"Lonesome Rhodes" are Often Lonely Places

A Face in the Crowd, a movie filmed in 1957, starring Patricia Neal and, the infamous, Andy Griffith, begins in a small town in Arkansas where a women, Marcia (played by Neal), is the host of a radio show entitled A Face in the Crowd. Marcia takes her show into the local jail to interview men that are being held there. It is in the jail that she encounters a man known only in the beginning as "Lonesome." Marcia interviews him, on the premise that the interview is not on the air. He sings a song that tells the story of his time in jail, and although Marcia agreed not to put him on the air, she hides the microphone and secretly sends his song over the radio. He becomes an instant star, people want him for radio shows, then his radio shows become so popular that television stations want to put him on TV. His television show becomes the most watch television shows in the country, but the bigger he gets, the more he forgets about the people who got him there, and the ride from the bottom to the top and back again is rocky, hard, and, as his name states, lonesome.

This movie was originally released in 1957 and is being re-released on DVD this Tuesday. There is only one way to describe this movie, it is an Andy Griffith classic. Griffith brings to life a man who transforms on the screen, from a man of humble and traditional beginnings to become somewhat of a monster. I have found that Griffith gives us the ability to see what celebrity does to an already lonely man; it creates a hole big enough for only one person that is hard to find a way out of. Neal, who plays Marcia, brings a completely different emotion to the movie. Neal shows the audience how it feels to love someone who does nothing but hurt you emotionally. She puts herself into the character and makes me feel sympathetic for her pain. Griffith and Neal do an amazing job of creating a relationship that an audience is able to follow and relate too, although not everyone is a rising television star, most of us have been emotionally hurt once or twice in our lives. Although, nearly 50 years has passed since its original release, the message of the film is still relevant today.

The DVD itself has been fully restored to its original magnificance and has additional special features which only add to the movie. Whether young or old, rich or poor, Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal do an excellent job with this movie, and no one should miss the opportunity to see this film.