**SPOILERS** Ground breaking Hollywood movie in it being the first to have a major Hollywood actress Barbara Stanwyck play the in your face, not suggested, unapologetic bull dike lesbian Jo Courtney. It's Jo who runs the notorious bordello the "Doll House" in the French Quarter in New Orleans back in the 1930's. In fact at the start-as well as end- of the movie we do see this scroungy looking black cat walking through this dark alley in cadences with the title theme song "Walk on the Wild Side" as a foreshadow of things to come in the film.
It's when Texas dirt farmer Dove Linkhorn, Laurence Harvey, unexpectedly shows up at the "Doll House" looking for his girlfriend Hallie Gerard, Capucine, that the hasn't seen in three years that the sparks really start flying in the movie. As we, but not the very naive Dove, all see Hallie is the whorehouse madame's, Jo Countrey, personal squeeze or lover and she's not at all ready to let Hallie check out on her with another man or woman if that was the case. Hallie for her part has somewhat become accustomed to her boss Jo's lesbian advances even though she's straight! Since Hallie feels that she owes Jo at least that much for taking her off the streets, in New York's Greenwich Village, when she was a struggling artist and giving her the life of luxury that she's now so used to.
Slowly but surly the not so with it, in not knowing what exactly is going on, country hick Dove gets the love starved, for a man, Hallie to see things his way in taking off with him back to his dead father's, who Dove had been caring for the last three years, farm in Texas. This has the now dejected Jo throw a fit and try to do everything to split the loving couple up! To the point of both blackmail and murder! It's when Jo finds out that one of her ladies of the evening teenager Kitty Twist, Jane Fonda, rode the rail's with Dove to New Orleans crossing the Texas border that she uses that fact, even as Dove always said he never once touched Kitty, to blackmail Dove in him violating the Mann Act: Trafficking under-aged women across state borders for the purpose of prostitution. If convicted Dove can face as much as 25 years behind bars!
***SPOILERS*** Things really start to pick up when Dove refuses to be blackmailed by Jo and challenges her to go to the police knowing that her sleazy operation will be exposed to the public. This would lead Jo's paid off cops and politicians who let her get away with it now on the hot seat and, in order to save their necks, turning state evidence against her! In a last desperate attempt Jo together with her legless husband who lost his legs in a car accident Schmidt, Karl Swenson, in house enforcer Oliver, Richard Rust, who keeps the hookers in line and "Dockery, Don "Red" Barry, the "Doll House" bartender brutally work over Dove in order to make him change his mind!
All this backfires on Jo when her prime witness against Dove, in him violating the Mann Act, Kitty comes to his aid by refusing to testify against him. Wanting to make Dove pay for what he did to her, in taking Hallie away, Jo together with hubby Schmidt enforcer Oliver and bartender Dockery brake into Dove's living quarters at the Vidaverri Diner, where he works as a short order cook as well as all around handyman, still trying to get him to drop his idea of leaving for Texas along with Hallie! This time around Jo went a bit too far and in the end not only lost Hallie but her freedom as well with her whole operation shut down by the Federal authorities and the FBI. That's when Jo's former hooker employee Kitty, who finally realized what a vindictive rotten lowlife Jo really was, turned state's evidence against her thus being the one and only person making all that possible!
It's when Texas dirt farmer Dove Linkhorn, Laurence Harvey, unexpectedly shows up at the "Doll House" looking for his girlfriend Hallie Gerard, Capucine, that the hasn't seen in three years that the sparks really start flying in the movie. As we, but not the very naive Dove, all see Hallie is the whorehouse madame's, Jo Countrey, personal squeeze or lover and she's not at all ready to let Hallie check out on her with another man or woman if that was the case. Hallie for her part has somewhat become accustomed to her boss Jo's lesbian advances even though she's straight! Since Hallie feels that she owes Jo at least that much for taking her off the streets, in New York's Greenwich Village, when she was a struggling artist and giving her the life of luxury that she's now so used to.
Slowly but surly the not so with it, in not knowing what exactly is going on, country hick Dove gets the love starved, for a man, Hallie to see things his way in taking off with him back to his dead father's, who Dove had been caring for the last three years, farm in Texas. This has the now dejected Jo throw a fit and try to do everything to split the loving couple up! To the point of both blackmail and murder! It's when Jo finds out that one of her ladies of the evening teenager Kitty Twist, Jane Fonda, rode the rail's with Dove to New Orleans crossing the Texas border that she uses that fact, even as Dove always said he never once touched Kitty, to blackmail Dove in him violating the Mann Act: Trafficking under-aged women across state borders for the purpose of prostitution. If convicted Dove can face as much as 25 years behind bars!
***SPOILERS*** Things really start to pick up when Dove refuses to be blackmailed by Jo and challenges her to go to the police knowing that her sleazy operation will be exposed to the public. This would lead Jo's paid off cops and politicians who let her get away with it now on the hot seat and, in order to save their necks, turning state evidence against her! In a last desperate attempt Jo together with her legless husband who lost his legs in a car accident Schmidt, Karl Swenson, in house enforcer Oliver, Richard Rust, who keeps the hookers in line and "Dockery, Don "Red" Barry, the "Doll House" bartender brutally work over Dove in order to make him change his mind!
All this backfires on Jo when her prime witness against Dove, in him violating the Mann Act, Kitty comes to his aid by refusing to testify against him. Wanting to make Dove pay for what he did to her, in taking Hallie away, Jo together with hubby Schmidt enforcer Oliver and bartender Dockery brake into Dove's living quarters at the Vidaverri Diner, where he works as a short order cook as well as all around handyman, still trying to get him to drop his idea of leaving for Texas along with Hallie! This time around Jo went a bit too far and in the end not only lost Hallie but her freedom as well with her whole operation shut down by the Federal authorities and the FBI. That's when Jo's former hooker employee Kitty, who finally realized what a vindictive rotten lowlife Jo really was, turned state's evidence against her thus being the one and only person making all that possible!