What disease is Big Daddy afflicted with in the film "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof"?

After some opening scenes in the 1958 film, the Pollitt family is meeting to celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of the domineering Mississippi plantation owner and patriarch, Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives). The members of the family are now thinking that Big Daddy is "dyin of" a terminal disease, Cancer. This party will probably be his last.

Within the household, Margaret "Maggie" (Elizabeth Taylor), Brick's beautiful young wife, criticizes her brother-in-law Gooper Pollitt (Jack Carson) and his shrewish, fertile wife Mae (Madeleine Sherwood). She is also upset with actions of their five obnoxious kids. Later in a scene upstairs in the bedroom/sitting room, Maggie tells a coolly-detached Brick (Paul Newman) that she is completely sickened by her brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and their kids.

Suspicious of her greedy, prolific relatives who have produced 5 grandchildren for Big Daddy, Maggie tells Brick why they have assembled. They are here to battle over the vast inheritance of the 28,000 acre Mississippi cotton plantation. She says: "I'll tell you what they're up to, boy of mine! They're up to cutting you out of your father's estate. There's some things you gotta face, baby. There's some things in this world you simply got to face."

Overall, "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" is a powerful, highly-charged, moving story of a neurotic, dysfunctional Southern family with its rivalries, tensions, and avarice. This provocative screenplay on film will make you feel something.