Hard, Fast and Beautiful **½ (1951, Claire Trevor, Sally Forrest, Carleton G Young, Robert Clarke) – Classic Movie Review 4892

Director Ida Lupino’s intriguing and involving but hesitant 1951 drama is written by Martha Wilkerson. The movie, unusually for this time one with women as both the writer and director, as well as two female stars, is sharply focused on female characters and the needs of women.

Sally Forrest stars as Florence Farley, a tennis player prodigy who is manipulated by her obsessively ambitious mother Millie (Claire Trevor). But Florence is also concerned with a bloke, Gordon McKay (Robert Clarke), whom mother thinks will get in the way, so the two women are on a collision course.

The acting is on the shaky side, apart from a spirited performance by Trevor, and so unfortunately is Lupino’s direction. And there is a compromised wind-up of the plot (from a novel by John R Tunis), apparently demanded by the RKO studio, which weakens the story.

Lupino and Robert Ryan have walk-on appearances as people in the audience.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4892

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