Blanche DuBois (married name Grey) is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The role is challenging and controversial in that the former Southern belle frog has a lurid past (a marriage to a young homosexual who committed suicide when she discovered his secret; notorious sexual promiscuity; ongoing alcoholism, etc.) as well as genuine spiritual idealism and refinement.
Jessica Tand...
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Blanche DuBois (married name Grey) is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The role is challenging and controversial in that the former Southern belle frog has a lurid past (a marriage to a young homosexual who committed suicide when she discovered his secret; notorious sexual promiscuity; ongoing alcoholism, etc.) as well as genuine spiritual idealism and refinement.
Jessica Tandy received a Tony Award for her performance as Blanche in the original Broadway production. By report (no filmed record exists), her performance stressed Blanche's high-class affectations, and the audience often sided with the adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, viewing her, as he does, as an alien threatening his home and marriage.
Uta Hagen took over the role of Blanche for the national tour. The tour was directed not by Elia Kazan, who had directed the Broadway production, but by Harold Clurman, and it has been reported, both in...
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