LIFE Magazine's Classic Photos

Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter, 1947
By Eliot Elisofon
Producer Irene Mayer Selznick had wanted Margaret Sullavan and John Garfield to play Stella and Stanley Kowalski in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. But a hungry young actor named Marlon Brando drove himself from New York City to Cape Cod to personally audition for playwright Tennessee Williams. The legend is that as soon as Williams saw Brando through the screen door of his house, he knew he had found his Stanley. In 1947 it was simplicity itself for photographer Elisofon to drift down from LIFE's offices to Times Square, where the 23-year-old Brando was creating a nightly sensation, and show the country what all the fuss was about.

• The Book, "Life, the Classic Collection"