REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE In one of the most influential performances in movie history, James Dean plays the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of postwar teens and still reverberate today. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo were Academy Award nominees for their achingly true performances. EAST OF EDEN A wayward Salinas Valley youth (James Dean) vies for the affection of his hardened father (Raymond Massey) with his favored brother (Richard Davalos). Julie Harris and 1955 Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet co-star in this adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Tennessee Williams Pulitzer Prize play thunders across the screen in a powerful film adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor as frustrated Southern belle wife Maggie the Cat and Paul Newman as her disillusioned ex-athlete husband. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: THE ORIGINAL DIRECTORS VERSION Four Academy Awards including three for acting! Elia Kazan directs the landmark movie of Tennessee Williams Pulitzer Prize play about the clash between brutish Stanley Kowlaski (Marlon Brando) and his dreamy sister-in-law Blanche Dubois (Vivien Leigh).

Turner Classic Movies' Greatest Classic Films Collection: Romantic Dramas collects four movies on two double-sided discs, with top picture quality and the bonus features that appeared on disc 1 when two of those films were released on two-disc sets, or the features that appeared on the single discs of the other two. The first disc pairs two of James Dean's three major films, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden (both 1955), with commentary tracks by author Douglas L. Rathlieb and historian-filmmaker Richard Schickel, respectively. The second disc offers two Tennessee Williams adaptations: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), starring Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the Cat and Paul Newman, and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Bonus features include commentary tracks by author Donald Spoto and by Karl Malden and others, the featurette "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Playing Cat and Mouse," and movie trailers. --David Horiuchi