Filming The Rose Tattoo in Key West
The Rose Tattoo was a 1955 film based on Tennessee Williams Broadway play starring Anna Magnini and Burt Lancaster, which was shot almost entirely in Key West.
You can always count on Tennessee Williams to give you an engrossing tale of love, lust, loss, betrayal, sexual frustration and jealousy in the Deep South.
Tennessee Williams was a good friend of Anna Magnini, the Italian screen star whom was relatively unknown in America. It was with her in mind he wrote The Rose Tattoo and this would be her first English speaking role in a Hollywood film.
Magnini plays Serafina Delle Rose, who loses her husband in a truck crash and as a result withdraws from the world becoming a bitter creature. Enter Lancaster as Alvaro who brings her back to life. Lancaster plays the dimwitted but sexy truck driver with over the top gestures and shameless mugging
It wouldn’t be a Tennessee Williams story without the actors sweating bullets as they pour their hearts out.
Magnini’s sensational performance won her the Academy Award for best actress.
While scouting locations a perfect fit was found on Duncan Street for the house owned by Serafina Del Rose. Unbeknownst to the crew the house next door was owned by Tennessee Williams. Magnini and Lancaster even used Tennessee Williams home as dressing rooms. Today it’s an apartment Airbnb.
Years later Tennessee Williams had an enormous Mosaic of a rose tattoo embedded in the floor of the pool behind his house which is still there.
When the movie was shot in 1954, some Key West residents were recruited as extras.
Paul Toppino said his whole family was in the film because they were Italian. He was 12 when the movie was made and even had a line in the very first scene.
During this time my father had been on a fishing trip to the Dry Tortugas when he happened upon a crowded bar in Key West, when Lancaster walked in. Ignoring the people ahead of him, he pushed some of the locals aside shouting for a drink. They wouldn’t serve him and he stomped out of the bar. The crowd applauded the bartender.
In the Mardi Gras Club scenes a few familiar faces appear among the extras as Serafina storms by the men on bar stools. Tennessee Williams can be seen at the bar and in striped shirt and the shorter man in the white suit helping restrain her is Frank Merlo, Tennessee Williams long time companion and lover.
The church where Serafina meets with her priest is the Catholic Basila of St Mary, Star of the Sea in the film and it’s still open to worshipers today.
The premiere of the film was held in New York City at the Hotel Astor on December 12th 1955, with Arthur Miller, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield in attendance.
The Rose Tattoo has another distinction, a happy ending unusual for Tennessee Williams. Many felt that Tennessee Williams was wishing for a happy ending for his sister that had a lobotomy and was disabled.
Her name was Rose.
David Garland FL Key West Jun 28, 2023 Back in Time Movies Places to Stay
Jun 28, 2023
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