HE ROSE TATTOOED

THE ROSE TATTOO (1955)
dir: Daniel Mann

HE ROSE TATTOOED
MAD #28, July 1956
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

Based on a play by Tennessee Williams. This is about Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani), a seamstress who mourns over her husband dying in an accident. A few years pass and she has become a recluse much to the dismay of her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan), who is graduating high school, and has started dating a sailor (Ben Cooper) who Serafina only accepts when she finds him to be pure. Later she attends a church bazaar to find out if her husband has been cheating and fights with the priest who told her of his confession. She's driven home by a truck driver, Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster) and she fixes his shirt, loaning him a temporary one.

Alvaro returns later and shows Serafina he got a rose tattoo like her husband's, he thought she'd like it, but it sends her into a rage. She makes Alvaro taker her to the club where her dead husband's lover Estelle (Virginia Grey) works and she admits their affair, proving it by showing she got a rose tattoo to prove their love. Alvaro gets extremely drunk, shows up at Serafina's house, sees Rosa sleeping, and makes a pass at her thinking it's Serafina, then gets kicked out of the house. The next morning after the daughter has moved on with the sailor, and Alvaro is outside confessing his love, Serafina decides she has had closure and becomes her old self again.

I know you can't see the top panels, but that's not because of bad reproduction. It's the joke. In the background in the last panel is the slogan Maidenform bras used in their print ads.