The fifth Tennessee Williams play to reach the screen, wealthy Mississippi plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt, unaware that he's dying of cancer and disturbed by the strained and childless marriage of his favored alcoholic son Brick and his other son, Gooper, whose wife is about to bring forth another in the endless line of little "no-neck monsters," celebrates his sixty-fifth birthday with his family. Brick's wife, Maggie, beautiful and desirable, tries unsuccessfully to coax her husband away from the bottle, while alternately enticing him and taunting him about his obsession with his deceased best friend and the guilt about their relationship. The seamy tensions reach a climax when the truth of Big Daddy's health is revealed, and he and Brick manage to resolve their differences.

Playwright Tennessee Williams so disliked this adaptation that he told people in the queue "This movie will set the industry back 50 years. Go home!"

Harvey 'Big Daddy' Pollitt:
I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

(uncredited)
Composed by André Previn and Milton Raskin