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.
Russ Conway appeared in the film as Johnson, a reporter.
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."
[Quirk, Lawrence J.. The Films of Joan Crawford. The Citadel Press, 1968.]
Cultural impact
The film was adapted into a 1980s American television series,
Flamingo Road.
See also
