I don't think anyone would call "The Seven Descents of Myrtle" one of Tennessee Williams' best plays, (it failed on Broadway), and yet, in 1970 Sidney Lumet, no less, made it into a movie, changing the title to "The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots" with a screenplay by none other than Gore Vidal, casting Lynn Redgrave as Myrtle, (Estelle Parsons had been Tony-nominated for the play), with an unlikely James Coburn as the dying man she marries in order to win a prize in a game-show.
You could say it should have been a disaster and commercially it was, (it was never released in the UK), and yet it remains one of the most bizarrely fascinating films Lumet ever tackled if not always for the right reasons. Redgrave may have been miscast, (she's like a dizzy Southern Belle version of Georgy Girl), but she's still very good in her vacant, dumb way and an equally miscast Coburn is surprisingly effective as the husband who carries her off to his crumbling Deep South Plantation, (about to be devoured by a flood), which he shares with his biracial brother, (an excellent Robert Hooks).
Since the play itself flopped you may wonder why Hollywood thought this might be a success. Was Tennessee Williams still considered a sufficient name to carry any vehicle no matter how poor or did they think that Redgrave and Coburn were now sufficiently up-and-coming 'stars' that they could draw in an audience? If so they were clearly wrong on both counts though the film didn't deserve to die the painful death that it did. It may be a movie for Williams and Lumet completists only but it's still weird enough to be of more than passing interest. Minor Williams yes and minor Lumet most definitely but in its demented way it almost works. It's just a pity the material itself wasn't stronger.
