Paladin has provided ComingSoon.net with the exclusive trailer for Jodie Markell’s film based on the unproduced Tennessee Williams screenplay of The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, which opens in New York and L.A. on Wednesday, December 30, and in other cities in the new year.
The legendary playwright, considered by many to be one of the most significant writers of the latter 20th Century, wrote the screenplay with the intention of it being his third collaboration with director Elia Kazan, who helmed the Oscar-winning films A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll, both for which Williams received Oscar nominations for his adaptations of his own plays. For whatever reason, Kazan moved onto other projects and the screenplay remained dormant, and The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is the first new movie based on one of Williams’ original screenplays in over 40 years.
Set in Memphis during the roaring ’20s, it stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Fisher Willow, a high society debutante frustrated with the behavior of her greedy father and desperate to separate herself from his corruption. To enact her revenge, she convinces Chris Evans’ Jimmy Dobyne, a handsome but poor young man whose father works for Fisher to be her escort to a high-profile party she must attend in order to inherit money from her great Aunt Cornelia, played by living legend Ann-Margaret. Things go wrong when Fisher borrows then loses one of Cornelia’s priceless diamond earrings, and then accuses Jimmy of stealing it.
Those who have studied the works of the great playwright will probably realize why the film is such an important addition to his canon, and Howard follows the likes of Vivien Leigh, Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor in taking on the role of a Williams heroine.
