Nightmare Alley (1947) on Netflix
Passed19471h 50mDramaFilm-Noir
Stanton Carlisle works the crowd at a traveling carnival, assisting the mentalist Zeena Krumbein and her alcoholic husband Pete. He covets their mind-reading code and the young carny Molly.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.7/1014,813 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Featurette
Plot summary
Stanton Carlisle takes work at a traveling carnival, where he runs the ballyhoo and assists Mademoiselle Zeena, a mentalist who once topped vaudeville bills. Zeena and her husband Pete built a stage act on an ingenious code that let her seem to read minds, until his drinking and her attentions to other men left them playing small tents. Stan, who has no intention of staying with the carnies, courts Zeena for the secret, but she keeps the code as a nest egg and will not sell it to anyone. He also flirts with Molly, a young performer watched over by the strongman Bruno. The show's most notorious attraction is the geek, a drunk who bites the heads off chickens.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nightmare Alley (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tyrone Power, wanting to escape the romantic and swashbuckler roles that had made him famous, asked 20th Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights to the novel so he could star in it.
- To make the film believable, the producers built a full working carnival on ten acres of the 20th Century Fox back lot and hired over 100 sideshow attractions and carnival people for authenticity.
- Screenwriter Jules Furthman added the film's slightly upbeat but ambiguous ending at Zanuck's direction, softening the harsh ending of Gresham's novel for commercial purposes.
- Author William Lindsay Gresham died by suicide with sleeping pills on September 14, 1962, in the same Hotel Carter room where he wrote the first draft of Nightmare Alley.
- Before Tyrone Power took the lead, Fox's plans in November 1946 had Mark Stevens and Anne Baxter set to star in the film.
