Walk on the Wild Side **** (1962, Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter, Barbara Stanwyck) – Classic Movie Review 7064

Dove Linkhorn: ‘What are you doing here, Kit?’

Kitty Twist: ‘I run the candy concession.’

Despite the film’s original release public relations hysteria as really hot stuff, director Edward Dmytryk’s would-be shocking 1962 movie proves a damp squib in the shock department as a heated but unexciting romantic melodrama starring a miscast Laurence Harvey as Dove Linkhorn, a naïve Texas farm boy in love with Hallie Gerard (Capucine), a sculptress who has become a prostitute in a Thirties New Orleans brothel called the Doll House.

Lithuanian-born, London-trained and based actor Harvey does his chilly upper-class American act, while France’s Capucine [aka Germaine Lefebvre] is coolly beautiful as his lost love, whom he finds working in the bordello.

Despite his miiscasting, Harvey is okay, and Givenchy model Capucine is quite good, but they are totally out-classed by Barbara Stanwyck as lesbian brothel-keeper Jo Courtney and by Jane Fonda as bad girl Kitty Twist. The film’s explosive shock is supposed to be that madame Jo has lecherous feelings for her most beautiful and popular girl (Capucine). Jo says: ‘What do you know about love? What does that young fool know? WHAT DOES ANY MAN KNOW!’ Anne Baxter is hopelessly miscast as Mexican señorita Teresina Vidaverri.

John Fante and Edmund Morris’s screenplay is based on Nelson Algren’s novel. Advertised as ‘a new kind of love story from the best-seller by Nelson Algren’, it was the first Hollywood film to feature lesbianism openly and Stanwyck thus became the first American actress to portray a lesbian character in a Hollywood feature. So might have thought lesbianism was as old as the Hollywood hills, but Hollywood apparently thought it was ‘a new kind of love’. Has anyone heard of Nelson Algren’s novel today? Not many people know the movie either, but then again, a few.

Walk on the Wild Side’s main attraction Barbara Stanwyck is not on the DVD cover.

There is a lot of lather, impure and simple, in this posh soap opera, but the acting and the direction save it. Stanwyck and Fonda apart, the best of all about a rather bad picture are Elmer Bernstein’s jazzy musical score, the Oscar-nominated title song by Elmer Bernstein (music) and Mack David (lyrics) and Saul Bass’s smart opening designs.

However, time is on its side, and now, with its kitschy dialogue and soapy characters, scenes and situations, it has a huge load of entertaining camp value as a rather good rather bad movie.

Also in the cast are Richard Rust, Joanne Moore, Karl Swenson, Don ‘Red’ Barry, Juanita Moore, John Anderson, Ken Lynch, Todd Armstrong, Sherry O’Neil, John Bryant, Kathryn Card, Lillian Bronson, Adrienne Marden, Paul Maxey, Murray Alper, Alexander Lockwood and Ray Walker.

Walk on the Wild Side is directed by Edward Dmytryk, runs 114 minutes is made by Famous Artists Productions, Famartists Productions SA, Columbia Pictures Corporation, is released by Columbia, is written by John Fante and Edmund Morris, is shot in blak and white by Joe MacDonald, is produced by Charles K Feldman, is scored by Elmer Bernstein and is designed by Richard Sylbert.

Capucine was discovered in 1957 by producer Charles K Feldman while she was working as a high-fashion model for Givenchy in Paris and brought to Hollywood, where she made Song Without End (1960). Allegedly, Capucine was also Feldman’s inamorata.

Allegedly also, Harvey was behaving unprofessionally on the film and a furious Stanwyck gave him a dressing down in front of cast and crew.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7064

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Barbara Stanwyck as madame Jo, who has lecherous feelings for her most popular girl (Capucine), in Walk on the Wild Side (1962).