The Wild One (1953) on Netflix
The Black Rebels, led by Johnny Strabler, ride into Wrightsville after causing trouble at a race. Johnny takes an interest in Kathie Bleeker, the sheriff's daughter. A rival club arrives.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Johnny Strabler leads the Black Rebels, a motorcycle club that causes trouble wherever it stops. In Wrightsville, a small California town whose only lawman is Chief Harry Bleeker, the riders race along the main street and settle into the cafe-bar that Frank Bleeker runs, where Kathie Bleeker and the elderly Jimmy work. Because the riders spend money, many residents put up with them, and Bleeker hesitates to act. Johnny asks Kathie to a dance that night; she declines, though his manner interests her. Asked what he rebels against, he answers with a question of his own. He stays on, learns that Kathie is the lawman's daughter, and then a second club, the Beetles, reaches town, its leader Chino nursing a grudge against Johnny.
Cast
- William Vedderas Jimmy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Wild One (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In the United Kingdom the film was refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Censors, effectively banning it for 14 years; some film societies showed it where local councils overturned the board's decision.
- Frank Rooney's short story "Cyclists' Raid", on which the film was based, was inspired by media coverage of an American Motorcyclist Association rally that got out of hand in Hollister, California, over the Fourth of July weekend in 1947.
- One story holds that the Beatles took their name from the film's rival motorcycle club, the Beetles, as noted in The Beatles Anthology, though The Wild One was banned in Britain until 1967.
- Columbia Pictures offered a new version of the film to the BBFC with a preface and a new ending, but the board rejected that version too after viewing it.
- Marlon Brando told Time in March 1953 that he would retire from films over censorship, saying 15 different pressure groups did not want The Wild One made.
- Triumph's then-US importers, Johnson Motors, objected to the prominent use of Triumph motorcycles in the film; the full text of their letter to the president of the Motion Picture Association of America ran in the April 1953 Motorcyclist.
- Johnny Strabler's haircut set off a craze for sideburns followed by James Dean and Elvis Presley; Presley modeled his Jailhouse Rock role on the character, and Dean bought a Triumph TR5 Trophy to mimic Brando's Triumph Thunderbird 6T.
- The Wild One is considered the original outlaw biker film and the first to examine American outlaw motorcycle gang violence.
