A Face in the Crowd (film)

A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 American satirical drama film directed by Elia Kazan and starring Andy Griffith (in his film debut), Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau. The screenplay by Budd Schulberg is based on his short story "Your Arkansas Traveler", from the 1953 collection Some Faces in the Crowd.

The story centers on Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a drifter who is discovered by the producer (Neal) of a small-market radio program in rural northeast Arkansas. Rhodes ultimately rises to great fame and influence on national television. The character was inspired by Schulberg's acquaintance with Will Rogers Jr.. The successes of Arthur Godfrey and Tennessee Ernie Ford were also acknowledged in the screenplay.

The film launched Griffith into stardom, but got mixed reviews on its release. Subsequent reappraisals have been kinder to the movie. In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot
In late 1950s' America, radio journalist Marcia Jeffries encounters a drunken drifter, Larry Rhodes, while recording a segment at a rural Arkansas jail. She invites him to speak to the audience and sing while playing his guitar, and his raw voice, folksy humor and personal charm make him instantly popular. Marcia dubs him "Lonesome" Rhodes and fast-tracks him onto his own radio program.

Marcia enlists the support of the show's staff writer Mel Miller and witnesses the charismatic Rhodes ad-lib his way to Memphis-area popularity, effectively criticizing local politicians along the way.

When he pokes fun at his sponsor, a mattress company, it initially pulls its ads, but when his adoring audience revolts, burning mattresses in the street, the sponsor discovers that Rhodes's irreverent pitches actually increased sales by 55%, and Rhodes returns to the air with a new awareness of his persuasive power. He begins an affair with Marcia and proposes to her.

An ambitious office worker at the mattress company, Joey DePalma, puts together a deal for Rhodes to star in a new TV show in New York City. The sponsor is Vitajex, an energy supplement that Rhodes ingeniously reimagines as a yellow pill marketed as a male sex-drive enhancement product. As his fame, influence and ego increase, Rhodes is enlisted to improve the appeal of presidential hopeful Senator Worthington Fuller of California, and rebrands the stuffy conservative as an everyman with the folksy nickname "Curly".

In contrast to his friendly onscreen persona, Rhodes has privately become an egomaniac who berates his staff. Marcia's hopes of marrying Rhodes are dashed, first when a woman turns up claiming to be his legitimate wife, and then when he returns from alleged divorce proceedings in Mexico, newly married to 17-year-old drum majorette Betty Lou. Rhodes and Marcia enter into a profit-sharing agreement after she reminds him of her role in his success.

Ultimately, Rhodes's ascent into fame and arrogance begins to turn on him. Mel, who loves Marcia, leaves to write an exposé on Rhodes. Joey has an affair with Rhodes's young wife. Rhodes dumps her and sends her back to Arkansas, but can't get out of his business arrangement with Joey, as Joey reminded Rhodes that Joey owns 51% of the company.

When Rhodes is about to reveal his "Fighters for Fuller" plan, he visits Marcia at her apartment. While he gets comfortable in her bed, Marcia, having come to regret her role in making him famous, leaves in the rain. The next day, she activates a live microphone over the end credits of his TV show to reveal Rhodes contemptuously mocking Fuller and the station's "idiot" viewers. His popularity and the show's ratings plummet, his viewing audience turned their backs on him, and the advertisers cancel their sponsorships, as Rhodes descends in a metaphorical elevator down to the ground floor.

Rhodes returns to his penthouse, where he was scheduled to address the nation's business and political elite, only to find the room empty, except for his friend, Beanie, and a few servants, whom he dismisses when they don't respond to his demands. Having waited for Marcia to break free from Rhodes's spell, Mel returns to insist that Marcia tell Rhodes that she exposed his rant so she can never backslide to rehabilitating Rhodes. Rhodes discovers the truth during a phone call with Mel and Marcia and threatens suicide, but Marcia only goads him on. When the pair arrive at Rhodes's home, they find him speaking to the empty room, with an applause machine replacing the people whose support he lost. Marcia tells Rhodes that she was responsible for his open-microphone incident and demands that he never call her again.

Before they leave, Mel lays out a prediction of Rhodes's future: his career is not completely over, and he will likely find further TV work soon, but never again enjoy the same level of popularity and prestige. After leaving the building, Mel and Marcia hear Rhodes screaming from the penthouse for Marcia to return to him, but they ignore him as they depart. Marcia expresses guilt for having elevated Rhodes to power, and Mel replies that a faker like Rhodes may fool people for a while, but “we get wise to him―that’s our strength.”

Development
The film was produced under the working title of The Arkansas Traveler, which was the name of Budd Schulberg's source short story from his 1953 collection Some Faces in the Crowd. Schulberg had stated that a conversation with friend Will Rogers Jr., son of Will Rogers – who was known for earthy anecdotes and folksy style – had inspired him to create the Lonesome Rhodes story; the younger Rogers had stated that his "father was so full of shit, because he pretends he's just one of the people, just one of the guys."

Director Elia Kazan said that he and screenwriter Schulberg had based the character of Lonesome Rhodes on Arthur Godfrey, as well as Billy Graham and Huey Long.

Casting
Contemporary newspapers reported an early 1956 trip by Kazan to Sarasota, Florida, to confer with Schulberg. Late in April, columnist Walter Winchell wrote that Andy Griffith was due to leave the cast of his Broadway show, No Time for Sergeants, at the end of July, vacation for a month, and then begin shooting with Kazan. Kazan and Schulberg spent much of July and August 1956 in Memphis and in Arkansas, with Patricia Neal's involvement being announced by early August.

Griffith, Lee Remick, Charles Irving, Charles Nelson Reilly and uncredited actors Lois Nettleton and Rip Torn all made their film debuts in A Face in the Crowd.

In stage performance, Griffith noted, he would work gradually up to his most intense moments, but needed to conjure that up spontaneously when shooting such scenes for Kazan. In some instances, he asked to have a few discarded chairs available to destroy, in order to work up his rage before filming.

Big Jeff Bess, who portrayed the sheriff under his own name, was a country singer and bandleader in Nashville who led Big Jeff and his Radio Playboys. He was once married to Tootsie Bess, owner of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. Real-life personalities who make cameo appearances in the film include Walter Winchell and Mike Wallace.

Filming
Most of the film's interiors were shot in New York at the Biograph Studios in the Bronx. This was preceded by shooting in Memphis and Piggott, Arkansas, where Rhodes meets Betty Lou.

The most involved location shoot was in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, standing in for Piggott in the fair and baton-twirling competition scenes. Five thousand extras were sought, to be fed and paid $1 hourly for a mid-August day's work. Sixty baton twirlers and musicians from six different high school bands were rounded up from Arkansas and Missouri. Remick reported spending two weeks in Piggott living with teen twirler Amanda Robinson and her family, working on her twirling and local accent. Some of her baton-twirling scenes used a double. At the Piggott location shoot, some 380 dogs were assembled from Missouri and Arkansas for the scene following Rhodes's first mass-action call on his audience: to take their dogs to the home of a local sheriff who was running for higher office to find out if a candidate is worthy of the office of dog catcher.

Shooting in New York included 61 sets at Biograph Studios, as well as some exteriors. The scene of the network headquarters switchboard was NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Anthony Franciosa, eager to work with Kazan, had turned down a more lucrative offer to appear in MGM's The Vintage. Schulberg remained involved throughout: "I went on a trip in 1955 to scout a location in Arkansas, and I've been on the set every day since shooting started in August [1956]."

Critical reaction
The film received mostly positive reviews from contemporaneous critics, continuing this trend in later reviews.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times applauded Griffith's performance, writing Griffith "plays him [Lonesome Rhodes] with thunderous vigor". However, Crowther felt that the character Lonesome Rhodes overshadowed the rest of the cast and the story, in which he wrote: "As a consequence, the dominance of the hero and his monstrous momentum ... eventually become a bit monotonous when they are not truly opposed." Harrison's Reports wrote: "On a whole, however, it is a fascinating picture, superbly directed and finely acted. Much credit for the film's impact is due [to] Andy Griffith, a newcomer to the screen, for his exceptional performance in the principal role. It is not a sympathetic part, but he plays it with explosive vigor and makes the characterization entirely believable. Worthy of special mention, too, is Patricia Neal for her fine portrayal" as Marcia Jeffries.

Hy Hollinger of Variety praised the film as "provocative and hard-hitting", summarizing that "Kazan once again demonstrates his ability as a director and why major studios are willing to give him carte blanche in selecting his own story material and working under his own conditions." Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Far and away outstanding in their stellar performances are Griffith, Miss Neal and Matthau, with Franciosa also very capable. They are nearly all at their peaks in their interpretations, even though the actual reading of lines is not too easy to understand at times. Schulberg has, however, written a splendid screenplay, and the picture is by far one of Kazan's most penetrating and incidentally ironic."

In his review for Cahiers du cinéma, François Truffaut, then a film critic, called it "a great and beautiful work whose importance transcends the dimensions of a cinema review". Karel Reisz, reviewing the film in Sight & Sound, critiqued more harshly, writing, "If we are to accept its attack on the jungle values of American sponsored television then we must be able to sense a more decent, rational tone in the film which is attacking them. And this becomes more and more difficult as the film goes on. When it comes to the test Kazan and Schulberg seem to have little more respect for their audience than the [t]elevision showmen. Dramatic scenes are all played at full blast, while the more intimate scenes are slurred over."

In a 2015 interview, filmmaker Spike Lee credited the film with inspiring his film Bamboozled. Writing in The Washington Post in 2020, Ann Hornaday ranked it at number 14 of her list of the best political movies.

Musical
A stage musical play version is under production and scheduled to start performances September 10, 2024 until November 9 of the same year. The official opening is expected on September 17. It will have music by Elvis Costello, book by Sarah Ruhl and direction by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The cast will by led by Ramin Karimloo as Lonesone Rhodes and Anoushka Lucas as Marcia Jeffries.