The Betsy (1978) on Netflix
Loren Hardeman Sr. hires driver Angelo Perino to build a fuel-saving car named for his great-granddaughter Betsy. Angelo romances two women, Betsy and Lady Bobby Ayres, his grandson's mistress.
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- Netflix1.8/5
- IMDb5.3/101,957 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Hardeman family's Detroit automotive conglomerate has fallen on hard times, and while Loren Hardeman Sr. remains its head, his grandson Loren Hardeman III runs it as president. The younger man has diversified the business and sees little value left in the automobile division. The older man wants the company to build a new, fuel-saving model he calls Betsy, after his great-granddaughter, and he brings in Angelo Perino, a racing driver, to design the car and see it through, against the grandson's wishes. Angelo is drawn into the two men's disagreement over the company's future. He also becomes involved with Betsy, who is about to turn twenty-one and receive her inheritance, and with Lady Bobby Ayres, Hardeman III's mistress.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Betsy (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Harold Robbins formed his own company, Harold Robbins Productions, to make the film, and wanted Al Pacino and John Wayne to play the leads.
- Screenwriter William Bast recalled that the studio found the director's cut rather tame, so an additional sex scene between Lesley-Anne Down and Tommy Lee Jones was filmed in a rented hotel room, seemingly to get an R rating.
- Assembly-plant footage was shot at the American Motors factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, showing 1978 Gremlin, Pacer and Concord models being built; on screen the line stood in for the fictitious Bethlehem Motors.
- Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw were both offered the leads in The Betsy, but the pair turned the film down.
- Because racquetball courts were booming in the United States in 1978, director Daniel Petrie shot a scene in a company racquetball court for the first meeting between the characters played by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall.
- The producers learned from American Motors how new cars are developed, and the film's title car, the Betsy, was a slightly modified 1974 Lancia Beta coupe.
