Sweet Bird of Youth | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

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What happens at the end of Sweet Bird of Youth? ›

Chance returns to his hometown, St. Cloud, to attempt a reconciliation with Heavenly, but in the end he is unable to recapture the love that they shared. He is abandoned by Princess when her career takes a better turn, and in the end he submits to castration in retribution for his corruption of Heavenly.

Consider Tenneessee Williams one of the greats when it comes to play writing. 'Sweet Bird of Youth' is not quite 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'The Glass Menagerie', but it is nonetheless classic Williams and one of his best.

The original title of the play was "The Enemy, Time," which essentially means the same thing as "Sweet Bird of Youth." "Sweet bird" suggests that, almost before we know it, youth flies away. Youth is sweet and has a buoyant quality, while the enemy, time, is what makes the sweet bird fly.

After unsuccessfully trying his luck in Hollywood, charming gigolo Chance Wayne (Paul Newman) wanders back to his hometown, accompanied by Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page), a movie star on the wane. Chance quickly falls back into his old rut -- he's still smitten with his former sweetheart, Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight), but her thuggish brother (Rip Torn) and her crooked politician father (Ed Begley) both hate him. When Alexandra leaves town, Chance is left with little more than trouble.

Sweet Bird of Youth / Film synopsis

It's official; the coveted and much admired couple Hye-Jeong (or Jun-ha) has split. If you listen closely enough, you'll hear the million little shards of my shattered heart come loose and fall tinkling to the ground.

With his youth gone, Chance does not know how to move on with his life. Although she will not recommend him for a job in Hollywood, del Lago urges him to continue as her escort, but he decides to stay and accept his punishment in St. Cloud.

In Sweet Bird of Youth, the inevitability of aging wears on characters who have come to depend on a superficial kind of beauty. Chance, an aspiring actor, has no true talent as a performer. Nonetheless, he has spent his life chasing the minor success he enjoyed as a young man, always believing himself worthy of fame.

Sweet Bird of Youth is a drama set at the time the play was written in the late 1950s. All the action takes place in two settings over the course of one day, an Easter Sunday, in the Gulf Coast city of St. Cloud, Florida. A majority of the action occurs in the Royal Palms Hotel.

Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1962 American drama film starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page, with Shirley Knight, Madeleine Sherwood, Ed Begley, Rip Torn and Mildred Dunnock in support.

Cloud, Mississippi. St. Cloud is the fictional small town on the Gulf Coast Tennessee Williams used as a setting for “Sweet Bird of Youth.” In the play, Chance Wayne, a flashily dressed man originally from St.

Who wrote Sweet Bird of Youth? ›

Sweet Bird of Youth, drama in three acts by Tennessee Williams, published and produced in 1959 as an expanded version of Williams's one-act play The Enemy: Time (1959).

(idiomatic) An attractive young woman. I just know he's off spending the night with some sweet young thing he picked up in a bar. (idiomatic) A sweet-tempered young woman.