NANCAN Blog

Every actor should be so fortunate as Warren Beatty to debut in a film as good as this one is. As hapless Bud Stamper, he stutters and stumbles his way through his turbulent teenage years during the 1920's where he and his family are very large fish in a very small Kansas town. Overpowering father, Pat Hingle, is at his peak as attempts to live his lost youth through young Bud. And, then there's Natalie Wood who is smitten with Bud and he her, but this is the 1920's and poor Bud has a good devil and and bad devil on his shoulders pushing him forward and pulling him back. Poor Natalie goes crazy and is sent away to what seems like a very sanitized asylum for a few years to "get over Bud." After Bud's life comes crashing in on him in the early dawn of a gritty NYC morning, the two lovers are briefly reunited years later only to shrug their shoulders at what boils down to much ado about nothing. It's no wonder that Beatty went on to do as many good films as he did because he's just a natural here. (Oh, yeah, that really is a young Phyllis Diller doing a Sophie Tucker in the nightclub scene.)