Flamingo Road (1949) is a Warner Bros. feature film starring Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet and David Brian in a story about small town political corruption. The screenplay by Edmund H. North was based upon a play by Robert and Sally Wilder. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Jerry Wald. Flamingo Road has been released to VHS and DVD.
Plot and cast
Lane Bellamy (Crawford) is a hootchie-kootchie dancer stranded in a small town in the Southern United States. She becomes romantically involved with Fielding Carlisle (Scott), a deputy sheriff whose career is controlled by Sheriff Titus Semple (Greenstreet), a corrupt political boss who runs the town. Titus dislikes Lane and mounts a campaign against her. She has difficulty finding work and is arrested on a trumped-up morality charge. Eventually, she finds work as a hostess at a roadhouse run by Lute Mae Sanders (Gladys George). There, she meets Dan Reynolds (Brian), a political opponent of Titus. She charms Dan into marrying her, and the couple moves to the town's best neighborhood, Flamingo Road. A drunken Fielding then calls on the couple and commits suicide, giving Titus another weapon in his bid to ruin Lane and her husband. Lane confronts Semple and accidentally kills him. At the end, Lane is in prison awaiting a ruling and Dan indicates he will stick by her. Cast includes Virginia Huston, Fred Clark, and Gertrude Michael.
Reception
Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "Joan Crawford acquits herself ably in an utterly nonsensical and undefined part...It's no fault of hers she cannot handle the complicated romances and double crosses in which she is involved."[1]
Cultural impact
The film was adapted into a 1980s American television series, Flamingo Road.
See also
References
- ^ Quirk, Lawrence J.. The Films of Joan Crawford. The Citadel Press, 1968.
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