Walk on the Wild Side

Plot synopsis:
During the Great Depression, Dove (Laurence Harvey) and Kitty (Jane Fonda) meet on the road in Texas as each travels separately to New Orleans. They decide to travel together, hitchhiking and hopping freight trains. Dove is hoping to find his lost love Hallie (Capucine), and is not interested when Kitty comes on to him sexually.
After Kitty steals from the New Orleans-area café where she and Dove stop for a meal, he leaves her and makes things right with the owner, Teresina (Anne Baxter). She gives Dove a job at the café and a place to stay while he searches for Hallie. He finds her working at the Doll House, an upscale French Quarter bordello, where Jo (Barbara Stanwyck) is the madam.
Later it is revealed that, after Jo's husband lost his legs in an accident, she lost interest in him. A lesbian relationship is suggested between Jo and Hallie, who is supported by the owner in pursuing her interest in sculpting on the side. But Hallie still works for Jo as a prostitute like the other women. Hallie is unhappy with her life at Jo's, but does not want to give up her comforts to risk married life with Dove.
Meanwhile, Kitty starts working at the bordello after Jo bails her out of jail, where she had been confined for vagrancy. Seeing that Kitty and Dove appear to know each other, Jo questions Kitty about her past, and learns that she traveled with Dove from Texas to Louisiana. Jo threatens Dove with arrest for transporting the underage Kitty across state lines for immoral purposes and for statutory rape, unless he leaves New Orleans without Hallie. As Dove leaves the bordello, the bouncer, another employee, and Jo's husband beat him viciously. Kitty watches from upstairs.
Kitty helps Dove return to the café, where Teresina cares for him. The younger woman goes back to the bordello to get Hallie, helping her reach the café. When Hallie can't be found at the bordello, Kitty is suspected and put under pressure; frightened, she brings Jo and her three henchmen to the café. During the ensuing struggle among the men, Hallie is shot and killed by a stray bullet. The film closes by showing a front-page newspaper story reporting that Kitty's testimony sent Jo and several others from the bordello to prison.

Tags: violence, depressing, melodrama

Review:
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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!"..
In 1930s New Orleans Texan Laurence Harvey (!!) finds one time lover Capucine (!!!) working in a bordello.
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.
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!.
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!).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Her casting here is woeful.Anne Baxter does the best she can with her role.The film is a real old-fashioned melodrama.
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.
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!).
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.
Stanwyck and Capucine were lesbians in real life, so you'd think they'd bring some conviction to their roles here, as if to make the most of the opportunity to present gay characters on the screen when this was rare.
Anne Baxter comes off best in an unusually understated performance as a mexican chilli slinger.Also, the script is really ambiguous about the relationship between Capucine and Stanwyck.
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..
This works in favor of "Walk On The Wild Side," whose stars look so up-to-date you forget you're watching a 45-year-old movie.
Poor Texas boy Laurence Harvey (Dove Linkhorn) goes to New Orleans to find the artist love he abandoned to care for his sick father (Capucine as Hallie).
Chili parlor operator Anne Baxter (Teresina Vidaverri) falls for him and gets him stay with her, but then he finds that Capucine is working at a bordello and things get exciting when he tries to rescue her.Wonderful performances all around, especially Anne Baxter and Laurence Harvey, and yes, the opening credit sequence is great too..
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.
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.
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.
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).
It starts out with Laurence Harvey hitchhiking in the early 1930's from Texas to New Orleans and runs into another hitchhiker played by Jane Fonda.
Harvey winds up staying with an unrecognizable Anne Baxter who runs a diner and Barbara Stanwyck basically plays a pimp who runs a brothel.
Harvey finally meets up with the old squeeze (Capucine), only now she is the plaything of and sometimes prostitute for lesbian bordello madam Stanwyck.
Walk on the Wild Side could have been a decent movie but the script is underwritten, the plot is simplistic, there is no chemistry between Laurence Harvey and Capucine and Capucine herself is incredibly bland.
Alas time has not been so kind to the rest of the movie, Lawrence Harvey's limp american accent grates badly on the ears, Jane Fonda over acts in her what is only her second film, fortunately Barbara Stanwyck is on hand to deliver another of her famous and effective women gone bad performances and then there is Capucine.
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.
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.
Laurence Harvey is hitchhiking from Texas to New Orleans, and along the way he meets fellow drifter Jane Fonda.
The plot is flat as Laurence Harvey, a Texas cowboy, goes on a search to New Orleans for his true love (played by Capucine).
Nelson Algern's famous novel of 1930s white trash is given a slightly prettied up and toned down feel here, and glamorous stars Laurence Harvey, Jane Fonda and Capucine all look a little out of place slumming in Depression-era New Orleans.
It was no longer "the sniper" "the juggler" "cross fire " or "Caine mutiny".It was not yet "Shalako"!The script is not really satisfying but the cast is really appealing: Laurence Harvey and four actresses !My favorite is Barbara Stanwyck,a hateful madam,getting old and still wanting to be attractive,with her legless cripple husband on tow.Jane Fonda ,although too old for her part (she's supposed to be seventeen and she's already twenty-four),gives a foretaste of her future great parts such "they shoot horse don't they?" or "Klute"-and anyway much better than in her ex-husband Vadim's sixties' farces-.Ann Baxter ,in an underwritten part of a good girl in love with the hero who brings her back her rosary ,makes the best of it.And finally Capucine: some people say she was a model and a mediocre actress but she displayed qualities and even a demanding director such Mankiewicz made her work ("honey pot");the problem with Capucine's character is her clothes made by Pierre Cardin!Laurence Harvey ,tormented as ever,plays Dove (sic) a man who tries to find back his love who left him because he was busy taking care of his sick father.A dangerous liaison from NY led her to the Dolls house, some kind of house of the Rising Sun down in New Orleans which's been the ruin of many poor girls .....Excellent pictures of the cat during the cast and credits (she comes back at the end)For this alone,the movie is worth the price of admission.It' s probably the novel which inspired Lou Reed his famous eponymous song..
Barbara Stanwyck showed her age as the tormented head of a Baton Rouge brothel in this 1962 film.Laurence Harvey portrays Dov Linkhorn, a man looking for his love, Capucine, who really gives the film's only good performance.
The biggest joke here is Jane Fonda, who acts churlish in far too many scenes.The dismal black and white photography here tries to emulate 1951's "Streetcar Named Desire." That had a story, this has basically nothing.The only male Dov who was memorable on the screen was Sal Mineo's Oscar nominated Dov Landau in 1960's "Exodus."The film was ahead of its time in trying to depict the apparent lesbian relationship between Stanwyck and Capucine.
Laurence Harvey, never the most convincing actor, does sport a secure Texas accent and evokes undying devotion and neediness touchingly; Anne Baxter stretches herself, not badly; Capucine's wooden but beautiful; Stanwyck does tough-old-broad as only she can, with some fairly frank lesbian overtones she's fearless about; and Jane Fonda is hot as all getout, and what others call overacting I see as leavening.
With Laurence Harvey (nominated by one anonymous viewer as #1 Lithuanian-American actor of all time!) as Dove Linkhorn, a drifter searching for his lost love, a sculptor/prostitute named Hallie, played by the 100% beautiful and 100% talent-free Capucine.
Also stars Jane Fonda, as Kitty Twist, an amoral, mentally-deficient thief and prostitute, the magnificent Barbara Stanwyck as Jo Carter, the glamorous but tough and domineering (of course) lesbian brothelkeeper at the "Dollhouse" where Kitty and Hallie work, and, mysteriously, the usually capable Anne Baxter stars as a Mexican woman who offers her *chicharonnes* to complete strangers.
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE features one of Jane Fonda's first film appearances and one of Barbara Stanwyck's last.
Fonda and Laurence Harvey travel to New Orleans to find Harvey's girlfriend Capucine.
It doesn't work and Laurence Harvey is much too old for his role as Algren's character Dove in the book.
The surprising thing about watching this 1962 film 50-years later is how hard it pushed the censorship of the day.Toned down from Nelson Algren's novel, the whole thing involves a number of people attracted to characters who are not attracted to them.Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) and Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey) team up on the road as they head to New Orleans.
Jane Fonda is arresting in a figure-clinging dress, and although she fancies Dove, he fancies a woman called Hallie (Capucine) in New Orleans.
She also fancies Dove but he still only has thoughts for Hallie.The rest of the film revolves around the Doll House, a brothel in New Orleans run by Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck).Dove and Kitty end up at the Doll House where we find that Jo also fancies Hallie who really doesn't seem to fancy anyone.
He still fancies her, but...On it goes until the whole thing comes to a head back at Teresina's café.Seeing this group of glamorous and vital actors has added piquancy knowing most of them have now gone; some too young: Laurence Harvey at 45, Anne Baxter and Capucine both at 62.To star in the film, Anne Baxter took time out from her life on an Australian cattle station, where she lived for four years.
She was a good story teller; the few anecdotes about movie-making included in "Intermission" show that she could have written a book about Hollywood to rival Niven's "The Moon's a Balloon", which came out around the same time.Along with a brilliant title sequence, the film has a great score and song by Elmer Bernstein.
In fact at the start-as well as end- of the movie we do see this scroungy looking black cat walking through this dark alley in cadences with the title theme song "Walk on the Wild Side" as a foreshadow of things to come in the film.It's when Texas dirt farmer Dove Linkhorn, Laurence Harvey, unexpectedly shows up at the "Doll House" looking for his girlfriend Hallie Gerard, Capucine, that the hasn't seen in three years that the sparks really start flying in the movie.
I have not seen this film in decades and to be honest, I had no idea Stanwyck's character was a lesbian (I was too young to get it), but Jane Fonda's child prostitution disturbed me then.