Nightmare Alley (1947)

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2000-01-28 NY Re-release
• Running Time: 110 min.
• Director: Edmund Goulding
• Cast: Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Colleen Gray, Helen Walker, Ian Keith
• Producer: George Jessel
• Writer: Jules Furthman
• Distributor: 20th Century Fox
• Official Site: Nightmare Alley (1947) Official Site

Forgotten today, source novelist William Lindsay Gresham actually worked with the freaks among a carnival before writing Nightmare Alley. This 1947 adaptation is fairly faithful to the cynical tone, though--in typical studio fashion--it changes the ending to a note of hope that Gresham never found in his own life. Tyrone Power's unprincipled grifter learns the code for a mind-reading act from old carny pro Joan Blondell, which he then makes a profitable sensation among the swells at Chicago nightclubs, aided by his cute new wife (Coleen Gray). The third woman in his life is a shrink (Helen Walker) who questions Power's supposed gifts. If the sex has been edited out of this movie, it relishes the grimy connivance of carny folk, who are not so different than their cousins in Hollywood. Power's goal, which inevitably destroys him, is to get a line of suckers for his act. He's most alive when he's roping them in, those poor, credulous saps, to get their money. And if he can't have that, he'll settle for "a bottle a day and dry place to sleep."