There are two references to vaccination in Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". The first is a simile in a stage direction that describes Maggie Pollitt as shutting her eyes "tight as a child about to be stabbed with a vaccination needle." But actual vaccination appears in the dialogue when Mae Pollitt, Maggie's sister-in-law, lists the shots her children have received, "their tyyy-phoid shots, and their tetanus shots, their diphtheria shots and their hepatitis shots and their polio shots, they got those shots every month from May through September." The polio reference is striking: the play premiered in March 1955, and the Salk vaccine was announced a month later. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 14 January 2022)
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| Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie in the 1958 film of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" |
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