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A Face in the Crowd  /  The Naked Kiss

A Face in the Crowd (1957)
November 30, 2015 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Denise Mann, UCLA.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Castle Hill Productions, Inc. with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.

A Face in the Crowd  (1957)


Director Elia Kazan's second collaboration with screenwriter Budd Schulberg after On the Waterfront (1954) is a corrosive attack on the ascendant medium of television.  Andy Griffith, in his screen debut, plays Lonesome Rhodes, a charismatic, guitar-picking hillbilly-turned-TV star, eventually becoming a power-mad demagogue.  Hyperbolic, energetic and in many ways prophetic, the film indicts both television and the cult of personality in postwar America. 

35mm, b/w, 132 min.  Production: Newton Productions, Inc.  Distribution: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.  Producer: Elia Kazan.  Director: Elia Kazan.  Based on the short story “Your Arkansas Traveler” by Budd Schulberg.  Screenwriter: Budd Schulberg.  Cinematographer: Harry Stradling, Gayne Rescher.  Editor: Gene Milford.  Composer: Tom Glazer.  With: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Warner Bros. with funding provided by The Ahmanson Foundation in association with the Sundance Institute.

The Naked Kiss  (1964)


Shot on a shoestring and conceived as an indictment of American bourgeois hypocrisy, The Naked Kiss is a bombastic, idiosyncratic but wholly original hybrid—the B-movie as social critique.  A reformed hooker finds renewed purpose as a small-town orthopedic nurse.  Although courting the dashing local philanthropist promises to cement her integration into mainstream society, but her romantic fantasy is dashed in a shocking plot twist.

35mm, b/w, 93 min.  Production: F&F Productions.  Distribution: Allied Artists.  Producer: Samuel Fuller.  Director: Samuel Fuller.  Screenwriter: Samuel Fuller.  Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez.  Editor: Jerome Thoms.  Composer: Paul Dunlap.  With: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante, Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly.

Part of: 
Archive Treasures: 50th Anniversary Celebration