John Indrisano

No one can touch Robert Aldrich when it comes to holding a mirror up to the self-absorbed self-deception of Hollywood. The director of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Big Knife turns the lens again to Tinseltown with this deliciously overheated mystery-melodrama. Kim Novak portrays an unknown chosen to star in a biopic of film goddess Lylah Clare, who died under mysterious circumstances on her wedding night. Two Best Actor Academy Award® winners,* Peter Finch as Lylah's obsessed widower and Ernest Borgnine as a loutish mogul, help stir a heady plot that reveals secrets, compulsions, perversions and murder as the naïve young actress becomes consumed by the identity of the dead star.

When a naïve young actress is chosen to star in a biopic of film goddess Lylah Clare, who died under mysterious circumstances on her wedding night.

When a naïve young actress is chosen to star in a biopic of film goddess Lylah Clare, who died under mysterious circumstances on her wedding night.

Having been burned by compromises to censors on his earlier films Cat On a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, Paul Newman decided to star in as uncompromising a property as he could find. That property was Hud, inspired by a portion of Larry McMurtry's novel, Horseman Pass By. Hud Bannon (Newman) is a young Texas rancher who lives with his cattleman father Homer (Melvyn Douglas) and his hero-worshipping nephew Lon (Brandon DeWilde). Hud is an amoral, cold-hearted creature; his father, who holds Hud responsible for the death of his other son, tries to imbue Lon with a sense of decency and responsibility to others, but Lon is devoted to Hud and isn't inclined to listen. When hoof-and-mouth disease shows up in one of the elder Bannon's cows, Hud is all for selling the herd before the government inspectors find out. But Homer orders the cattle destroyed (the film's most harrowing sequence), driving an even deeper wedge between himself and Hud. Finally, Hud steps over the line by attempting to rape Alma (Patricia Neal), the earthy but warm-hearted housekeeper. Paul Newman was so repellantly brilliant as an unregenerate heel that his Oscar nomination for Hud was a foregone conclusion. Although Newman lost the Oscar to Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field, Oscars did go to Neal for Best Actress, Douglas for Best Supporting Actor, and cinematographer James Wong Howe.