Madeleine Sherwood was a Canadian actress of stage, film and television. She portrayed Mae/Sister Woman and Miss Lucy in both the Broadway and film versions of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, and starred or featured in 18 original Broadway productions including Arturo Ui, Do I Hear a Waltz? and The Crucible. In 1963 she won an Obie Award for Best Actress for her performance in Hey You, Light Man! Off-Broadway. In television, she played Reverend Mother Placido to Sally Field's Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun (1967–70).

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1955 American three-act play written by Tennessee Williams. The play, an adaptation of his 1952 short story "Three Players of a Summer Game", was written between 1953 and 1955. One of Williams's more famous works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Set in the "plantation home in the Mississippi Delta" of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, the play examines the relationships among members of Big Daddy's family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the "Cat", Brick's wife.