A Face in the Crowd (1957) on Netflix
In Pickett, Arkansas, radio host Marcia Jeffries interviews prisoners for her program and finds Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a guitar-playing drifter. His songs and jokes win listeners.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb8.1/1019,556 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Marcia Jeffries hosts A Face in the Crowd, a radio program in northeast Arkansas, and fills it with the common people she meets. In the jail at Pickett she records a segment with Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a boisterous drifter who plays guitar, tells jokes and talks against the establishment, and listeners take to him at once. Marcia builds a show around him, with the writer Mel Miller on the staff, and an offer brings Lonesome to Memphis for a television program of his own and a large salary, Marcia beside him. His fame grows, sponsors come to him and politicians pay attention. Endorsement deals follow, and his name is put on ships and buildings.
Cast
- Charles Irvingas Mr. Luffler
Show all 20 cast
- Big Jeff Bessas Sheriff Big Jeff Bess
- Henry Sharpas Abe Steiner
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Budd Schulberg said a drunken conversation with Will Rogers Jr., son of the folksy humorist Will Rogers, inspired the Lonesome Rhodes story; Rogers Jr. complained his father was "so full of shit" for pretending to be one of the people while privately keeping to high society.
- On set, Andy Griffith struggled to summon the intensity of his stage performances, so he asked for discarded chairs he could destroy in order to work himself into a rage before filming.
- The Poplar Bluff shoot used 5,000 extras paid $1 an hour, plus 380 dogs and baton twirlers and musicians from six high school bands from Arkansas and Missouri.
- Filmmaker Spike Lee credited the film with inspiring his 2000 satire Bamboozled, which he mentioned in a 2015 interview.
- Lee Remick spent two weeks in Piggott with a teenage baton twirler to improve her twirling skill and local accent, and a double performed several of the baton-twirling scenes.
