Ode to Billy Joe (1976) on Netflix
In the Mississippi Delta, eighteen-year-old Billy Joe McAllister loves Bobbie Lee Hartley, whose father allows her no gentlemen callers before she turns sixteen. He keeps coming around anyway.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.6/102,465 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mississippi, 1953. Billy Joe McAllister is eighteen and in love with Bobbie Lee Hartley, who is fifteen. The Hartley household holds that she is too young to date, and her father Glenn will not let a young man come calling on her before her sixteenth birthday. In the Delta country, television and indoor plumbing have not yet arrived, and Bobbie Lee's dog-eared copies of Torrid Romance are no help to her as she tries to keep the virtue her family expects of her, while Billy Joe's persistence makes the task harder. The story comes from a 1967 hit song of the same name.
Cast
- Becky Bowenas Becky Thompson
- Simpson Hemphillas Brother Taylor
- Rebecca Jerniganas Mrs. Thompson
- Ed Shelnutas Coleman Stroud
- Eddie Talras Tom Hargitay
- William Hallbergas Dan McAllister
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ode to Billy Joe (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Songwriter Bobbie Gentry told screenwriter Herman Raucher she never actually knew why the real person who inspired Billie Joe McAllister took his own life, leaving Raucher free to invent whatever motive he wanted for the film.- Mississippi Governor Cliff Finch declared June 3, 1976 "Billy Joe Day", honoring both the film's release in 550 theaters across the Southern United States and Bobbie Gentry becoming the first woman inducted into the Mississippi Hall of Fame; a bronze tablet was placed on the Tallahatchie Bridge near Rising Sun.
- Bobbie Gentry re-recorded her hit song "Ode to Billie Joe" for the film with the spelling of the name changed to "Billy", saying the original spelling had been a typographical error, something her original handwritten lyrics corroborate.
- Burbank Mayor Leland Ayers dedicated a 16-foot-long replica of the film's Tallahatchie Bridge, which was constructed 25 feet above Olive Avenue.
- The actual bridge used in filming, which crossed the Yazoo River near Sidon, Mississippi, was demolished in 1987 and replaced with a modern concrete span; plaques on both ends still commemorate the film.
