Claudelle Inglish (1961) User Reviews

Diane McBain Sexy, Beautiful

[adventure-21903 · 7/10 · 18 June 2020]

Warner Bros had a brigade of young contact stars and in fact their is a pic of J L Warner with most of them: Connie Stevens, Dorothy Provine, Van Williams,, Clint Walker , Natalie Wood, Edd Byrnes, Peter Brown, Ty Hardin among the many.

Diane McBain was a beautiful young actress with a penchant of getting in the gossip columns. Diane beat out a truly fine actress Shirley Knight - another WB star!-for the lead role in this film shot in black and white. WB stars Chad Everett, Robert Logan, and Robert Colbert were also in the cast. Diane plays it well as a Southern girl out to put the make on men.

Diane McBain made a few more movies such as Troy Donahue's Parrish which has Diane's opening scene sensational as the rolls out of a car and those magnetic eyes of Diane's mesmerizing! , and Raoul Walsh's A Distant Trumpet with Troy Donahue and Suzy Pleshette, with Debbie Reynolds in Mary, Mary, but left the studio rather than play a small part in WB''s big budget Sex And The Single Girl with Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall and Mel Ferrer directed by Richard Quine. Richard Quine fell in love with Kim Novak and his films with Kim such as Bell Book And Candle, Strangers When We Meet, Notorious Landlady reveal l Kim at her most lush beauty. Diane should have done Sex And The Sungle Girl with Quine; He may have made her a great star as he did Kim.

Presents and promises...

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 23 September 2015]

Potboiler from Erskine Caldwell's novel about a Southern sharecropper's daughter, broken-hearted after being rejected by her soldier-fiancé, turning from timid girl to tramp in order to even the score. Producer-screenwriter Leonard Freeman is rather timid himself within this potentially sweaty and sinful scenario; we're never sure just how far our heroine is going sexually with the drooling males in town--or if she's just a tease (had the film been made only a few years later, it might've been a more salacious melodrama). Diane McBain is well-cast as Claudelle Inglish, and she gives a good performance, but restrictions of the era prevent her and director Gordon Douglas from exploring the character with any depth. As a result, the finale doesn't provide the emotional punch Freeman or Douglas probably hoped for. Instead of being a classic tragic figure, Claudelle merely seems guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. **1/2 from ****

Claudelle English

[mhrabovsky6912 · 15 August 2007]

More soap on a rope....typical soapie-doapie tearjerker of the late 1950s and early 60s....there were a lot of those super sudsers in that era, "A Summer Place", "Parrish", "Susan Slade", "Splendor in the Grass", "Imitation of Life" with Lana, etc. Unusual twist in this film, as Arthur Kennedy who plays Claudelle English's father and Constance Ford who was Sandra Dee's mom in "A Summer Place" are married in Claudelle English. Kennedy was Troy Donahue's dad in "A Summer Place"....guess the Warner Bros producers loved to use those recycled cast members......Claudelle English is the town vamp...a loose and fast young lady, a real lover gal. She has more boyfriends than a baseball stadium has hot dogs, and she loves and leaves em.....she loves them from 19 years old to old men in equal amounts. Sad tale though as Claudelle lives on an impoverished farm worked to the ground by her hapless dad, Arthur Kennedy. Constance Ford, the mother from hell in a "Summer Place" reprises her role in that regard in this film. Ford feels living in poverty is not for her and has an affair with the local landowner. She pushes Claudelle, her daughter to marry a rich man so she wont have to suffer like she did. A mixed bag of emotions follow as one lover after another chases Claudelle and her mom gets more jealous and frustrated at her own lack of an exciting life. She gets mixed up with a hokey landowner played by the boring Claude Akins.....in the end a surprising ending comes.....Claudelle is killed by the father of a jilted young man who is beaten up by another of Claudelle's many boyfriends. This is all the soap you would want and Dianne McBain is very beautiful in this film......surprising she never achieved the fame of another soaper Natalie Wood in this era.....they were both very hot women and actressses in the early 60s. McBain was a knockout in "Parrish" and you would have thought her career would take off...... it didn't....she played in several more mostly forgotten B films, including one Elvis flick. McBain is mostly a forgotten actress today. She like Connie Stevens, another Warner Bros starlet never achieved the fame many thought they would have. This was an era when the soap sudser made a lot of money for Warner Bros. Then very quickly the genre died for some reason. Guess Troy Donahue, Stevens and McBain did not want any more suds roles. Go figure!!!

The story of a bad girl....

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 14 November 2015]

"Claudelle Inglish" is a well made movie but it's also rather dark and depressing. This isn't so much a complaint--I'm just trying to let you know in case you are thinking about watching it.

Diane McBain stars as the title character, an innocent and nice young lady. However, she quickly transforms from this to a 'bad girl' in her small home town after she is jilted by her jerk of a fiancé. Now she uses men and cares little about them--in her odd attempt to punish men in general for her stupid fiancé. Since the film was made in the early 60s, it's really unclear whether Claudelle is sleeping around or if she's just a tease--but it is clear that she uses men to get what she wants. How will this ultimately lead to disaster? See the film.

The acting is very good here--particularly by Arthur Kennedy who plays Claudelle's father. Well worth seeing and very unique...but also a tad unpleasant.

good film, gets dark

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 12 June 2021]

While her friends are marrying the local boys, Claudelle is determined to find just the right guy. And she thinks that she has. He's got a plan, and is working on it. But... as usual, life happens and upsets all her plans. So she comes up with Plan B and turns into a wild child. And now all the men in town are chasing after her. Co-stars Claud Akins, Chad Everett, Will Hutchins; Hutchins made Clambake with Elvis. Diane McBain would make Spinout with Elvis a couple years after this. Pain. Family relationships. Dreams. What makes one happy? When do you know you've realized your goals? Similar to a tennessee williams story. Based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell. He had also written God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road. Books about growing up in rough times and rough places. It's quite good,but ends on a pretty dark note.

Bildungsroman Of A Georgia Peach

[theognis-80821 · 7/10 · 17 July 2023]

Horny hicks and lascivious ladies seeded the loamy Georgia soil of Erskine Caldwell's imagination for decades, beginning in the early Thirties with "Tobacco Road," made into a masterpiece by John Ford in 1941 and "God's Little Acre" directed by Anthony Mann in 1958. Gordon Douglas does a good, professional job with this 1959 novel about a teenaged girl, daughter of an impoverished sharecropper, who slowly discovers, and learns to use, her sexual power over men. Diane McBain triumphs in the title role, with strong support from a good cast. There's no arguing with Mr. Caldwell, who farmed these parts for generations and spins a moving, engaging yarn.

Tawdry, within production code confines

[mls4182 · 5/10 · 13 December 2021]

Diane McBain proved she can act in this film. It is too bad it wasn't a bigger and better film. She plays a good girl who finds out playing by the rules doesn't guarantee you happiness. So she says to hell with the rules.

Constance Ford is perfect as the mother who feels life has passed her by. She always excelled at tough, bitter roles.

The only big disappointment for me was the harsh ending, which I won't reveal. It was all too similar to other films made in the era with its double standards of "ultimate punishment" imposed on females but never males.

you have not seen anything like this

[jerieg · 10/10 · 1 November 2002]

This movie starts out appearing to be the usual b-movie shlock morality tale - and that beginning is where any similarity ends. Claudelle Inglish winds up having a place right beside movies like Showgirls and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, just for sheer shock value.

The basic premise is familiar enough, sweet young thing is seduced and then jilted. However, nobody knows that, since her beau is not a total creep; her shameful secret is still safe from the townspeople who would label her a whore - so here's where the fun starts, since our heroine, literally overnight, decides to transform herself into the town tramp anyway. Why? Uhhh, why not?

Of course it would have made perfect sense for Claudelle to just go ahead and marry the older, unappealing rich man who all but drools on her, but that would be too easy, and it won't happen here. In fact nothing here plays out the way you would expect it to, and that is the brilliance of this film and why it is something you have to see to believe.

This is trash at its very finest, and to tell anything more about what happens after Claudelle creates her own hell would spoil everything.

"The only thing I own is that old shovel . . . "

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 20 April 2021]

. . . laments the beleaguered tenant farmer Pa of CLAUDELLE INGLISH. This story allows the always eponymous Warner Bros. Seers to warn America that our core institution of the family farm is dead, that outsiders like "Rip" are going to run down half of us with their Fat Cat Rich People Road Hog vehicles and that gun violence will rub out most of the rest of us, which is how title character Ms. English herself bites the dust. Our few survivors will be left with little more than spades to bury the dead, warn the prophetic prognosticators of Warner. These clairvoyants caution that in this End Time wanton wenches will rule the roost, eschewing marriage and home-making in favor of joy rides, lovers' lanes and general harlotry. As hellfire reigns down from Heaven Above, all decent dames will petrify as salt posts, with any surviving daughters misbehaving like Lot's.

Good girl turned town tramp

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 13 January 2017]

Claudelle Inglish is one of those guilty pleasures that certain film fans. Based on an Erskine Caldwell novel, Diane McBain gets her first notice as the good girl turned town tramp because she gets a dear Jane letter from her boyfriend in the service.

McBain in the title role is first seen as a high school girl on a bus which you will note only has white students on it. She's in love with Chad Everett, but after a night together he goes off to the military. Soon she gets a letter saying he's met another girl and he's going to marry her. Brokenhearted McBain becomes the biggest tease for miles around. She's going to punish the male of the species and have a good time doing it.

Some of Warner Brothers young contract players play some of McBain's conquests, people like Everett, Will Hutchins, Robert Logan, and Robert Colbert. She's even got the older males in a tizzy like storekeeper Frank Overton who is Hutchins's father and the richest plantation owner in the county Claude Akins.

In fact Akins is really gone gaga for McBain and her new tramp look. McBain's mother Constance Ford wants her to wed Akins and get all she never could with Arthur Kennedy who is one of Akins's sharecroppers. But Kennedy maintains hopes that McBain will make a good marriage with one of the boys who is getting in her pants.

McBain finds Akins quite gross, but Akins after persistent refusals settles for second best. You'll have to see the film to know what that means.

Claudelle Inglish even got some Oscar recognition with a nomination for costume design for a black and white film.

It's also low trash, but it is deliciously low trash and a lot of people will enjoy it.

This movie grows more memorable the older it gets.

[lisazthorpe · 9/10 · 7 December 2005]

I saw this movie 35 years ago on late night TV and was totally and utterly spellbound by it -- so much so that this many years later I still remember it.

The stark quality of the movie, as shown through the dialog and other "devices" underlined the desperate nature of the characters (the fact that Claudelle knew she didn't have what she wanted but didn't know what that was or how to get it) and their suspicious natures in that someone might find what they were searching for.

A marvelous, fascinating character study. All good literature is nothing more than character study and good movies must have well-developed characters to be considered good. "Claudelle Inglish" is both.

What you see is what you get...so cliche but hey if the shoe fits :D

[MzPrudish · 6/10 · 4 October 2021]

Finally I caved & purchased this for $2 on youtoob movies; it was good. Not terribly great but an interesting, low radar jewel with decent pace; the pacing helped boost its appeal and keeps ya watching; Would like to see it few more times for free. Reviews are accurate-slightly predictable yet you still want to watch; cannot turn it off so sit back and enjoy the melodrama moment ; )

A melodrama 1960's period piece not relevant for the subsequent 1969 Woodstock and free love

[Ed-Shullivan · 4/10 · 25 July 2023]

I think the writers/producers and director missed their period of opportunity to make this melodramatic period piece stick around for a few decades. Yes it was released in the early part of the 1960's (1961 to be exact) but it was only eight (8) years later that moral beliefs about pre-marital sex were changed forever when the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival glorified hip music, drugs and most especially free love.

Both women and men in the late 1960's and early 1970's (before Aids) felt the need to be free and uninhibited with their bodies and divorce rates climbed exponentially. Films such as 1961 Claudelle Inglish were more greatly appreciated in the previous decade of the 1950's as being informative to remind all young and virtuous ladies that all men are dirty pigs with only one thing in mind. Women who put out before marriage were looked down upon in the early 1960's and 1950's and it will only lead to a downward spiral if your virtue is jeopardized in lieu of a one night fling in hopes of trusting the man will respect you in the morning.

After watching Claudelle Inglish transform from a young seedling to a robust and ripe flower so attractive to any man's eyes only to have her wilt after successive bad decisions we witness a disappointing ending to a melodramatic young life.

Just like Claudelle Inglish herself, this film has long passed its best before date and todays women know what they want and are not afraid to speak up for themselves before it would be too late.

I give the film a rather outdated 4 out of 10 IMDb rating.

Diane Does Georgia

[wes-connors · 5/10 · 3 June 2012]

In her teenage years, pretty blonde schoolgirl Diane McBain (as Claudelle Inglish) begins arousing the opposite sex. She loves handsome student Chad Everett (as Linn Varner), who looks great in close-up. But he goes off to join the Army, leaving Ms. McBain feeling lonely and unsatisfied. Due to her poor Georgia roots, McBain's sharecropper parents Arthur Kennedy and Constance Ford (as Clyde and Jessie) are asked to consider their daughter as good marriage material for older, less attractive Claude Akins (as S.T. Crawford). However, McBain prefers good looking young men like Will Hutchins (as Dennis Peasley). And, she finds a few more. Then, she goes for dads and out-of-towners. As McBain gets less discriminating, the movie gets less believable. Basically, McBain exchanges sexual favors for expensive gifts, but never obliges Mr. Akins. He is asked to consider Mama Ford as a sex date. It all leads to a rather ludicrous ending.

***** Claudelle Inglish (9/20/61) Gordon Douglas ~ Diane McBain, Arthur Kennedy, Constance Ford, Will Hutchins

Dime Novel Trash -- Classic Level Drama

[vitaleralphlouis · 10/10 · 18 April 2007]

DIANE McBAIN has only one claim to movie fame besides her good looks. It is her deep-down excellent portrayal of Claudelle Inglish in this strange and sensational movie that is both dime novel trash and classic drama.

The best and most powerful subject for a grab-you movie in my opinion is the power of intense love; that power which can bring joy and true happiness. Take away (or betray) that love and a person can be turned-on-a-dime into an adrenaline-filled force of self destruction. If I told you what happens in the movie you would not believe it; but I saw this near-exact drama play out in my own neighborhood some 15 years after this movie.

Too bad my 10 star rating is virtually pointless. The critics trashed this film when it came out and Warner Bros were clueless of its merits. I have no idea how you could get a copy and see it.

claudelle inglish

[mossgrymk · 5/10 · 11 April 2021]

Kind of an unappetizing combo of "Peyton Place" and "Tobacco Road". And Diane McBain should be called Diane McBland. Good to see one of my favorite 50s/60s TV character actors, Claude Akins, out of TV, though, in a fairly substantial and even somewhat ambiguous role. And Constance Ford is good, as always, playing a hard bitten mom. Solid C.

Painted lips and wickedness!

[bobvend · 8/10 · 2 June 2012]

A guilty pleasure, to be sure, "Claudelle Inglish" is thoroughly enjoyable pulp trash, and I say that with great affection. Actress Diane McBain mines the same territory as Caroll Baker in "Baby Doll" in a role one could easily see being played by Sue Lyon, Joey Heatherton, or Tuesday Weld.

The title character becomes the belle of the ball in the backwoods of rural Georgia after her plans for her future (with fellow actor Chad Everett) get thrown under the school bus. The parents, wonderfully played by Arthur Kennedy and Constance Ford, get the chance to show their stuff once the drama boils up to its inevitable over-the-top crescendo(s).

Momma wants her daughter to end up with the wealthy, smitten landowner (Claude Akins) who's land they occupy as tenant farmers. Papa is content to let Claudelle make her own decisions about love, until it becomes her favorite after-school activity, that is. And when the love-boat drifts wildly off-course, momma Constance decides to take tawdry matters into her own restless hands.

There are some unintentional laughs inherent in a pine-woods potboiler such as this, and one could imagine what a director like Russ Meyer would do with such material a few years later. A film that is definitely worth your time.

Love's that other four-letter word in this hot mess!

[melvelvit-1 · 10/10 · 23 December 2010]

The movie version of Erskine Caldwell's over-heated "tobacco road" potboiler is all about a sharecropper's teenage daughter becoming the town pump after receiving a "Dear John" letter from her drafted beau and it's a mind-boggling trip to bad movie heaven where "love" is literally that other four-letter word. The dead-earnest dialog's a howler: Claudelle (played by pretty 60s starlet Diane McBain) tempts her date (a young and handsome Chad Everett) away from their high school dance and into the woods where she exhorts him to "love me!" but he jilts her later on and she cracks up, screaming at her mother, "But I loved him, mama -and I let him love me!" Looking to get even, she now loves anything in pants, telling one local yokel who sneaks up to her bedroom window looking for a date that he can have one if he promises her something: "Tell me I'm pretty -all over." The one man she won't have, however, is the overbearing oaf (Claude Akins) her bitter, ambitious mama (Constance Ford channelling Kim Stanley) foists on her. He's the richest man in the county and nuts about her but when Claudelle blows him off, her mother dresses up in her daughter's duds and hides in the shadows, going off with the sex-minded simpleton herself. Claudelle's reckless abandon eventually turns the town (consisting of little more than a general store) upside down and it can only end one way...

Arthur Kennedy (as the wayward wench's long-suffering pa) tried to give the trashy tragedy some much needed class but it's a curious dinosaur, a throwback to an earlier time. The sordid subject matter was definitely "for adults only" but it was handled with a "Production Code" sensibility that was more-or-less obsolete after PSYCHO began breaking all kinds of barriers the year before. Warner Brothers' hesitation waltz around the lassie's lurid ways was not unlike the one Paramount was still doing a few years later in A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME and SYLVIA. The last starred Carroll Baker and was yet another unsuccessful "A" attempt to turn its "B-list" leading lady into a sex symbol star. By the end of the 60s, "Baby Doll" Baker found a niche in Eurotrash and Diane McBain went on to make MARYJANE, a marijuana movie starring Fabian Forte. Thank god. As for CLAUDELLE INGLISH, ya gotta "love" her -catch it if you can!

Certainly this is a nearly forgotten film that is worth watching.

[bethelagcy · 8/10 · 5 June 2004]

I remember this film from the very early '60s. In those years we saw a lot of movies at the so-called "grind houses" on West 42nd Street (on both sides of Times Square); the deal, for us, was terrific: a double feature for "never more than 99 cents!" The first film to break that price barrier was Mercouri's NEVER ON Sunday. After her amazing bitchiness in A SUMMER PLACE, Constance Ford was again remarkable in this motion picture. I feel that this film, like too many others, is nearly forgotten today. But, when graduates, with a B.F.A. in Film, Theatre and Television, can look you in the eye and confess that they've "never heard of Marlene Dietrich", what can one expect?! Another one, a 2004 NYU grad, had never heard of THE GLASS MENAGERIE. Perhaps it's not the students but the schools that are failing!

Complex Emotional Drama -- Well-worth watching.

[SoCalMovieLover · 8/10 · 2 June 2012]

This movie premiered this evening on Turner Classic Movies and was well worth watching. The film is a very well-acted and intense emotional drama about a high school girl who is navigating the confusing territory of transforming from a girl into a woman and having her first experience with love and betrayal. Claudelle is a beautiful and innocent 17 year old girl about to graduate from high school when she is "wooed" by, and falls in love for the first time with, a handsome and seemingly sincere local boy. She trustingly gives her heart and soul and body to the young man she loves, shortly before he must leave to serve in the army. Her lover "Linn" (Chad Everett) is assigned to a military base far from home, but he promises to marry Claudelle as soon as he is done with his 2 year stretch in the service and he asks her to wait for him. Claudelle is deeply in love and promises to wait for Linn. She eagerly awaits her lover's letters, every day, until she receives one in which he tells her that he has become involved with another young woman and is going to marry his new girl -- not Claudelle. Claudelle is absolutely devastated and heartbroken. Her mother, a woman who is bitter from a life of hard work and unrealized dreams of her own, is unequipped and too narcissistic to help her daughter deal with the pain of betrayal and her first broken heart. Claudelle wants to "get even" with the lover who spurned her, just as she begins to realize the power of her own beauty and sexuality . . . and the hold which she seems to so easily have over just about every man in town -- young and old. But the pain of being betrayed and spurned is so raw that Claudelle fails to realize that she is inflicting far more pain on herself than on any of the men who she she becomes involved with -- least of all her first lover, Linn. Claudelle's father (George Kennedy) is a decent and loving man, but is unable to help his daughter deal with the raw pain of her broken heart and her self-destructive behavior -- until the end of the movie. Unfortunately, but all too typical of the mores of the time in which the story takes place, the plot is resolved by a need to kill off the "slutty wanton woman", because of the havoc she wreaks on the lives of the many weak and delusional men who want her but cannot have her -- and who cannot control their own emotions. Why is it that the promiscuous woman always has to die in these movies? (Think about Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8, Kim Novak and Bette Davis in "Of Human Bondage") Why can't the men just learn to deal with their own emotions without resorting to violence? In fairness, one sincere young man loses his life when he fights to defend Claudelle's honor (but mostly his own ego and "manhood"). And, I was really thinking and believing that Claudelle and her loving and protective father could pack up and move to a new town, and get a fresh start. But oh no. The wanton, beautiful and sexual woman always must die! Is it maybe because of all those stories were written by men? Is it because a woman who enjoys and trades on the power of her own beauty and sexuality is just too threatening to the patriarchy and must be punished? What is it? Happily, this motif begins to change with the advent of the sexual revolution in the mid- to late 1960's. I was so happy when I again saw the "The Sanpiper", recently, and observed that Elizabeth Taylor's character didn't have to end up dead -- even though she and Richard Burton thoroughly enjoyed an illicit, extramarital affair. Amen! LOL!

romance can carry an unpleasant side

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 24 August 2020]

There are probably a number of movies to which one could compare "Claudelle Inglish", but the one that comes to my mind is "Leave Her to Heaven". Both movies feature a romance that takes an ugly turn. I could also see a link to "A Summer Place" and "The Graduate", in the sense that the parents' generation tries to manipulate the young peoples' relationships. Will people never learn?

I've never read any of Erskine Caldwell's novels. This movie and "God's Little Acre" are the only movie adaptations of his novels that I've seen. If I ever get a chance I'd like to read his works. In the meantime, I recommend both movies. Diane McBain does a great job as the title character; her radiant beauty hides questionable tendencies. The Oscar-nominated cinematography shows the small town and surrounding area as a hopeless place. Worth seeing.

Not just a girl gone bad

[cbmd-37352 · 8/10 · 30 March 2021]

This movie is sometimes described as sleazy, but it was the advertising emphasizing the girl gone bad theme that is sleazy. She had a lot of help on the road to perdition. Constance Ford as her unhappy frustrated mother is terrific, and is a major force driving her daughter to accept gifts for her favors. Her well meaning father is no help to her or her mother, he is content being a share cropper, living in a house with no running water. Reviews rarely mention Frank Overton,and appears to be a minor character in the beginning. Starting on Broadway, he has a wonderful voice. But in this film it's his eyes that tell everything. He goes from innocuous small town shopkeeper to husband cheating with Claudel , and anguished father of a dead son. Multiple peoples bad choices lead to the destruction of 2families, not just Claudel.

FYI, Ford Rainy appears in this film as well as Last Mile, as did Frank Overton, only the roles are reversed. Watch both films for some powerful acting and a lot of anguish.