The Lady in Red (1979) on Netflix
In Depression-era Chicago, Polly Franklin takes a sweatshop job and stands with a coworker against its owner. Fired from the shop, she becomes a taxi dancer who is arrested for prostitution.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.3/101,726 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Featurette
Plot summary
Polly Franklin, a farm girl in the Depression-era Midwest, witnesses a bank robbery on an errand into town and is taken hostage. A journalist, Jake Lingle, then manipulates her and drops her, and when she gets home late her widowed father, a preacher, beats her. She hitchhikes to Chicago, takes a sweatshop job under Patek, and befriends Rose Shimkus, a Jewish communist who becomes her roommate. When federal agents arrest Rose, Polly leads the workers in a revolt against Patek and the whole crew is fired. A job as a taxi dancer leads to her arrest for prostitution, and in prison she is reunited with Rose and works the laundry under the guard called Tiny Alice. Facing an extended sentence, she accepts an offer to work at a brothel run by the madam Anna Sage.
Cast
- Rod Gistas Pinetop
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Lady in Red (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The lead, a character aged from 17 to 21, was first offered to Angie Dickinson, who had starred in Big Bad Mama for Corman; she nearly took it before realizing that with her over 40 it would have taken a total rewrite to make sense.
- Rather than write Roger Corman the treatment he asked for, John Sayles wrote a full draft, using it to show him ideas such as taking the heroine to jail and to a sweatshop and win him over to the 1930s story he wanted to tell.
- The film's soundtrack was the first film score composed by James Horner, who went on to a multiple Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy-winning career.
- Teague was given Sayles' script and told to go with it, with no chance to mold or change it; he had twenty days to shoot, three days to edit and a budget of less than a million dollars.
SPOILER
John Sayles had to cut his script down during filming because there was not enough time or money to shoot it as written; four scenes between the deaths of the heroine's two friends were never filmed, leaving only five minutes between them.
