a new kind of love story starring ...

THIS IS AN ADULT PICTURE! Parents should exercise discretion in permitting the immature to see it.

a side of life you never expected to see on the screen!


This moody and controversial drama takes place in Depression-era New Orleans. Dove (Laurence Harvey) has traveled by bus from Texas to find his wayward lover Hallie (Capucine). He meets young Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) as the two get off in the crescent city. Teresina (Anne Baxter) gives him a job at her small cafe. In his free time, Dove searches for Hallie and finds her at work as a prostitute in the Doll's House. Dove implores Hallie to return to him but she refuses. When the lecherous lesbian madame Jo (Barbara Stanwyck) discovers Dove's intentions towards Hallie, she has him beaten to a bloody pulp by her hired goons. He is found by Kitty, now a happy hooker at the Doll House, and is taken back to the cafe where the compassionate Teresina heals his physical and emotional wounds. The film taken from the novel by Nelson Algren is much tamer than the original text. The title track, sung by Brook Benton, was nominated for an Academy Award. The "black-cat stalking" opening and closing sequences (by designer Saul Bass) is a perfect little "film-within-a-film." This footage, with its superb lighting, framing, panning, and editing, should be appreciated by anyone who wants to know more about the art of cinematography.


The film's plot is quite different from the book. Set during the Great Depression, it starts with Dove and Kitty meeting on the road in Texas as they each make their way to New Orleans. They decide to travel together, hitchhiking and hopping freight trains. Dove is hoping to find his lost love Hallie, and is uninterested when Kitty comes on to him sexually.
After Kitty steals from the New Orleans-area café where she and Dove stop for a meal, Dove leaves Kitty and makes things right with the owner, Teresina, who gives him a job and lets him stay while he searches for Hallie. He finds Hallie at the Doll House, an upscale bordello in the French Quarter, where Jo is the madam.
We learn later that Jo's husband had lost his legs in an accident, after which Jo lost interest in him. It is subtly implied that there is a lesbian relationship between Jo and Hallie, because Hallie enjoys the support of Jo to pursue her interest in sculpting, but it is clear that Hallie works for Jo as a prostitute like the others. Their relationship is not loving, more possessive. Hallie is unhappy with her life at Jo's, but is unwilling to give up the comforts of that life and marry Dove.
Meanwhile, Kitty gladly goes to work in the bordello after Jo bails her out of jail, where she had been languishing under a vagrancy charge. When Jo sees that Kitty and Dove apparently know each other, she questions Kitty about her past with Dove, taking a special interest in the fact that they had traveled together from Texas to Louisiana. She 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, a second bordello employee, and Jo's husband beat Dove viciously, as a horrified Kitty watches from upstairs. Kitty helps Dove get back to the café, where Teresina takes care of him, and goes back to the bordello to get Hallie. Kitty helps Hallie escape from the bordello without being seen and takes her to the café, but comes under suspicion later when Hallie can't be found. The fearful Kitty brings Jo and the three men who assaulted Dove to the café. During the ensuing struggle between Dove and one of the men, Hallie is shot and killed by a stray bullet. At the end of the film, we see from a front-page newspaper story that Jo and several others were sent to prison largely because of Kitty's testimony.

Release Date: February 20, 1962


Distrib: Columbia Pictures