Kim Voynar at Cinematical has

Kim Voynar at Cinematical has spoken to Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern, and reports that “the screen test Marlon Brando made in 1947″ — which will be included on a new double-disc DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire coming out May 2nd — “had practically nothing to do with the Rebel Without A Cause we’re all familiar with.” Stern tells Voynar that “Marlon’s 1947 test was not for Rebel Without a Cause as we know it. Dr. Robert Lindner wrote a book of that title in which there were several case histories, written in fictional form, of young offenders whom Lindner had treated psychiatrically in prison. One of these chapters — and the book — had the title, ‘Rebel Without A Cause’. [But] the whole project fell through as undoable and was shelved for years. I hadn’t known that Marlon tested for that book adaptation — I didn’t know they even had a screenplay from it to test him with. Anyhow, fade out & fade in to 1954, when Nicholas Ray approached [Warner Bros.] about doing a story about middle-class kids in trouble and hired first Leon Uris and then Irving Shulman to write it. He wanted to call it The Blind Run but Warners didn’t like the title and someone recalled ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ so they took the title — they owned it anyway — and threw away the book.”

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