A Face in the Crowd
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| A Face in the Crowd | |
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 A Face in the Crowd movie poster |
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| Directed by | Elia Kazan |
| Produced by | Elia Kazan |
| Written by | Budd Schulberg also story The Arkansas Traveler |
| Starring | Andy Griffith Patricia Neal Anthony Franciosa Walter Matthau Lee Remick |
| Music by | Tom Glazer |
| Cinematography | Gayne Rescher Harry Stradling Sr. |
| Release date(s) | May 28, 1957 |
| Running time | 125 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
A Face in the Crowd (1957) is an epic motion picture starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, and Walter Matthau, directed by Elia Kazan. The screenplay was written by Budd Schulberg, based on his own short story "The Arkansas Traveler". The story centers on a "country" comedian, a common thug named Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes (Griffith, in a role starkly different from the amiable "Sheriff Andy Taylor" persona), who is discovered by the producer (Neal) of a small-market radio program in Piggott, Arkansas.
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[edit] Plot
The setting for the film is late 1950s America, a time during which television was rapidly replacing radio as the most popular entertainment medium. Although Rhodes is coarse and abusive, he possesses a colloquial, on-air charm that quickly endears him to the hearts and minds of rural listeners after Marcia Jeffries (Neal), a small-town radio personality, discovers him in the Piggott, Arkansas jail and lands him a radio show there. A talent scout invites him to appear on television in Memphis, Tennessee where Rhodes is introduced to Mel Miller (Matthau), a bookish Vanderbilt graduate who writes his scripts. However, Rhodes makes a name for himself by insulting his sponsor — to the delight of his adoring audience. Rhodes's sponsor, the fictional "Luffler Mattress" company, is offended but forced to relent in canceling the show when they discover Rhodes's antics are actually increasing their sales (and that the wife of owner Luffler is a Lonesome Rhodes fan).
An opportunistic "office boy" (portrayed by Anthony Franciosa) lands Rhodes a contract in New York City, where he becomes the national TV spokesman for Vitajex, an innocuous dietary supplement. A frenetic montage of Rhode's hyperbolic ads for Vitajex is one of the film's most memorable sequences, revealing the gullibility of the American public to a persuasive con-artist. In the tradition of classical tragedy, Rhodes is undone by his thirst for power and by Jeffries who, despite building his stardom, becomes so fed up that she allows him to expose his contempt for his fans on the air.
As a "Cracker Barrel" broadcast ends, Rhodes is shown, with sound off and an announcer doing a voiceover, smiling and waving to the camera as he speaks contemptuously of his audience. In the control room, Jeffries and the technical staff hear him continue to mock his viewers as "idiots," "morons," "guinea pigs." Fed up with Rhodes' betrayal, aware she helped create the monster, Jeffries pushes slide switches that throw Rhodes's comments on the air. In minutes, furious, betrayed fans who heard the remarks are calling the network. In a symbolic moment, an unaware Rhodes's popularity is shown plummeting as he rides an elevator down following the show. The film ends with a meltdown at Rhodes's penthouse apartment, as Jeffries admits she betrayed him and Matthau predicts his future, that he'll return to the air but it won't be quite as fancy. An uncredited Rip Torn is shown at one point as "Barry Mills," a young Lonesome Rhodes waiting in the wings.
Interviewed for the DVD release in 2006 and the documentary accompanying the film, Griffith, Neal and Franciosa all express pride in their work in the film, and Schulberg explains the film's origins.
[edit] Real-life inspirations
It is possible that Schulberg built the musical side of the Rhodes character on that of Tennessee Ernie Ford who, in the wake of his hit record "Sixteen Tons," had a popular weekly half-hour program on NBC called "The Ford Show." The down-home facade of Rhodes has some roots in Ford's "Pea Picker" persona though Ford himself was nothing like the manipulative, megalomanaical Rhodes. Certain aspects of the Rhodes personality presented in the film, were clearly inspired by 1950s CBS radio-TV star Arthur Godfrey. The scene where Rhodes, on TV in Memphis, spoofs his sponsor precisely echoes Godfrey's reputation for kidding his sponsors. Godfrey claimed he would not advertise products he did not believe in, and while he never mocked the product, he often ridiculed the stodgy ad copy the sponsor gave him as well as company executives. As their sales increased, some sponsors began giving Godfrey badly done ad copy knowing he would ridicule it or even rip it up before launching into a heartfelt, sincere and effective extemporized sales pitch. Godfrey's popularity, of course, underwent a slower drop from fame following his 1953 on-air firing of singer Julius LaRosa, which similarly exposed his less lovable side.
The film marked the debut of actress Lee Remick, who plays a teenage baton-twirling champion from Arkansas, one of Rhodes' love interests whom he marries instead of Marcia Jeffries. To underscore the sway of television media in America, Kazan cleverly incorporated several cameos by popular "talking heads," including: Sam Levenson, John Cameron Swayze, Mike Wallace, Earl Wilson, and Walter Winchell.
Some have suggested that the Rhodes character may have been inspired in part by John Henry Faulk, a country comedian who was long blacklisted as a result of the "Red Scare". Schulberg, however, has admitted basing a significant part of the character's facade on that of Will Rogers, adding a distinctively un-Rogers like level of amorality and cruelty.
Schulberg, in Richard Schickel's 2006 biography of director Elia Kazan, explained that he'd met Will Rogers, Jr., who was running for Congress. The younger Rogers told Schulberg how his father socialized with the very establishment types he mocked in his public pronouncements, adding his father was actually a political reactionary in private life.
Since Godfrey was involved in similar controversies based around the press seeing the difference between his amiable on-air personality and his cold, controlling offstage ferocity, many parallels were drawn between the two.
[edit] See also
[edit] External Links
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn • The Sea of Grass • Boomerang! • Gentleman's Agreement • Pinky • Panic in the Streets • A Streetcar Named Desire • Viva Zapata! • Man on a Tightrope • On the Waterfront • East of Eden • Baby Doll • A Face in the Crowd • Wild River • Splendor in the Grass • America, America • The Arrangement • The Visitors • The Last Tycoon
