The Rose Tattoo is a Tennessee Williams play. It opened on Broadway in February 1951, and a film adaptation was released in 1955. It tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Louisiana who has allowed herself to withdraw from the world after her husband's death, and expects her daughter to do the same.

The film was adapted by Williams and Hal Kanter and directed by Daniel Mann, starring Anna Magnani, Burt Lancaster, Marisa Pavan and Jo Van Fleet.

Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) born Thomas Lanier Williams, was an American playwright who received many of the top theatrical awards for his works of drama. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee", the Southeastern U.S. state, his father's birthplace.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition, The Glass Menagerie (1944 in Chicago, 1945 in New York) and The Night of the Iguana (1961) received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play. In 1980 he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.