Critical response Reviews from critics were mostly positive.
Bosley Crowther of
The New York Times wrote in a generally favorable review that Tennessee Williams "has written his trashy, vicious people so that they are clinically interesting...But Mr. Kazan's pictorial compositions, got in stark black-and-white and framed for the most part against the background of an old Mississippi mansion, are by far the most artful and respectable feature of 'Baby Doll.'"
Variety wrote that Kazan "probably here turns in his greatest directing job to date" and praised the "superb performances," concluding that the film "ranks as a major screen achievement and deserves to be recognized as such."
Richard L. Coe of
The Washington Post called it "one of the finest films of this or many another year, a chilling expose of what ignorance does to human beings...and an excellent example of why the Motion Picture Association should follow Britain's lead in classifying films into distinct categories for children and adults."
John McCarten of
The New Yorker praised the cast as "uniformly commendable" and wrote that the plot machinations "add up to some hilarious French-style farce, and it is only at the conclusion of the piece, when Mr. Kazan starts moving his camera around in a preternaturally solemn way, that one's interest in 'Baby Doll' briefly wanes."
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote "Kazan has often fallen afoul of his own cleverness, but in
Baby Doll he responds to a brilliant and astute scenario by Tennessee Williams with a great invention and the most subtle insight...There are no bad performances, and those of Carroll Baker as Baby Doll and Eli Wallach as the Sicilian are outstanding." Not all reviews were positive. Edwin Schallert of the
Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "offers an experience so basically sordid, and so trying besides, that if one does not manage to laugh at its fantastic ribaldry, he will think that he has spent two hours in bedlam." ''
Harrison's Reports'' called the film "thoroughly unpleasant and distasteful screen fare, in spite of the fact that it is expertly directed and finely acted." The film holds a score of 83% on the review-aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews.
Box office In its review of the film
Variety wrote the film "should make a barrell of dough."
Baby Doll premiered in New York City on December 18, 1956, opening the following week in Los Angeles on December 26 before receiving an expanded release on December 29. During its opening week at New York's
Victoria Theater, the film earned promising box-office returns, totaling $51,232. However the film struggled to receive bookings in the wake of Catholic opposition (discussed below). However, according to
Variety the film earned rentals of $2.3 million at the North American box office in 1957. Kazan later wrote in his memoirs, "People were reading that the film was breaking box office records. This was not true; the cardinal's attack hurt us. There'd be one good week, then a quick slide down. I never made a profit."
Filmink argued this box office failure was in part because Carroll Baker's character "clearly doesn’t want to have sex with anyone. Baby Doll is basically a child who Eli Wallach seduces through manipulation and guile. Maybe if Wallach had been played by a conventionally sexy actor... and/or Baker was more knowing, there would be an entirely different reading of the movie. As it is,
Baby Doll is basically a film about a victim. The film was marketed as something titillating but when you watch it, the end result is far more complex." ==Accolades==