Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

mach229 One of my favorite Saturday Night at the Movies movie from childhood. Even as a ten-year-old though, I hated Casey Cole, Charlton Heston's character - horribly misogynist, manipulative and macho to a degree rarely seen out of other Charlton Heston movies. He makes every effort to pull the smart, beautiful, passionate and ambitious Lucy away from her successful business and into his idea of the perfect little woman - barefoot and pregnant and waiting for the Lord and Master at the front door at the end of the day. Lucy loves him but is determined to be herself and not an empty shell to be filled with just him. I watch it now with happy dread - I have to see again just what a pig Casey Cole is while also seeing the awesome Jane Wyman glow and grow through every minute of her screen time.Absolutely worth the watch. My favorite character actresses Clair Trevor and Thelma Ritter are Casey fans but reliably good as well.

jjnxn-1 Sudsy drama is dated in it's attitudes but still an entertaining ride. Jane Wyman plays a youngish woman who after being spurned has got a fire in her belly and won't let anything stand in the way of her achieving her goal. That would include a young and towering Charlton Heston, it would be harder to understand her resistance if Heston's character wasn't such a macho jerk for much of the film. He's the right actor for the role since his clinched jaw delivery matches much of the blow-hard dialog he's given to speak. What makes this more than a standard soaper is the talent of the assembled cast. The film is fortunate to have not just one but two of the best character actress Hollywood ever produced, Thelma Ritter and Claire Trevor. Both play roles they could have performed in their sleep but each give them their customary snap and for the latter part of the film Thelma is dolled up in the height of fashion. For fans of high class melodrama spiked here and there with humor and filled with sumptuous trappings this is a gold mine, although be warned the ending with prove frustrating steeped as it is in a 50's mentality.

bkoganbing Before the much bigger budgeted Giant came out the following year, Paramount's B picture unit producers William Pine and William Thomas gave us Lucy Gallant a thinly disguised version of the founding of Neiman-Marcus. Jane Wyman plays the title role of a woman who was stuck in a Texas oil boom town in the Thirties and got the idea that the newly oil rich Texans might like some really fashionable clothing. As she is a recently jilted bride left at the altar, Wyman sells off her considerable trousseau and with that money builds the best department store in the state with all the latest fashions from Paris and New York.Charlton Heston has a nice part as the cattle rancher turns oil millionaire like Rock Hudson in Giant who waits for Wyman. But this is clearly Wyman's film. Her father was accused of embezzlement and committed suicide and she wants to prove as a woman she can start and maintain her own business.Wyman and Heston got a really good supporting cast from Paramount. The Dollar Bills as Pine and Thomas were called in the industry were getting bigger and bigger budgets to work with from Paramount although nothing like what Warner Brothers did for Giant. They assembled a good supporting cast with folks like William Demarest, Thelma Ritter, Wallace Ford, Gloria Talbott, and Tom Helmore settling in parts you are accustomed to seeing them in.One I wish had more screen time though was Claire Trevor. She plays a former honky tonk owner who sells her place to Wyman for her original store and becomes a friend and rises to be a queen of Texas society. There's just too little of Trevor in this film.Lucy Gallant is Texas putting its best foot forward. None of the warts are shown as they are in Giant. Still the film holds up well and Dollar Bills were probably justly proud of this work.

irpworks First saw this movie on AMC over a decade ago, taped it, and love it. It's actually a good conglomeration of events during the Texas oil boom. The scenes of the hotels being so full and nothing for people to buy in the boom towns is very accurate. The development of the great department store is really telling the story of famed Texas department stores such as Neiman-Marcus, Joske's, Hemphill-Wells and others that brought world-class shopping to the oil and ranching areas of Texas. Heston's performance is great and he really pegs the personality of many older rancher friends I know. And, any lover of Texas politics will love seeing Governor Shivers play himself. Other folks are right, we need this on a good quality DVD - it just has too much good history of the oil boom and post WWII development in Texas to keep locked away.