This Property Is Condemned

A small Mississippi town called Dodson during the Depression. The town lives off the railroad, and a company man named Owen Legate arrives to close one of its branch lines, which means finishing the town. Alva Starr lives in her mother's boarding house, believes that being the prettiest girl in town will get her out, and dreams of New Orleans. The story is told by her small sister Willie. Sydney Pollack directed. Natalie Wood plays Alva and Robert Redford plays Owen. John Houseman and Ray Stark produced. The source is Tennessee Williams's 1946 one-act play. Because the play is so short, most of the film was written afterwards and the screenplay carries three names: Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer. It is one of the scripts Coppola worked on early in his career. The reviews split. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called it soggy and sentimental while Variety found it handsomely mounted and well acted. Natalie Wood was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a drama. The budget was 4.62 million dollars and it returned roughly 2.6 million in United States and Canadian rentals. The song from the film, Wish Me a Rainbow, is by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and has been recorded by many singers, Ed Ames and Astrud Gilberto among them. Who it is for: viewers who like Southern small-town drama and young Redford and Wood. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a Williams adaptation. What survives of the play is the premise and a few scenes; the rest belongs to other writers.