Baby Doll

DRG Records to Release Vintage Soundtracks Baby Doll

Baby Doll is a 1956 American black comedy drama film directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach. The film also features Mildred Dunnock and Rip Torn. It was produced by Kazan and Tennessee Williams

Produced and directed by Elia Kazan, the 1956 film 'Baby Doll' — controversial for its time — featured an original screenplay by Tennessee Williams. It starred Karl Malden and two newcomers, Carroll Baker and Broadway veteran Eli Wallach. The score was composed by Kenyon Hopkins (with Rueben Fisher) and was performed by Ray Heindorf and The Warner Bros. Orchestra. The CD features 12 tracks, including 'Baby Doll and Empty House,' 'Lemonade,' 'Shame, Shame, Shame!' (vocal by Smiley Lewis) and 'The Cradle.'

In the Mississippi Delta, failing, bigoted, middle-aged cotton gin owner Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) has been married to pretty, empty-headed 19-year-old virgin Baby Doll Meighan (Carroll Baker) for two years. Archie Lee impatiently waits for Baby Doll's 20th birthday just a few days away when, by prior agreement with Baby Doll's dying father, the marriage can finally be consummated. In the meantime, Baby Doll still sleeps in a crib, wearing childishly short-nightgowns and sucking her thumb, while Archie, an alcoholic, spies on her through a hole in a wall of their decrepit antebellum mansion, Tiger Tail. Baby Doll's senile Aunt Rose Comfort (Mildred Dunnock) lives in the house as well and is (lightly) terrorized by Archie Lee.