Main Cast: Claude Traverse, Anthony Perkins, Beau Bridges, Blythe Danner, Edward Binns, Susan Sarandon
Release Year: 1974
Country: US
Run Time: 98 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Lovin' Molly is basically Jules and Jim, Texas style. In 1925, two close friends (Anthony Perkins and Beau Bridges) both fall in love with prescient woman's-libber Molly (Blythe Danner). Molly in turn loves both men equally and can't choose between them, so the three set up a freewheeling menage a trois--which endures for nearly forty years. Lovin' Molly belongs to Blythe Danner, an otherwise overly mannered actress who is at her naturalistic best herein. Lovin' Molly was based on the novel Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Conrad Fowkes - Eddie; John Henry Faulk - Mr. Grinsom; Claude Traverse - Mr. Taylor
Credit
David Golden - Associate Producer, Sidney Lumet - Director, Joanne Burke - Editor, Fred Hellerman - Composer (Music Score), Gene Coffin - Production Designer, Edward R. Brown - Cinematographer, Stephen Friedman - Producer, Robert Drumheller - Set Designer, Paul Hefferan - Set Designer, Stephen Friedman - Screenwriter, Larry McMurtry - Book Author
In an interview with another of the actors in the film, Paul Partain (better known for his role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) described the origins of the film:
When Sidney [Lumet] and [producer] Stephen [Friedman] got into town, they came with what they hoped would be the perfect formula for success. It had worked on The Last Picture Show, and they knew it would work here. It was this: get a Larry McMurtry novel, hire your three lead actors from Hollywood, get a great director, pick up all the rest of the actors and the crew from the local pool and you were set. Great plan, and it almost worked...
The movie was filmed in Bastrop, Texas; the filming was witnessed by a Texan journalist who later wrote a 1974Texas Monthly article about the film. The lengthly article (over 4000 words) was published in advance of its release, and noted the following:
Should you find more than a modicum of true Texas in the film — excluding John Henry Faulk's bit role — why, then, I'll buy you a two-dollar play purty. Lovin' Molly has no sense of Time or Place: a curious development, indeed, when you consider that Larry McMurtry's writing strength derives from evoking Time-and-Place about as well as you will find it done this side of Faulkner.
Let us fade, now, into the recent past — back to Austin and Bastrop, in November and December, 1972 — to discover how professional film folks could have so botched and perverted McMurtry's Texas.
[McMurty's novel was] a yarn of cattle country and of the last stubborn independent men in it; he well-clued the reader that his people wore coiled hats, boots, jeans, and retained a certain fierce saddleback pride. So director Sid Lumet trots everybody out in clod-hoppers and bib-overalls; they plant and reap as if in the best bottomlands of the rich Mississippi Delta.
