 A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn), attempts to bribe Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift), a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor). Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian. Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian s mysterious death that she witnessed while on holiday together in Spain the previous summer.