User reviews

This film is strangely reminiscent of Pre-Code Barbara Stanwyck pictures like 'Baby Face' or 'Women They Talk About.' But, what makes the film so much fun is its marvelously fractured casting. It's rumored that the film owes its existence to Capucine. Charles Feldman, the talent agent, mounted the production to showcase his protégée and (some say) girlfriend. She's quite a beauty, but what makes her performance so remarkable is that she's totally oblivious to the fact that she doesn't belong in this film.

Laurence Harvey has the Southern accent down. And, as for Jane Fonda, this was the one break in her endless string of coy sex kitten roles from the sixties where she proves she can act. Some say she overdoes it, but I think she provides the real spice in this film.

In the midst of this batch of newcomers hobbled together from around the world (although they're all playing indigenous Southerners) are two pros trained in the old Hollywood studios. This is hardly a high point for Barbara Stanwyck. But, she proves that you can put her down anywhere - in a screwball comedy, a tearjerker, a hard-boiled film noir, or a TV western - and she can hold her own.

Anne Baxter acquits herself well in the thankless task of playing a humble Mexican. Probably less well known for her accomplishments than Stanwyck, she won an Oscar for playing one of the greatest dramatic arcs given to an actress in the forties in "The Razor's Edge." These two pros give some dignity to a film that easily could have degenerated in to laughable kitsch.

This film is notorious for its overt portrayal of a lesbian character. But, it actually has a more interesting gay connection. Fonda, against the prohibition of director Edward Dymyrik, was secretly being coached in her dressing room by her 'secretary' and live-in boyfriend Andreas Voutsinas. Six years later, he would set a new benchmark for outrageous mincing queens as Carmen Ghia in Mel Brooks' "The Producers."

Laurence Harvey is on a quest to find his true love. He couldn't leave his ailing father, so of course Capucine as Hallie wound up in a house of sin in New Orleans, headed by Barbara Stanwyck. Laurence befriends Jane Fonda along the way to find Hallie, and Jane takes an instant liking to him and does what she can to get his attention. One pit stop was at Anne Baxter's little diner and gas station.

All this sounds quite simple, but its treatment and style is such that you feel its down-in-the-dirt quality and you get the feeling it's a guilty pleasure in watching it. It also features Juanita Moore, from "Imitation of Life" with Lana Turner, and Joanna Moore (who was the mother of Tatum O'Neal) has a very memorable if somewhat brief role.

For all the great stars and talent in the making of this movie, the one person you really empathize the most for is Anne Baxter, who comes to feel something for Laurence Harvey. Everyone else, including Laurence and Jane, are portrayed as somewhat selfish and hard in their own way; in other words, these are not very likable people. Even Capucine, who the viewer is supposed to feel sorry for in her predicament, doesn't really emote enough feelings for the viewer to really care about her.

I know I seem to be giving it a hard time, but I give it an '8' for its entertainment value and presentation with some of the best actors of the time. Like always, Stanwyck is great, and Anne Baxter's accent is so natural, you see the character and not Anne, which is a testimony to her acting chops. So, walk on the wild side with Stanwyck & company.

This film has a dynamite opening. A real life black cat prowls around a maze of pipes and fences, as Elmer Bernstein's jazzy musical score blares out the film's title song, a haunting invocation to low life everywhere.

Throughout, both the music and the B&W cinematography evoke a noirish, downbeat mood totally in sync with the film's theme of embittered sleaze. Although set in the 1930's, the film looks and sounds more like something from the hip, "beat" generation of the 1950's. And I'm comfortable with that.

What I'm not comfortable with is the casting and the screenplay. Lithuanian born Laurence Harvey is totally not convincing as a Texas tramp. French born Capucine, looking like she just walked in from the set of "La Dolce Vita", seems lost in the role of a Southern belle. A somewhat inexperienced Jane Fonda overacts the role of Kitty Twist. And American Anne Baxter, looking more like Suzanne Pleshette than Anne Baxter, plays a Mexican senorita, with the help of a big wig. Among the major roles, the only credible cast member is Barbara Stanwyck, as the bossy owner of the Doll House, your typical red light house of prostitution.

The film's red light title is a big tease. It advertises brothel life, but the screenplay delivers only boredom and preachy morality. But in 1962 the moralistic Hays Code still exerted influence on what Hollywood could say and show. The result here is a yellow light plot that merely hints at sleaze.

Forty years after its release, "Walk On The Wild Side" does have entertainment value, both as a curious period piece, and as a sudsy soap opera with some campy dialogue, helped along by the always engaging Barbara Stanwyck.

Laurence Harvey is terrific as a penniless Texas cowboy who hitches his way to New Orleans in the 1930s in search of a lost summer love, a French artist who--unbeknownst to him--is now working at a bordello; Barbara Stanwyck is the madame at the Doll House, married to a crippled tough but with heavy lesbian leanings towards Capucine, the girl who broke Harvey's heart; Jane Fonda is pretty good as a teen tramp who also ends up working for Stanwyck, and Anne Baxter is a proprietress of a diner who takes Harvey in. Though based on a novel by Nelson Algren, this screenplay sometimes plays like sub-Tennessee Williams, with the rather laughable story-conceit that New Orleans was just another small town in the '30s (walk up the street and you've seen it all!). Capucine, haughty and breathless, matches up well with Harvey, and her run-ins with benefactor Stanwyck are heated, but those hoping for some crackling gay subtext will be disappointed (Barbara's inclinations aren't hypothetical, but she's hardly out of the closet). There are some good, fruity lines of tough-talking dialogue and also some sentimental moments with surprising resonance (as when Baxter says, "Why can't two people care about each other...without the world making it dirty?"). Of course it's Hollywood-ized, with a camp score by Elmer Bernstein and Joanna Moore in the clichéd role of the good-hearted tootsie who gets taken for granted. But Fonda has a great scene near the end when she helps Capucine out of a jam, and Harvey makes a big impression on the audience without overstating his sleek handsomeness. *** from ****

This sleazy bit of melodrama, loosely based on a racy Nelson Algren book, is now dated kitsch; but can be enjoyed for what it is, thanks to the Hollywood team that put it all together. It's trashy intentions and heavyhanded delivery work in it's favor nowadays, so the brilliant Columbia DVD transfer is well worth checking out. The highlight of the movie is the Elmer Bernstein score; a masterwork with a life all it's own. The cast is a hoot: Barbara Stanwyck standing out as a lesbian brothel owner, a stiff dyke, hardly correct as a New Orleans Madame; Jane Fonda is a pouty, sultry slut, overdoing her overaged, nubile nymphette act; Laurence Harvey stretches all credibility as the good-boy Texas heartthrob searching for his lost love; an utterly miscast Capucine, playing an artsy, elegant whore-with-a-heart-of-gold; and Anne Baxter is quite humorous as a Mexican cafe owner. It's hard not to enjoy a movie with lead characters whose names are Dove and Kitty Twist, and a title song performed by Brook Benton with lyrics like: "Chances of goin' to Heaven, 6 to 1!".

With the Code still in place we could only hint about Barbara Stanwyck's alternative sexuality. Yet those are screaming hints about why Barbara is so obsessed with keeping Capucine at her bordello.

Walk on the Wild Side is the kind of delicious trash that Hollywood loves to give us in the movie going public. Laurence Harvey who went from that noblest of Texan founders, William Barrett Travis in The Alamo to poor white trash lovesick Dove Linkhorn who's on his way to New Orleans to get his girl to marry him and live the life of a poor dirt farmer back in Texas. Traveling on the bum, he meets Jane Fonda, a teenager on the road as well.

What I can't figure out is that Capucine who is Harvey's intended is a girl with artistic skills. She's a sculptress as well as a temptress and why she would want to waste her time on Harvey is beyond me. Even if she finds herself as Stanwyck's favorite at the bordello which is where she wound up, you've got to believe she would have married one of the well to do clients. It's happened before.

Other reviewers who've read the original book by Nelson Algren mention that Harvey's character is not much more than a teenager himself. Clearly then Harvey is too old for the part. But as presented possibly Monty Clift or Paul Newman could have made more of the role. My guess is that Director Edward Dmytryk wanted a clearer contrast in age between Jane Fonda and Laurence Harvey because part of the story involves Harvey being framed for a Mann Act violation in transporting the minor Fonda.

That is Anne Baxter with a very phony Latino accent as the truck stop owner who takes in Harvey and Fonda from the road and develops a thing for Harvey herself. That's a more serious error in casting. Why didn't Columbia try to get Katy Jurado for the part?

Acting honors in this go to Barbara Stanwyck as Jo, the lesbian madam of the house whose Jones for Capucine drive this whole film. Her portrayal in Walk on the Wild Side is another crack in the once omnipotent Code.

You've got to love Elmer Bernstein's jazz based score with the title tune that got Walk on the Wild Side it's only Academy Award nomination. It really does drive the pace of the film and underscores the emotions of all involved.

For those who like their films deliciously trashy this is definitely your kind of movie.

In 1930s New Orleans Texan Laurence Harvey (!!) finds one time lover Capucine (!!!) working in a bordello. He wants to take her away, but the bordello's lesbian madam, Barbara Stanwyck wants Capucine for herself. Then there's Jane Fonda as a real wild girl...

Film starts off with a great title sequence that perfectly sets the tone of the film--loud, brassy and dirty. This was probably considered pretty controversial it its time (in fact it's never made totally clear than Stanwyck is a lesbian, but there are hints all over the place), but it's a camp classic now. It's sleazy but lots on fun with tons of campy dialogue to spare. Apparantely this film had a very whimsical casting director--Harvey (an English actor) and Capucine (a French actress) play Texans and Anne Baxter (in a black fright wig) is a Mexican!

The acting varies--Harvey is just OK with a credible Texas accent; Fonda is really great projecting raw sexuality; Capucine is beautiful but wooden; Stanwyck chews the scenery in a very amusing way and Baxter turns in a very moving and great performance.

Lots of fun with the right crowd--I saw it years ago with a gay and lesbian crowd and we laughed all the way through it!

Savaged by the critics, (except perhaps for the over-praised Saul Bass designed credit sequence of a prowling cat), Edward Dmytryk's film version of Nelson Algren's 'scandalous' novel "Walk on the Wild Side" isn't nearly as bad as its reputation suggests. It's certainly unevenly acted, (a miscast Laurence Harvey is terrible and perhaps surprisingly Jane Fonda isn't much better but Barbara Stanwyck is terrific as a very butch lesbian madame and Capucine is surprisingly good as the object of both Harvey and Stanwyck's affection), and naturally it fudges the central issues of prostitution and lesbianism but it's very well shot by Joe MacDonald, beautifully designed and the screenplay by John Fante and Edmund Morris does manage to keep some of Algren's original poetry. Dmytryk was always a better director than critics gave him credit for and if he was often constrained by the studio system he was no slouch either. If this isn't the best film he ever made it still has much to recommend it.

This movie has a number of memorable scenes and performances. The problem is the major miscasting of Laurence Harvey in the lead. If Rod Taylor or Chuck Connors had been cast as Dove, the film could have worked. As is, Harvey views the tawdry world into which he's plunged with a curious affected distance rather than shock or wonder or contempt. The result for the viewer is one gigantic disconnect. Still Cappucine, Stanwyck, and Fonda make this one worth watching at least once.

Jane Fonda was the nominal star of this black and white film expertly directer by Edward Dymytrk but the real star was Barbara Stanwyck lured to the big screen in a small but pivotal role as the Madam of a New Orleans bordello. Stanwyck was brilliant in this film and wonder why the Great Star was not nominated for a supporting Oscar.

Legend has it that Stanwyck as well as Jane Fonda feuded with leading man Laurence Harvey. Havey had his detractors such as Kim Novak who detested Harvey co starring together in MGM's Of Human Bondage, but also had has fans among them Elizabeth Taylor who loved Harvey and co starred together in MGM's Butterfield 8.

Fonda, Harvey, Anne Baxter, Capucine, Todd Armstrong, etc do fine work in this film but it is Stanwyck who stands out.

Have you ever seen a film and wondered if maybe the producers picked names at random for the various parts? This is how I felt when I watched "Walk on the Wild Side"...a strangely cast film if I've ever seen one! First, British actor Laurence Harvey plays an American. Second, American actress Anne Baxter plays a Mexican-American! And, the French actress Capucine plays Harvey's love interest who lives in New Orleans. All very odd choices to say the least...and I don't know why they didn't just hire folks more suited for the parts. Clearly this is a case where the casting choices were inexplicable!

As for the story, Harvey plays Dove Linkhorn (wow...what an odd name)...a man who has been hitchhiking and riding the rails to get to New Orleans to find his lady love, Hallie (Capucine). He doesn't find her until well in to the movie...after which he's made the acquaintance of a couple other ladies. Kitty (Jane Fonda) overacts horribly here...and she later became a marvelous actress but certainly NOT in "Walk on the Wild Side"! Teresina (Baxter) is better....though her strange Mexican accent is out of place. Regardless, the two fall for him...but he's loyal to Hallie. Sadly, however, Hallie turns out to be a high-priced call girl and she evidently stopped waiting for Dove. What's next? See the film if you'd like.

The most interesting thing about the film is Barbara Stanwyck, who plays a woman who appears to be a lesbian (though she is married to a man). This was something pretty shocking back in 1962 and was apparently the first time an more overtly lesbian character was in an American mainstream movie--but it still isn't 100% explicitly stated. The rest of the movie has its moments and the plot is interesting. But the lack of subtlety, miscast characters and the general depressing nature of the plot make it a hard sell and take away from the story. In fact, I'd love to see a re-make of this picture, as the general plot is pretty unusual...but the execution, well, it's less than stellar.

Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Fonda, Capucine, and Laurence Harvey take a "Walk on the Wild Side" in this 1962 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, based on the book by Nelson Algren. One reason the film is memorable is the title song by Elmer Bernstein.

The 1930s story begins with Dove Linkhorn (Harvey) meeting Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) as they're both traveling out of Texas by the cheapest route possible. Though Kitty has the hots for Dove, he's headed for The Big Easy to find his girl Hallie (Capucine). It turns out that Hallie is working at the Doll House, a brothel run by lesbian Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck) who is in love with Hallie and giving her the good life. Before Dove finds her, he winds up working at a café run by Teresina Vidaverri (Anne Baxter), who falls for him. When he finally connects with Hallie, he finds out that Kitty is now working at the Doll House too.

For some reason this film seemed like it was cut to ribbons. It's very disjointed. Fonda appears in the beginning and then drops out for what seems like an hour. Though she's certainly a beautiful woman today, seeing this film is a reminder of just how dazzling she was. Her acting is effective if a bit over the top, though she doesn't get a lot of help from the script. Stanwyck is excellent as a tough woman made vulnerable because of her love for Hallie.

In fact, Stanwyck and Fonda are the only two who are well cast in this movie. The rest of them seem as if someone pulled their names out of a hat. I mean, Laurence Harvey as a Texan? And because this film is produced by Charles Feldman, that means Capucine gets to come along and give one of her cold as ice, monotone-voiced, frozen-faced performances. We have no idea why Dove fell for her and why Jo loves her. But then, we didn't understand Franz Liszt falling for her in Song without End either. And, though the film is set in the '30s, again thanks to Mr. Feldman, Capucine wears the latest Pierre Cardin fashions.

I'm sure that in real life, Capucine (known as "Cap" to her friends) was a lovely and warm woman - Dirk Bogarde was crazy about her as a person, William Holden I believe was in love with her, and she was a good friend of Audrey Hepburn's - but she just never projected much on screen. Her casting here is woeful.

Anne Baxter does the best she can with her role.

The film is a real old-fashioned melodrama. In the end it doesn't really draw you in and it seems like a lot is missing. It's a miss, but a high budget one.

If you told me there was a movie in which Laurence Harvey was good and kind and Jane Fonda was the bad girl, I wouldn't believe you. But, from the first scene of Walk on the Wild Side, it's clear Larry is a nice guy and Jane is up to no good. Who would have thought?

Laurence Harvey is hitchhiking from Texas to New Orleans, and along the way he meets fellow drifter Jane Fonda. He's generous and idealistic; she lies, cheats, and steals. While Jane's goal is to have a good time and get ahead, Larry wants to find his beautiful and pure former lover Capucine and live happily ever after. What will happen when they reach Louisiana?

That's just the beginning of the plot, so if you're interested in finding out more, you'll just have to rent this dark drama. Only a few years after the demise of the Hays Code, there's an enormous amount of taboo subjects included in John Fante and Edmund Morris's script, including homosexuality, gritty violence, prostitution, and interracial romance. Although this is hardly a feel-good movie, it's very exciting to watch, especially when you keep in mind the time of its release. Not only is the script stimulating, but the acting is very good, especially since so much of the cast is in against-type roles. Jane Fonda is well-known now for playing in very likable roles, but in her second movie, she's a giant pill. Even though she's incredibly beautiful and has a stunning figure, I can't imagine anyone watching this film and rooting for her. Laurence Harvey is surprisingly convincing in his innocent character, and Capucine channels Joan Crawford in her conflicted performance. Barbara Stanwyck takes on a bold role, and in every scene she sizzles with simmering tension. And finally, rounding out the cast is Anne Baxter. She plays a Mexican proprietress of a gas station and diner, and for the first twenty minutes she was on screen, I didn't even recognize her.

Saul Bass chose a fantastic opening to the film: the camera follows a black cat stalking from the clean sidewalk through garbage-ridden streets. The cat walks in time to Elmer Bernstein's haunting and fitting theme, and it perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the film. I love Elmer Bernstein, and thankfully his title song—with lyrics by Mack David—was nominated for an Oscar that year. Trust me, his music will stick with you long after the film's end.

(That's not to say that you wouldn't get it in the next 20 or 40 years, but now, that's just what I'm sayin', sayin'…).

I came to this film because of Brook Benton's vocal version of the title song. His deep, almost militaristic voice (unusual for Benton) and the marching drums--suggesting damnation, or at least eternity--evoke powerful sensory responses—it seems like an R&B song with a gospel preacher teaching a hoodlum, and the ending is nigh-on (perfectly and compellingly—but about what?) operatic. With memorable Mack David lyrics like "One day of praying, and six nights of fun; the odds against going to heaven—six to one," the song encapsulates the moral compromises the film shows but doesn't study.

The ludicrously named Texan "Dove Linkhorn" (Brit Laurence Harvey) sets off to find his former brief flame, Hallie (the French Capucine), and at first encounters "Kitty Twist" (Jane Fonda), then supposedly Mexican Teresina Vidaverri (Anne Baxter), and then his beloved Hallie, and then, along with brothel-owner Jo (Barbara Stanwyck), all of them more or less separately or all together. He travels from Texas to Louisiana, and it sure does seem that short a stretch, no matter how big you think Texas is.

Paint by numbers rarely works.

(The idea of a bunch of people from different backgrounds completely suits polyglot New Orleans, but almost nothing is made of the music and the few glimpses we get of black musicians or actors make this 1962 film retrograde for its time. Sexually speaking, for the film IS about sex, I suppose one can only say this—back then, a sexual transgression made you infamous, and now it makes you famous. In broad terms, which is the more morally appropriate?)

The pace is slow; there are many good lines, but they're derivative of the hard-boiled genre, and add up to nothing in a film about serious issues like prostitution and abuse and subjugation; it ends up being every actor for him or herself, and the leads let us down (everyone else breathes life into the movie!). The metronomic and unconvincing Harvey shows down in a cool-off with the somnolent and at-best unpersuaded Capucine (the script? the role? her place in a movie taking on serious issues as superficially as this?).

Renowned director Edward Dmytryk bears part of the blame for this movie, too. He had such a collection of actors around him that, perhaps, he chose to go almost exclusively with medium shots, or occasionally head shots. That's understandable, but the longish (for its era and for all the script has to say) film becomes oppressive as a result; the movie is supposed to be in New Orleans, but it could have been shot at your house. Yes, a brothel is a sealed place, but its sealedness only takes meaning from the sense of a world outside.

The black and white filming is nice, for those who like it (like me), but in the end feels a bit false, already, for its time. It really is neat to see a film that is essentially dominated by a strong female cast—Fonda, Stanwyck, Baxter, Joanna Moore (Miss Precious—about to marry Ryan O' Neal), and I guess Capucine. But it also shows how dim-witted screen writing, unimaginative directing, and desiccated morals can take some strong performances and turn them into a weak result.

The movie does gather some momentum towards the end, as if everyone realizes what they're there for—to end this abortive effort. It has an ending at once ironic and unironic, much as the song, in Benton's singing, anyway, does—it's frankly impossible to tell what is more successful, more alluring, more saving, than walking or not on the wild side. Once you hear Brook Benton's "Walk on the Wild Side," it probably won't ever fade away from your memory banks forever. The movie. . . yeah probably.

An itinerant Texas dirt farmer searches for his lost love discovered now working in a New Orleans brothel where she is the "favorite" of the madam of the house. Much has been written about the superb opening and closing credits and the jazzy music and stunning b/w photography but this film also expertly captures a time (Depression)and place and mood and has a totally engaging story (pared down from Nelson Algren's large novel)and a wonderful cast with Laurence Harvey, Barbara Stanwyck, Anne Baxter, a young Jane Fonda and the goddess-like Capucine as the center of attention. Various biogs of these stars say it was not a happy production but the finished product is highly polished.

Every few years along comes an actor (or actress) whose unexplained vogue results in such ludicrous miscasting that he (or she) soon finds the welcome mat snatched away. In the early 1960s it was Lawrence Harvey, co-starring in such big productions as Butterfield 8, The Manchurian Candidate, and Edward Dmytryk's Walk on the Wild Side (a decade later it would be Michael Sarrazin). Russian-born and classically trained Harvey doesn't quite cut it as a Texas dirt-farmer, but then, in this engagingly lurid festival of miscasting, he doesn't stick out, either.

After his father's slow death early in the Depression, Harvey hits the road to find his lost love, the enigmatic Capucine. Instead, he meets up with Jane Fonda, playing po' white trash right out of a summer-playhouse revival of Tobacco Road. They ride the rails together, stopping in an ethnic beanery on the outskirts of New Orleans, run by Tex-Mex widow Anne Baxter. Harvey and Fonda part ways, but Harvey, who strikes some incestuously maternal chord in Baxter's capacious bosom, finds a crib and a job as a hired hand. End of act one.

Act two opens in a French Quarter sporting house, proprietress Barbara Stanwyck (`Jo'). The star boarder in the pleasure dome she ruthlessly runs is, you guessed it, none other than Capucine. Among her privileges is being allowed to sculpt in the courtyard suite where she's paid to entertain gentlemen callers (though her bust of Stanwyck looks like one of the late Roman emperors). Capucine stays blithely unaware that Harvey runs want-ads in the Times-Picayune to find her, but the protective Stanwyck sets out to insure that the old flames never unite in romantic conflagration. Then Harvey gets a telephoned tip-off from the vindictive Fonda, who, rescued from jail on a charge of vagrancy by the always compassionate madam, has joined her stable....

A Walk on the Wild Side is a cat's-cradle of unrequited lusts (and in what is possibly the movie's best sequence – Saul Bass' titles – a black alley-cat prowls the Big Easy's nightscape ‘till the fur flies). Harvey and Stanwyck (not to mention paying customers) want Capucine; Fonda and Baxter want Harvey; Stanwyck's legless husband (wheeling around on a hand-driven pushcart) wants her, but no dice there – she makes it clear that physical love, at least with males of the species, repulses her.

Drawn from a novel by Nelson Algren, a mid-20th-century author of some repute, Walk on the Wild Side's a smoky étouffée that may have been hot stuff around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it's literal and overwrought, and not in the good old `coded' way. Lapses abound – Fonda expresses gleeful shock that Harvey's true love and her co-worker are one in the same woman; did she forget her phone call? Still, the film has the courage of its low convictions. The mannikin-like Capucine hoards the script's best lines when she's standing up to Stanwyck (who shows her formidable acting chops, though not quite so vividly as another brothel-keeper named Jo – Van Fleet in East of Eden). A Walk on the Wild Side shares a vision of South-Coast corruption with Flamingo Road, an earlier, campier melodrama. Were it a little campier itself, Walk on the Wild Side would be more fun. Alas, with its soured, downbeat ending, it takes itself all too seriously.

What were they thinking??? This is one of the most poorly cast movies in the history of Hollywood. Laurence Harvey is supposed to be a Texan, but he doesn't look like a cowboy/farmer and can't do the accent. Jane Fonda is supposed to be a 16 year old Texan, but she doesn't look 16 and can't do the accent either. Anne Baxter is supposed to be a Mexican -- yeah, right. Capucine is supposed to be...well, I'm not exactly sure what her character is. And we're supposed to believe that Barbara Stanwyck, with her New York accent, runs a New Orleans Cat House? Puh-leeez!!! There's not one genuine southern accent in the entire film. The story is totally uninvolving, the characters are unbelievable and, except for Baxter, unsympathetic. The direction is all over the place, and the art direction fails to evoke the 1930s, much less New Orleans. Don't waste your time or money on this misbegotten abortion.

I haven't seen this movie in 40 years. Being 8 years old the first time I watched this curious flick I did not know the meaning of camp. Watching this movie last night I realized this is classic camp. Stanwyck plays what is considered to be the first out lesbian in a major film and Fonda (never more beautiful) plays an underage bad girl headed for the "doll house." This was Fonda's second movie and she was actually 25. Most reviews mention her overacting. I thought she actually gave the movie energy. Capucine underacts as much as Fonda overacts and she is quite boring and wooden. The best one could say about her performance is she has great cheekbones. Anne Baxter (in a part that should have been played by Rita Moreno) isn't as bad as other reviewers have stated, although her wig is a little distracting. Laurence Harvey has a lot of sex appeal and presence while doing very little. Look also for Joanna Moore(Tatum's mom) as one of the "dolls". The French Quater sets are right out of Streetcar. As a matter of fact, the whole movie plays like Tennesee Williams. I believe the song was nominated for an Oscar, rightfully so, since the score was beautiful. Hollywood should do a remake. Maybe Fonda in the Stanwyck role?

The famous -and may be best- Saul Bass tittle credits, appropriate Elmer Berstein musical score, a excellent black and white photography and a good casting are not reasons enough to give to this melodramatic history more than a six over ten. Jane Fonda second movie picture would have been a something solid portrait from Depression Era, but it is not. They said that Blake Edwards directed some sequences but I do not know such ones he did. Do not miss the credits!