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This Property Is Condemned (1966)

Starring Robert Redford, Natalie Wood, Kate Reid, and Charles Bronson.  Cinematography by James Wong Howe. Edited by Adrienne Fazan.  Produced by John Houseman and Ray Stark.  Written by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe, and Edith R. Sommer. Directed by Sydney Pollack.

In Dodson, Mississippi Alva (played by Natalie Wood) and Willie Starr (played by Mary Badham) live with their mother Hazel (played by Kate Reid) in the Starr boarding house.  It is deep in the Great Depression and the small town is barely holding together. Nearly all of the men in Dodson work for the railroad and it is by means of this industry that Owen Legate (played by Robert Redford) mysteriously appears one day. 

Alva, who dreams of one day escaping to a big city, is immediately smitten with Owen and flirts with him as soon as he arrives.  The rest of the town is cordial with him, but when it is discovered that he is there to lay off nearly half of the railway workforce, he is immediately shunned. This does not stop Alva however, and she and Owen quickly fall in love. But the townspeople are getting hostile, Owen is scheduled to go home soon, and Hazel is pressuring Alva is court an old and lonely man who lives in Memphis.

In 1963 Seven Arts Productions offered Francis Ford Coppola almost four hundred dollars a week to work on a screen adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye.  John Huston, the film’s director, was not available at the time the screenplay was finished, and when he did eventually get to the project four years later he used someone else’s script.  But Seven Arts was impressed with Coppola’s talents as a writer and offered him a three year contract, which he accepted. 

One of his first projects with the production studio was to work on an adaptation of Tennessee William’s play, This Property Is Condemned.  He was one of over a dozen screenwriters to spend time with the project, but in the end he, along with Fred Coe and Edith R. Sommer, ended up earning himself a screen credit.

This Property Is Condemned is Coppola’s first project acting solely as a screenwriter and Sydney Pollack’s second job as a director.  Both of the young filmmakers performed well in their roles and subsequently the film succeeds.  The actors are great and the film has been quoted as one of Natalie Wood’s finer performances. It may be a bit heavy-handed with the melodrama, but overall the film does not suffer from it.  All in all it’s a pretty good flick.

Budget: $4,000,000 (approximate)

Total US Gross: $2,500,000

Genre: Drama

Runtime: 110 Minutes

US Release Date: 8/3/66

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Awards:

Golden Globes:
Nominated for best actress in a drama.

Tagline: Alva Was Growing Up The Only Way She Knew How…

Quote: “Mind if I asked you a question? Doing the things that you do, how do you sleep?”

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