The first, and certainly the best, of three major attempts at dramatizing the rise and fall of corrupt Populist Louisiana Governor Huey Long. (A 2006 remake and 1953's A LION IS IN THE STREETS the other two.*) Impressive & uneven in equal measure, the Robert Penn Warren novel a streaming mini-series waiting to happen. Writer Robert Rossen had only recently added on director’s shingle and the lack of experience shows. (Actually, it would in all his films; it’s the devil’s work to get his stuff to cut together. Here, Robert Parrish came on to ‘fix’ an initial edit.) The first third, charting the rise of ‘good’ Willie Stark (that’s the Huey Long figure), is the least successful. Rossen has a reporter tag along thru early political strivings & stumbles in the poor rural South, finishing with a too early run for Governor, set up to fail by entrenched politicos. But Broderick Crawford’s twice-burned Stark comes alive after that. Winning the race at last, the hairpiece goes, the ties grow even shorter, the ennobling wife is left at home and he leverages his adopted son into big time college football. But he’s also making deals for ‘the people,’ with plenty of kickbacks, even pulling that wised-up reporter into his circle, along with the reporter’s respectable girlfriend, her physician brother, and their old-school Judge of an Uncle. And Stark keeps everything in order thanks to gatekeeper extraordinaire Mercedes McCambridge, stealing all her scenes on shockingly modern terms. She’s the only thing in here that doesn’t feel pinned into place to make the next point. Still, once it gets going, compelling stuff.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Promising on paper, the 2006 remake is a near complete bust. While A LION IS IN THE STREET (dir. Raoul Walsh/James Cagney) is downright odd. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/all-kings-men-2006.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/lion-is-in-streets-1953.html
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