Sam Staggs's When Blanche Met Brando may not be the most scholarly commentary on Tennessee Williams, but it is certainly informative. Aiming “to synthesize, as no previous writer has, the first-hand accounts of those who were there” (xii) for both the 1947 Broadway premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire and its 1951 film, as well as subsequent revivals, Staggs succeeds at revealing the gulf between myth and fact, between play and production. By illuminating its twisted path of accidents from genesis to premiere to “classic,” Staggs reminds us that Streetcar by no means was destined to take on the form in which we now know it.