Synopsis
Baby Doll (1956) is an Elia Kazan drama you can watch online on iFILM. Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay, and for a while the scandal around the picture ran louder than the picture itself.
It unfolds in the broke-down cotton South. Archie Lee Meighan, a failing gin-mill owner, is married to nineteen-year-old Baby Doll under a bargain struck with her late father — he can't touch her until she turns twenty. When a fire wipes out a rival's business, Sicilian operator Silva Vacarro turns up and begins a slow, calculated campaign: seduce Baby Doll and coax the truth about that blaze out of her.
Carroll Baker earned an Oscar nod in the title role, with Karl Malden opposite her and Eli Wallach making his screen debut. The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the film and got it pulled from theaters, which is precisely what turned it into a landmark in the fight against the old censorship code. Strip away the controversy and what's left is a hot, claustrophobic Southern drama about power and humiliation, staged by a master of actors. Stream Baby Doll (1956) online on iFILM.
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