The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

MIRROR, MIRROR Howard admires herself.

Until now, this Tennessee Williams screenplay—about a willful Southern belle (Howard) and the hunky young man (Evans) she pays to escort her to debutante balls—was an interesting unproduced curiosity for Williams fanatics to read and imagine on the screen. It should have stayed that way. Like a send-up of Williams’s recurring motifs, the script has an alcoholic (Patton), an opium addict (Burstyn) and not one but two women with histories in mental institutions. Markell deserves credit for assembling such a name cast, but everyone’s heroic efforts are wasted on the undercooked melodrama.

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