurt your feelings.
You won't call again?
No.
I can't, Laura.
I've got strings on me.
You see, I've been going steady.
I go out all the time with a girl named Betty.
Oh, and, uh,
she's a nice, quiet home girl,
just like you.
She's Catholic and she's Irish,
so we get along fine.
I met her last summer
on a moonlight boat trip
up the River to Alton on the Majestic.
And right away from the start it was love.
Oh, boy.
And being in love has made a new man out of me.
The power of love is tremendous.
It's the kind of thing
that just changes the whole world.
Well, uh,
Betty's aunt took sick
and she got a wire and had to go to Centralia.
So, naturally, when Tom invited me for dinner,
I accepted the invitation, not knowing--
Well, I mean, um,
not knowing.
I wish you would say something.
What are you doing?
You want me to have it?
What for?
Souvenir.
AMANDA: Children,
I'm coming.
I thought you all might like a little liquid refreshment.
Honey.
Mr. O'Connor.
Mr. O'Connor, have you heard that song about lemonade?
Hmm?
♪♪ Lemonade
♪♪ Made in the shade and stirred with a spade
♪♪ and then it's good enough for any old maid ♪♪
JIM: Mo, ma'am.
I never heard that one.
AMANDA: Honey, why are you looking so serious?
JIM: Well, we were just having a serious conversation.
(sighing)
AMANDA: I don't understand you modern young people.
When I was a girl, I was just gay about everything.
JIM: You haven't changed a bit, Mrs. Wingfield.
AMANDA: Well, I suppose it's the gaiety of the occasion
That has rejuvenated me,
so here is to the gaiety of the occasion.
Mm!
I baptized myself.
Oh, I found some cherries back there in the kitchen,
and I put one at the bottom of each glass.
You shouldn't have gone to all that trouble, ma'am.
AMANDA: It wasn't any trouble at all.
Didn't you hear us cutting up out there in the kitchen?
I was so outdone with Tom
for not bringing you over sooner.
And now that you know the way, I want you to come all the time.
Not just once in a while, but all the time.
I'm going to run on back to the kitchen.
JIM: Oh, no, no, ma'am.
Look, as a matter of fact, well,
I have to be going.
Oh, but Mr. O'Connor,
It's only the shank of the evening.
Well, you know how it is, ma'am.
AMANDA: You mean because
you are a young working man
and you have to keep working men's hours.
Yes, ma'am.
AMANDA: We'll let you off early this time,
but only on the condition that you stay later next time.
Much, much later.
What's the best evening for you?
Is it Saturday?
JIM: Well, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Wingfield,
I have a couple of time clocks that I have to punch.
One in the morning and another one at night.
Oh, you are so ambitious.
You work nights too?
Well, no, ma'am.
Uh, not work,
But, uh, Betty.
Betty?
Who's Betty?
She's just a girl,
a girl I go steady with.
Is it serious?
Yes, ma'am, it is.
Well, we're going to be married the second Sunday in June.
Tom didn't say anything at all
about your being engaged to be married.
Well, uh, the cat's not out of the bag
down at the warehouse yet, ma'am.
You know how it is.
The fellows call you Romeo and stuff like that.
Mrs. Wingfield,
it's been a wonderful evening.
This must be what they mean by Southern hospitality.
Oh.
Nothing at all, nothing at all.
JIM: Well, I hope that you ladies don't think
that I'm rushing off, but I--
Well, I promised Betty i'd pick her up at the Wabash depot.
By the time I get my jalopy down to the train,
she's going to be in.
You know how some women get pretty upset
when you keep them waiting.
I know all about the tyranny of women.
Goodbye, Mr. O'Connor.
And I want to wish you happiness
and good fortune.
And you wish him that too, don't you, Laura?
Yes, mother, I do.
Well, uh, bye, Laura.
I'll always treasure this souvenir.
Oh, uh,
Bye, Shakespeare.
Well, thank you again, ladies.
And, uh, good night.
Laura,
Don't you forget that good advice I gave you.
(sighing)
Well, well, well.
Things have a way of turning out so badly.
Oh, Laura.
I wouldn't play that Victrola anymore,
would you?
(sighing)
Well, well, well.
So, our gentleman caller was engaged to be married.
(Victrola whirring)
Tom!
TOM: Yes, mother?
AMANDA: Come on out here.
I want to tell you something very funny.
Has the gentleman caller gone away already?
Yes.
He made a very early departure,
and that was a funny joke you played on us too.
How do you mean?
You didn't tell us
he was engaged to be married.
Jim?
Engaged?
Well, that's what he just informed us.
Well, I'll be jiggered.
I didn't know that.
Well, that seems very peculiar to me.
What's peculiar about it?
Didn't you tell me he was your best friend
down at the warehouse?
Mother, he is, but how did I know?
Well, it seems very peculiar to me
that you didn't know that your best friend
was engaged to be married.
Mother, the warehouse is where I work,
not where I know things about people.
You don't know things anywhere.
You live in a dream world.
You just manufacture illusions.
Where are you going? Where are you going?
I'm going to the movies.
Oh, that's right.
Now that you have had us make such fools of ourselves.
Well, all the effort and all the preparation
and all the expense.
The new rug and the floor lamp and the clothes for Laura.
And for what?
To entertain some other girl's fiancé?
Oh, go on and go to the movies.
Don't think about us:
A mother who is deserted,
an unmarried sister who is crippled and has no job.
No, don't let anything interfere with your selfish pleasures.
Just go on and go to the movies.
All right.
I will.
The more you shout
about my selfishness to me,
the quicker I will go.
And I won't go to the movies, either.
AMANDA: Go!
Go, go!
Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer!
(background music: solemn instrumental)
♪♪
VOICE OF TOM:I didn't go to the moon;
I went much further.
For time is the longest distance
between two places.
Not long after that, I left St. Louis.
I descended the steps
of our fire escape for a last time,
and from then on
I followed in my father's footsteps,
attempting to find in motion
what was lost in space.
I travelled around a great deal.
The city swept about me like dead leaves,
leaves that were brightly colored
but torn away from the branches.
I would have stopped,
but I was pursued by something.
It always came upon me unawares,
taking me altogether by surprise.
Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music.
Perhaps it was only
a piece of transparent glass.
Perhaps I'm walking along the street at night
in some strange city
before I have found companions.
I pass the lighted window of a shop
where perfume is sold.
The window is filled
with pieces of colored glass,
tiny transparent bottles
in delicate colors
like bits of a shattered rainbow.
Then, all at once,
my sister touches my shoulder.
I turn around and look into her eyes.
Laura?
I tried so hard
to leave you behind me,
but I am more faithful
than I intended to be.
I reach for a cigarette.
I cross the street.
I run into the movies or a bar.
I buy a drink.
I speak to the nearest stranger --
anything that will blow your candles out.
For nowadays
the world is lit by lightning.
Blow out your candles, Laura.
And so...