“He bought me a bathing suit I didn’t want to wear. It was transparent when it got wet, I told him I didn’t want to swim in it. I said, ‘I can’t wear that, it’s a scandal to the jaybirds!’” So said Elizabeth Taylor in the movie version of Tennessee Williams’s overheated Southern Gothic nightmare, “Suddenly, Last Summer.” (Miz Liz was being used by her gay cousin, Sebastian, to lure homeless beach boys to his bed — hey, this was Tennessee’s fantasy.)

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“Suddenly, Last Summer” began its sordid life off-Broadway in 1958, winning an Obie for actress Anne Meacham as Catherine, niece to Hortense Alden’s Violet Venable, the mother of all monster mothers. (Mrs. Venable wants her niece to be lobotomized, the better to wipe out evidence of her son Sebastian’s kinky sex-life.)

Then came the 1959 movie version with Miss Taylor, Monty Clift and Katharine Hepburn as Mrs. Venable. Everybody was miscast, but given the kooky nature of the material, it worked out fine.


Elizabeth Taylor

In 1993, the BBC produced a TV adaptation starring Rob Lowe, Maggie Smith and the late Natasha Richardson. Miss Richardson was much more believable as a fragile girl on the edge of madness than was the robust and feisty Miss Taylor back in the ’50s.

“Suddenly, Last Summer” finally had its Broadway début in a 1995 production starring Elizabeth Ashley. Ms. Ashley sucked so much oxygen out of the place, patrons needed resuscitation afterward.

Now, 50 years after the original show shocked New York, “Suddenly, Last Summer” is back where it began, off-Broadway. You can catch this baroque and brilliant work at the June Havoc Theater (312 West 36th Street) from April 25 to May 9. The cast features Joan Copeland as Mrs. Venable. Let’s see what she does with lines like, “Dementia praecox … it sounds like a lovely flower; night-blooming dementia praecox.”  

In the choice role of Catherine Holly — whose very brain and life are at stake — we have singer Kathryn Luce. (She has appeared at Carnegie Hall and London’s Palladium.) This will be Kathryn’s NYC stage début.

And not that it matters, Kathryn Luce is also the wife of fabled composer/performer Art Garfunkel. Expect a lot of music types to be dropping in at the June Havoc Theater next week. Call (212) 868-4444.

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Debbie Reynolds knows a thing or two about scandalized jaybirds — she was the wronged wife of the “Eddie-Debbie-Liz” biz of 1958. (The Jennifer Aniston of her day, if you want historical perspective.) Debbie is still going super-strong with her cabaret shows. She brings her stuff to NYC’s Café Carlyle June 2 - 27.

Two coveted tickets are being auctioned on charitybuzz.com, benefiting SOS Children’s Villages International, housing orphans with AIDS. Debbie will meet the winners after her performance, pose, schmooze and lift a glass to good deeds in a naughty world and surviving MGM!

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Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella Swan in the “Twilight” movies, doesn’t believe in vampires, no matter how often she’s bitten onscreen. But she does believe in ghosts.


© Everett Collection

Kristen says she had an encounter of the vaporous kind in 2007, while filming a movie in Canada. Miss Stewart insists she awoke suddenly in her hotel room one night to find a lady spirit, dressed up in late 19th-century corsets and bustle, staring down at her. She screamed and screamed and castmates came to save her from the ghost, who had vanished, natch. So, she’s a believer in life on the other side, but would prefer it stay on the other side.