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Anna Magnani: Tennessee Williams
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Magnani is indeed the main reason to visit The Rose Tattoo. Those who enjoyed—or suffered through—the works of Williams while in school will recognize the arcane, poetic writer's style all throughout this early piece. Tattoo was written after The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire (two classic works of theater if ever there were any), but before Williams's other successes like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
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In 1959, Magnani became involved in a major film project that, although it resulted in immediate failure, turned out to be perhaps her most interesting American movie. Further, it combined her considerable talents with those of arguably America's greatest actor, Marlon Brando, as well one of the movie industry's best directors, Sidney Lumet, and one of the country's finest playwrights, Tennessee Williams.
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Tennessee Williams wrote it and based the character of Serafina on Magnani, since the two were good friends. It was originally put on stage starring Maureen Stapleton, because Magnani’s English was too limited at the time for her to star. Magnani worked with Williams again in his 1959 film, The Fugitive Kind, where she played Lady Torrance and starred opposite Marlon Brando.
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Her friendship with Tennessee Williams was the subject of an Off-Broadway play in New York, Roman Nights, by Franco D'Alessandro, which starred Franca Barchiesi as Magnani and Roy Miller as Williams. A film adaptation is in the works.
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