Cat Ballou (1965) on Netflix
NR19651h 37mComedyRomanceWestern
Cat Ballou returns home to her father's ranch, where a development company wants his water rights and a hired killer, Tim Strawn, threatens him. She sends for the gunfighter Kid Shelleen.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.7/1017,643 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Catherine Ballou finishes at her academy and rides the train home to Wolf City, Wyoming, where she helps a handcuffed prisoner named Clay Boone hide from the sheriff. At the ranch her father Frankie has sold the horses, left the house unpainted and hired a Sioux bronc-buster, Jackson Two-Bears, who tells her that a development company wants Frankie's water rights and that he refuses to sell. A killer named Tim Strawn, who wears a silver nose, comes calling at the ranch. At the Fall Harvest dance, Cat asks Jackson who could stand up to Strawn; he names Kid Shelleen, a gunfighter out of her dime novel, and she writes him a letter.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cat Ballou (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Nat King Cole was ill with lung cancer while filming Cat Ballou and, a chain smoker, died four months before the film was released.
- Ann-Margret was the first choice for the title role of Cat Ballou, but her manager turned it down without telling her; she later wrote in her autobiography that she would have taken it. Kirk Douglas and Dick Van Dyke also turned down the role of Shelleen.
- Accepting his Academy Award for Cat Ballou, Lee Marvin said half of it belonged to "a horse somewhere out in San Fernando Valley", the horse Kid Shelleen rode that appeared to be as drunk as Shelleen was.
- Jay C. Flippen suffered a circulatory failure during the filming of Cat Ballou and as a result later had his leg amputated because of gangrene.
- Cat Ballou is the favorite film of comedy directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly, and the Balladeers in their film There's Something About Mary were inspired by similar characters in Cat Ballou.
- Imagery from the hanging scene of Jane Fonda in Cat Ballou was spoofed advocating her execution for treason after her 1972 visit to Hanoi, and a brief test shot from that scene was used in Alex DeLarge's sadistic reverie in A Clockwork Orange.
