Synopsis for
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Plus avec IMDbPro »

Gooper (Jack Carson) and Brick (Paul Newman) have come home to New Orleans to celebrate Big Daddy's (Burl Ives) 65th birthday. Big Daddy is expected back from a six-week stay at an out of town at a clinic where his health has been evaluated and the family is waiting for the news. Brick has broken his leg in a drunken attempt at jumping the hurdles alone at night at his old high school track field where he was reminiscing about his glory days as a star athlete. He and his wife Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor) argue in their bedroom about Brick's drunkenness and his lack of sexual interest in Maggie.

Maggie is disgusted with Gooper, his wife pregnant wife Mae Flynn (Madeleine Sherwood) and their five young children--Sonny (Robert 'Rusty' Stevens), Dixie (Patty Ann Gerrity), Trixie (Deborah Miller), Buster (Hugh Corcoran) and Boy (Brian Corcoran).

It's in the hot summer stickiness of New Orleans that Big Daddy and Big Mamma return after a scare with his health. But not all is well and he doesn't in fact have a spastic colon, but terminal cancer that will kill him in a matter of days. His oldest son Gooper and his child bearing and social climbing wife, May, return to the estate as well. But this is only a bid to get the inheritance and control of the entire estate from Big Daddy, who has built an empire from the resources of the south and some elbow grease, making himself a multi millionaire.

But Gooper and May aren't the only ones to return on Big Daddy's arrival, his youngest son, Brick and his wife Maggie "the cat" come back to old memories and bitter feelings. Maggie, unlike the very fertile May, is childless and Brick is a drinker who dreams of his former glory as a football super star. It isn't long before Maggie and Brick are fighting and the others looking on with judgment.

Big Daddy realizes that he's dying and that Brick and Maggie are haunted by the ghost of Brick's ex best friend, Skipper who killed himself. Through a series of passionate explanations by Brick about a click in his head and his disgust for mendacity, Big Daddy manages to get the whole story from Maggie, to clear up Brick's belief that she seduced Skipper before his death, and this is why Brick won't make love to Maggie any longer. It turns out that when Brick got injured before a big game, Skipper was left alone on the field and he fumbled and stumbled like jelly, unable to win the game. He went crazy with rage and weak with tears that night, upsetting the manager of the hotel that the team was staying at. Maggie told the manager she would calm Skipper as not to have the manager call the police over. At first she wanted to seduce Skipper, make Brick have a reason to hate him, and Skipper wasn't about to refuse the beautiful wife of his best friend. But Maggie realizes that she'll only lose the gorgeous, talented and sensitive Brick, if she goes through with it. But she bitterly admits that she lost Brick anyway.

When Big Daddy and Brick talk in the basement, among the memories of old football cutouts of Brick and the junk of a European trip, they discover that they do love each other and that their father son relationship isn't dead after all. Big Daddy stops Gooper and May in their harassing of Big Mamma for her support after his death, backing up Maggie in her bold face lie that she is pregnant with Brick's child at last. May refuses to believe it and is finally told to shut up by Gooper after realizing that his father does indeed love him and that he should stop living for his approval.

In the end Maggie thanks Brick for not telling on her, but he says that there are no liars any longer in the house and throws his pillow besides Maggie's on the bed. The films ends on them about to make love and their long awaited reconciliation, giving the viewer an idea that they will in fact have a child and be lovers once more, setting the memories of passed wrongs and misunderstanding at rest.