A Lion Is in the Streets (1953) on Netflix
Approved19531h 28mDramaRomanceThriller
Hank Martin, a roving peddler, marries schoolteacher Verity Wade. He accuses cotton buyer Robert L. Castleberry IV of shortchanging poor farmers and sets out to prove it.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.1/101,145 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Featurette
Plot summary
Hank Martin peddles goods along the bayou roads and has friends through the countryside. He courts Verity Wade, a schoolteacher, and the two marry. That same day he takes a run-down house from Jules Bolduc, a lawyer he knows, and his friends gather to repair it while he sits reading a law book, telling Verity that handling people is a matter of doing it the right way. Jules asks the couple to dinner, where Hank clashes with Robert L. Castleberry IV, who owns a cotton-buying company, over what he pays the small farmers. Verity rides with Hank into the bayou, where a young woman called Flamingo throws her arms around him. Hank decides to show that Castleberry is cheating the farmers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Lion Is in the Streets (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer William Cagney launched a nationwide contest in 1947 to find an "exotic" woman to play Flamingo in the film, offering a $5,000 prize to whoever most resembled an artist's conception of the character; Anne Francis was cast in the role instead.
- Columnist Hedda Hopper speculated in 1948 that the film had been delayed by a threat from Huey Long's son to sue any studio making a film about his father's life, and the release of All the King's Men in 1949 and Earl Long's election as Louisiana governor likely delayed it further.
- James Cagney bought the rights to Adria Locke Langley's novel in early 1945 for $250,000, a sum at the time second only to the amount paid for A. J. Cronin's The Green Years in 1944.
- The Cagney brothers' first choice for the lead role of Hank Martin was Paul Douglas, but James Cagney ended up playing the part himself.
- The Cagney brothers reportedly disagreed about the choice of the film's original screenwriter and at one point tried to recruit Roark Bradford; in 1951 Charles Bennett was hired to work on the script.
