NEW YORK -- Ann-Margret and Treat Williams star Sunday on ABC in Tennessee William's 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' an emotionally stunning remake of 1951 film classic that made Marlon Brando an overnight star.
The made-for-TV movie airs 9-11:34 p.m. EST.
Miss Margret is the fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois and Williams is her crass brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski in the new movie, which is truer to the Williams play than the original -- minor editing was approved by the playwright before his death.
Beverly D'Angelo ('Coal Miner's Daughter') plays Blanche's younger sister Stella and Randy Quaid ('The Longriders') plays Stanley's shy friend Mitch in both performers' dramatic television debuts.
Miss Margret's Blanche is both sexy and pathetic as she flirts vainly with the animalistic brother-in-law who hates her for her unwillingness to accept what her life has come to -- living off his charity in his dingy flat at the end of a streetcar line in New Orleans.
Williams, though not as magnitizing a force as Brando, exudes the gruff sexuality the Stanley character needs to make his hold over Stella and physical attraction for Blanche believable.
'Streetcar' is the story of Blanche's mental demise at the hands of her brother-in-law after she is fired from her teaching job and forced to sell the decaying family estate Belle Reve and move in with Stanley and Stella.
Miss Margret, who won acclaim for her role as the dying mother in the 1983 ABC Theater presentation 'Who Will Love My Children?' is at her finest in the scene where she tells Mitch about the 'boy' she married, who committed suicide.
Steamiest of all is the scene where the drunken Stanley stumbles out of his apartment wailing for Stella to come home.
Steamy and sweaty as it all looks, Quaid said shooting the movie wasn't that uncomfortable.
'They used a lot of spritzer and they smoked up the set to give it a steamy quality,' he said. 'The actors wanted the air conditioning turned off on the sound stage, so it would actually be hot. But they wouldn't do it.
'Because you know in New Orleans, you really are affected by the heat. You talk slower, you move slower.'
Quaid said remaking an Oscar-winning American film classic did not worry him.
'That didn't worry me, that aspect. I think it might have worried Treat a little bit,' he said. 'We talked about that. He wasn't really sure whether he should take that part or not.
'But its hard to turn down when you get offered something like this. You just have to forget about the remake and look at it as a fresh piece of material -- try to find your own values within it.
'That's what we were trying to do. We weren't necessarily trying to make it better or trying to copy what's been done before.
'We were able to do a lot more in this version than the film did. As far as the sexuality of the material, Blanche's husband and his homosexuality are a little more defined in our version than the original.'
Quaid said he thought a lot of people probably have not seen the original film and he hoped the new version would become their 'Streetcar.' He said he saw the original once in high school and saw it again after making the new version.
The 6-foot-4-inch actor played Lenny in Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' a few years ago.
'I'm sort of becoming the king of the remakes,' he said.
