Handsome, young Chance Wayne returns to his hometown of St. Cloud, Mississippi, a chauffeur and gigolo to a considerably older film star, Alexandra Del Lago. Needy and feeling discouraged after completing filming of her latest film, she is considering retiring from the acting world.
Chance, once a waiter at the local country club, had gone to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune at the behest of St. Cloud's most powerful and influential citizen, Tom "Boss" Finley, who had duped him into leaving town to pursue fame and fortune as a way of keeping him away from his beautiful daughter, Heavenly.
A political kingpin, Finley enjoys putting Heavenly on display as a model of purity and chastity. His ruthless son, Tom Jr., aids his father's ambitions in any way he can. He, too, is unhappy to have Chance back in town.
Desperate to have Alexandra further his fantasy of becoming a star, Chance has become her lover. He goes so far as to blackmail her with a tape recording, on which she speaks openly of a dependence on drugs. Alexandra defies him, becoming irate at the realization that Chance's romantic interests in Heavenly are more important to him than her own needs.
Just when Alexandra is at her most vulnerable, she learns from major syndicated gossip columnist Walter Winchell that her performance in her new movie is being raved as the best of her career, and the picture appears to be a certain success. Meanwhile, Finley's discarded mistress, Miss Lucy, exposes Finley's underhanded tactics to the government authorities. Chance, who has been repeatedly warned to stay away from Heavenly and leave town immediately, refuses to do both. Repudiated by Alexandra, and obsessed with his fate, he stages a scene outside the Finley mansion, and is cornered there by Tom, Jr., and his gang of thugs. Determined to ruin Chance's "meal ticket" once and for all, Tom, Jr., smashes his face in with the crook end of his father's cane. When Heavenly returns home and discovers Chance lying in a heap in their driveway, she defies her father and runs off together with Chance.
The film was produced by Roxbury Productions, a company established by Pandro Berman to make two films for MGM.[6] Berman bought the film rights to the stage play a year and a half before it debuted on Broadway, for $400,000.[7] (Richard Brooks, who wrote and directed, said the cost of the play rights was $600,000 but there may have been an extra fee payable after the play had been on Broadway.[1])
The film reunited Berman with Paul Newman, MGM, and Richard Brooks, who had previously made a very successful version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, also for MGM.[3][4][5] Brooks later said he only did the film because Paul Newman asked him to do it.[8] "Sweet Bird I didn’t want to do," he said. "While I thought it was a very good play, I felt that time had passed, that there were too many imitations of his work. So many of his pieces had been done and were even being brought back and were playing at the same time."[9]
According to Hank Moonjean, who was assistant director, a condition of Brooks' contract was that Tennessee Williams would have nothing to do with the screenplay. However Williams did insist on a small role for actor Mike Stein, who Moonjean says was the original inspiration for the character of Chance (he played the police officer watching Heavenly).[10]
The adaptation of the original play by Tennessee Williams went through several drafts, with Brooks unsure how to film the play's controversial ending in which Chance is castrated by Finley's hoods.[11] The castration was cut from the film and replaced by Finley's son clubbing Chance in the face with a cane, followed by Chance and Heavenly escaping together.
Williams called Richard Brooks "a wonderful director except that at the end he cheats on the material, sweetens it up and makes it all hunky-dory.... [he] wrote a fabulous screenplay of Sweet Bird of Youth but he did the same fucking thing. He had a happy end to it. He had Heavenly and Chance go on together, which is a contradiction to the meaning of the play."[12]
Brooks says he wanted to shoot a different ending. He felt "no man waits to be castrated" so he wanted Chance "to do something more: to go and look for the trouble. But M.G.M. felt it was bad enough they were doing the picture. " He wanted Chance to be beaten up and for Princess and Lucy to leave town on the same ferry and see Chance on a garbage scow. According to Brooks MGM executives said "We’ll let you shoot it after we’ve had the preview, and, of course, they never did."[9] Hank Mojeen says an alternative ending was shot, at Long Beach, involving Geraldine Paige and Madeleine Sherwood, but was scrapped.[10]
Paul Newman was paid $350,000 plus 10% of the profits to play the lead role.[13]
Geraldine Page had played the lead female role on Broadway but producer Pandro Berman was unsure about using her in a film, worried she was insufficiently glamorous to play a movie star. Page did a screen test with an MGM contract actor which was not well received. Berman offered the role to Ava Gardner but she turned it down (which Garner later regretted). Paul Newman requested another screen test with Page and offered to appear in it with her; Berman says the issue was not Page's acting but with her looks. Anothe screen test was done, with a wig from Sydney Guilaroff, a gown from Orry Kelly and make up from William Tuttle. This test was successful and she was cast.[10]
Brooks offered the role of Boss Findley to Randolph Scott who turned it down.[10]
Filming started 6 July 1961 and went until October. Brooks said "It’s a very harsh picture, and I didn’t see why the photography had to be as harsh as the content."[9]
According to Brooks, the cost was $2.8 million including $600,000 for the play rights, $700,000 for the cast and $1.6 million for overhead.[1]
Reception
Box office
Variety estimated the film earned $2.7 million in the US and Canada in rentals in 1962.[2] Market analysts thought the film might have done better had it been released a few years earlier.[14]
According to MGM records, the film lost $627,000.[15]
Critical
Variety called it "a glossy hunk of motion picture entertainment."[16]
Filmink argued that the happy ending of the film hurt its commercial success. "You can have a popular film with a happy ending or a sad ending, that doesn’t matter – what matters is that it’s a just ending. Justice must be served. Chance didn’t deserve a happy ending in Sweet Bird of Youth. (If the filmmakers wanted that ending, they needed to make more changes throughout to justify a happy ending.)"[17]
The film also was one of Roger Ebert's top films of the decade, and held a score of 74% on Rotten Tomatoes based on a total of 19 surveyed critics.
