However, sparks begin to fly between Clara and Quick, and when Jody fears he may lose his place as heir of Will's estate, he takes drastic action, trapping his father in a barn, setting it on fire, and planting evidence that would suggest that the blaze was Quick's doing. The Long, Hot Summer was the first film that Newman and Woodward made together, and they got married the same year.
Paul Newman as Ben Quick. Joanne Woodward as Clara Varner. Orson Welles as Will Varner.
Anthony Franciosa as Jody Varner. Lee Remick as Eula Varner. Angela Lansbury as Minnie Littlejohn. Richard Anderson as Alan Stewart. Sarah Marshall as Agnes Stewart.
Mabel Albertson as Mrs. Pat O'Malley as Ratliff. Bill Walker as Lucius. George Dunn as Peabody. Jess Kirkpatrick as Armistead. Val Avery as Wilk. Stanford Jolley as Houstin. King as John Fisher. Lee Erickson as Tom Shortly. Ralph Reed as J. Terry Rangno as Pete Armistead.
Steve Widders as Buddy Peabody. Jim Brandt as Linus Olds. Helen Wallace as Mrs. Brian Corcoran as Harry Peabody. Byron Foulger as Harris. Victor Rodman as Justice of the Peace. Eugene Jackson as Waiter. The production was marked by conflicts between Welles and Ritt, which drew media attention.
The film was well received by critics but did not score significant results at the box office. Its critical success revitalized the career of Ritt, who had been blacklisted during most of the s. Ben Quick is on trial, suspected of barn-burning , but when no solid evidence is found, the judge expels him from town. Clara's father, Will Varner, is the domineering owner of most of the town.
Accused barn burner and con man Ben Quick arrives in a small Mississippi town and quickly ingratiates himself with its richest family, the Varners. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa. Q: Is 'The Long, Hot Summer' based on a book?. Directed by Stuart Cooper. With Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Judith Ivey, Cybill Shepherd. A loner arrives in a small town only to be condemned for the sins of.
Ben goes to the Varner plantation. Will is away, but his only son, Jody, agrees to let Ben become a sharecropper on a vacant farm. When Will returns from a stay in the hospital, he is furious at Jody for hiring a notorious "barn burner," but soon begins to see in Ben a younger version of himself and comes to admire his ruthlessness and ambition, qualities that Jody lacks. Will is also disappointed with the man that his year-old daughter, Clara, has been seeing for five or six years: Alan Stewart Richard Anderson , a genteel Southern "blue blood" and a mama's boy.
Will therefore schemes to push his daughter and Ben together, to try to bring fresh, virile blood into the family. However, she is openly hostile to the crude, if magnetic, upstart.
Will is determined to have his bloodline go on, so he offers to make Ben wealthy if he marries Clara. Meanwhile, Minnie Littlejohn Angela Lansbury , Will's long-time mistress, is dissatisfied with their arrangement and wants to marry him. Jody becomes increasingly frustrated, seeing his position in the family being undermined.
After Ben sells some wild horses for Will, he is rewarded with the position of clerk in the general store , alongside Jody. Will even invites him to live in the family mansion. This is the final straw for Jody. He pulls a gun on Ben and threatens to kill him. Ben talks his way out by telling Jody about buried Civil War -era treasure he has supposedly found on a property that Will gave him, a down payment to seal their bargain over Clara. Jody starts digging and finds a bag of coins.
He is elated, thinking he might finally free himself of his father's domination; he buys the land from Ben. Late that night, Will finds his son, still digging. After examining one of the coins, Will notices that it was minted in Ben aggressively pursues Clara.
She finally asks Alan what his intentions are, and does not like what she hears. A defeated Jody finds his father alone in their barn. Jody bolts the entrance and sets the barn on fire, but he cannot go through with it and releases Will. The incident leads to a reconciliation between father and son.
Men from town assume Ben is the culprit and start toward him, but Will claims he accidentally started the fire by dropping his cigar. The smell of fire brings back bad memories for Ben, who confesses to Clara that his father was a real barn-burner. He tells her how, at age ten, he warned a farmer that his father was about to set another fire.
Ben's father got away, never seen again. Ben tells her he is leaving town, but Clara makes it clear she has fallen in love with him. During the s, two American expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls. John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Indians, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws. After his employer is murdered by rival cattlemen, a troubled and uneducated young cowboy vows revenge on the murderers.
Lew Harper, a cool private investigator, is hired by a wealthy California matron to locate her kidnapped husband. An ambitious young executive chooses a loveless marriage and an unfulfilling personal life in exchange for a successful Wall Street career. Sixty-one year old widower Will Varner, in ill health, owns many businesses and property in Frenchman's Bend, Mississippi, including a plantation. To him, his children are a disappointment, they who he sees as not being able to carry on the Varner name in the style to which he has built around it.
Son Jody Varner has no ambition and does not work, spending much of his time fooling around with his seductive wife, Eula. Twenty-three year old daughter Clara Varner he finds clever, but he feels she also wastes her time on more contemplative pursuits. While most of her contemporaries are married, Clara has been dating Alan Stewart, a genteel mama's boy, for six years.
Will would not mind Alan so much if he too thought Alan had a bit of a forceful man in him, which he could demonstrate by actually asking Clara to marry him. Conversely, Jody laments that nothing he does is ever good enough for his father, while Clara plain does not like the way he treats them. Into their lives comes Ben While trying to woo the daughter Clara Joanne Woodward Ben also strikes up a partnership with her father Orson Welles , which doesn't sit well with the son Anthony Franciosa who can't ever seem to do anything right. The film is known for that but it's also known for the heated on-set battles between Welles and director Martin Ritt.
These two things usually take a lot of the spotlight away from the film itself and that's really too bad because it's a pretty good soap opera from Fox. The term "soap opera" will be seen by some of a criticism but it's certainly not meant to be. There were countless movies made during this era that likes to be over-dramatic at times with a strong sexuality and a blazing music score going in the background. This film here has the benefit of some great locations, a pretty good story and of course some legendary actors doing great work.
I will admit that the one really weak thing is the music score, which is constantly blaring at the wrong time and taking away from the actors and their magic. As for the cast, the heat that Newman and Woodward were feeling off the set certainly burned on screen because the two have some wonderful chemistry here. There's no doubt that they bring a lot of smoke to the screen and the two manage to capture the sexuality of the story as well as the dramatic nature of the love story.
Welles is also excellent in his part as the fiery father.
Again, Welles had various issues on the set but I thought he was very believable in the part. There are certainly some flaws throughout the movie but the star power alone makes it a must see. Enjoy a night in with these popular movies available to stream now with Prime Video. Start your free trial.