Merchant marine officer Tom Wingfield reminisces about his life in St. Louis where he had lived with his nagging mother Amanda and crippled shy sister Laura.

This first movie version of the Tennessee Williams play about a faded, aging Southern belle, her shy, crippled daughter and her "selfish dreamer" of a son more or less sticks to the original story, except for a compromise ending which strives to be more upbeat.—Eugene Kim <[email protected]>