Double Takes: ‘The Louisiana Hussy’ (1959) ★★ / ‘Desire in the Dust’ (1960) ★★★ 1/2

Great title, so-so movie.

I love a good, sweaty Southern melodrama, and I can love a bad one even more. Books and movies about horny Southern belles, hunky rednecks, conniving good ol’ boys and scheming trailer tramps always pique my interest, so I was immediately drawn to these two movies from the Eisenhower era that promise all sorts of sordid shenanigans in the Deep South.

I knew I had to see The Louisiana Hussy the moment I discovered it streaming on Tubi. Its title made it all but mandatory. Nan Peterson, who sort of resembles a pre-plastic surgery Melanie Griffith, plays the titular hussy, and she causes plenty of trouble when she arrives in the bayou shanty town known as the Pit. Well, she doesn’t so much arrive as she’s brought there by brothers Jacques and Pierre (Peter Coe and Robert Richards, respectively) after they find her in the woods, unconscious after having been thrown from a horse. She comes to long enough to give her name as Minette Lanier and accuse Jacques of stealing her jewelry, before returning to a state of semi-consciousness.

The plot synopsis on Tubi says that Minette “sows discord” between the two brothers, which is only partially true (Tubi also describes New Orleans as “a small bayou town,” so maybe don’t put too much stock in their synopses.) Jacques was already pissed at Pierre for marrying Lili (Betty Lynn, before she joined the cast of The Andy Griffith Show as Thelma Lou), whom he had the hots for, but Minette just makes things worse. First, she seduces Pierre—on his wedding night no less—then, when he starts getting too suspicious about her past, she runs to Jacques, claiming Pierre forced himself on her, only to belie that accusation by promptly fucking Jacques. Jacques, the big lunk smiling for the first time in the movie, is now firmly on Team Minette, and is none too happy when Pierre relays Doc Opie’s (Tyler McVey) discovery that the real Minette Lanier committed suicide in nearby Grange Hill. Jacques’ refusal to believe him spurs Pierre and Lili (who never learns of her husband’s cheating with the hussy) to take their pontoon boat across the bayou to Grange Hill to find out just who the fuck is this woman claiming to be Minette Lanier. 

Pierre and Lili not only find out the backstory of the Pit’s visiting vixen, but they also uncover why The Louisiana Hussy isn’t quite working as a movie: the interesting part—a sexy young woman ingratiating herself into the lives of a wealthy couple, seducing the husband and driving his wife to suicide—is a mere subplot, told in flashback. The hussy of Grange Hill doesn’t sound like a woman who would be content to hang out among the poor folk of the Pit, even if she is screwing its two most attractive men (pickings are slim in the Pit, OK?), but this inconsistency is of no concern to screenwriters Charles Lang and William Rowland. Their movie is about Jacques and Pierre; the hussy is just a device to titillate audiences.

Director Lee “Roll’em” Sholem, as befitting his nickname, keeps things moving along at brisk pace, continuity be damned (Peterson is wearing flats when leaving one location, but arrives at her destination wearing high heels), delivering a few grindhouse thrills along the way, including a daring-for-its-time skinny dipping scene. But for all the movie’s efforts to appeal to audiences’ prurient interests, The Louisiana Hussy never lives up to the awesomeness of its title.

20th Century Fox transformed Harry
Whittington’s 1956 pulp novel into
a very sweaty Southern melodrama.

1960’s Desire in the Dust, also set in Louisiana, is not only better, but sweatier, too. Seriously, almost every shirt actor Ken Scott wears in this movie is sopping wet. Scott plays Lonnie Wilson, the hunky son of sharecropper Zuba (Douglas Fowley, who’s sweaty and dirty). At the movie’s opening, Lonnie is returning home after doing time for killing the youngest son of town big wig Col. Marquand (Raymond Burr, wearing dry suits but frequently wiping perspiration from his scowling face) when driving drunk. Newspaperman Luke Connett (Edward Binns) has his suspicions Lonnie was wrongly convicted, but Lonnie has more pressing issues than confirming Luke’s hunches, specifically the issue pressing up against the zipper of his pants. “After six years of goin’ without it ain’t likely he’s gonna like to be sittin’ around chatting with us,” Zuba tells his oldest daughter Maude (Margaret Field, Sally’s mom) after Lonnie drives away in the family Jeep on his first night home.

Marquand’s blonde bombshell daughter, Melinda (Martha Hyer, giving a performance that should appeal to Morgan Fairchild fans), is the woman who relieves Lonnie’s six-year case of blue balls (I can’t believe he served his entire sentence without once messing around with a cellmate, but such things weren’t acknowledged in 1960). Lonnie’s post-nut bliss is quickly dashed when he learns Melinda has married Dr. Ned Thomas (Brett Halsey). “I waited six years for you!” Lonnie rages. “You had no choice,” Melinda smirks. Melinda is content to keep Lonnie as a side piece, but Lonnie doesn’t want to share. But can he get his revenge before Marquand—with the help of Sheriff Wheaton (Kelly Thordson, also very sweaty)—silences him for good?

At the movie’s periphery are Marquand’s mentally unbalanced wife (Joan Bennett), who refuses to believe her youngest son is dead and goes ballistic whenever her nurse (Irene Ryan, better known as Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies) tells her the truth; Paul Marquand (Jack Ging), who is basically the Eric Trump of his family; and Cass (Anne Helm), Lonnie’s little sister, who’s having an affair with Paul but getting impatient for him to stand up to his domineering dad and marry her.

Desire in the Dust benefits from a strong cast (Burr, Scott, Hyer and Fowley are all great in their roles) and William F. Claxton’s direction is solid if not exactly distinctive. The movie’s greatest strength, though, is respecting Harry Whittington’s 1956 novel on which it’s based. It’s not 100% faithful, but it’s close enough to where I’d say the movie is just as good as the novel. Some aspects of the movie are a bit icky, however, and by icky, I mean incestuous. Marquand and Melinda’s interactions often suggest they are lovers rather than father and daughter, and upon seeing his little sister Cass for the first time in six years Lonnie leers, all but saying he’d like to tap that. Not sure if the suggestion of incest is meant to play into Deep South tropes or not, but it’s definitely there. It should also be pointed out that each movie features exactly one (1) Black person and they are servants to their movie’s respective wealthy characters, which just doesn’t reflect the population of either movie’s setting, though this very much reflects the time in which these movies were made.

Its uncomfortable familial interactions and unrealistic racial representation aside, I love Desire in the Dust and credit it with introducing me to the work of Harry Whittington. The only thing that would make it even better is if it had been made in the mid-1960s by Russ Meyer. Unfortunately, Desire in the Dust is not available for streaming or on Blu-ray. However, if you’re not too picky about video quality, you can get a perfectly watchable DVD-R here.

A Story of Big Business and Blue Balls

Harry Whittington is one of my favorite novelists, so I’m kind of surprised I’m just now getting around to reviewing one of his books. But better late than never, and this particular book is even somewhat topical, it being about the railroad industry, which is kind of a hot topic in the U.S. now. Although the likelihood of people following the disaster in East Palistine, Ohio, immediately seeking out historical fiction about the expansion of a railroad in Florida during the 1800s is negligible, I figure it’s worth a shot.

Anyway, back to Harry. I first discovered Harry Whittington when I caught the movie adaptation of his 1956 novel Desire in the Dust on the Fox Movie Channel, back when that was a thing. I thought the movie was awesome and immediately sought out the book, which was just as good. Since then, I’ve been going on periodic eBay binges, searching out his work. Luckily, there’s a lot to choose from, and in a wide variety of genres: westerns, crime thrillers, mysteries, sexploitation, soapy potboilers and even queer pulp.

Of course, not all of Whittington’s books were written under his own name. Among his many pseudonyms was the name Blaine Stevens, which he used for a trio of historical epics he published in the very late 1970s and early ’80s, the first of which was 1979’s THE OUTLANDERS.

Set in the late 1800s, The Outlanders is the story of Ward Hamilton, a man with a dream: to own his own railroad. He’s so driven to achieve this goal that he hunts down his older brother Robert, wanted for stealing $100 thou in gold, so he can collect the $20,000 bounty. Also, he wants to know where Robert hid the gold. “I can use that money you stole,” the 19-year-old Ward explains to Robert when he finds him, hiding in a shack in the wilds of Florida with his servant (and recently freed slave) Thetis, “and warrant you a tenfold return you’ll never get with it planted somewhere in the ground.” Robert, out of spite, doesn’t admit to having stolen the gold, let alone divulge where it’s hidden. Ward will just have to make do with the $20 grand reward money.

Twenty-thousand dollars isn’t enough to buy a railroad, but Ward doesn’t let that stop him from bidding on the East Florida & Gulf Central railroad when he learns it’s for sale—information he gets when he beds the frustrated wife of its owner (“It’s been ten years since [my husband has] had an erection. Five since he’s wanted one.”) With some financial sleight of hand and the kind of self-confidence only found in those too young to know better, Ward’s bid for EF&GC is accepted. Now he must cover the full purchase price. So, he heads to Atlanta, where he calls on Lily Harkness, the prettiest of the Harkness daughters and Robert’s fiancée prior to his incarceration. She’s pretty, sure, but what Ward wants as much as access to her pussy is her knowledge of where Robert stashed the hidden loot—surely, he’d have told the person he loved the most. He gets neither, even when they marry. Lily has her own motive for marrying Ward, and that motive ain’t sex, the very concept of which she finds disgusting (the couple only bones two times during their decade-long marriage). Worse, Lily has no clue where Robert stashed the stolen gold (hint: the person Robert loved the most was not a woman). Ward gets more out of a business arrangement with one of Lily’s other suitors, the homely but goodhearted bank vice-president Hobart Bayard, from whose bank Ward secures a generous line of credit.

As the story progresses, Ward’s business success increases while his home life becomes more and more miserable. He and Lily have two children, only one of which is Ward’s: a son, Robin, and daughter, Belle. Lily becomes a religious nut, and then just plain insane. Ward isn’t always the easiest guy to root for — he’s a bastard in many instances — and his reasons for courting Lily were hardly admirable, but it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for him as he tries to do everything possible to give Lily a happy life, only to see her grow more hostile, poisoning Robin against him and resenting Belle for her closeness to Ward. Lily is also a sad case, but since The Outlanders is told from Ward’s point of view her behavior is often presented as the result of her being a spoiled bitch and not mental illness.

Adding to the tension is Julia Fredrick, the daughter of Dayton Fredrick, a one-time successful developer who was depending on buying EF&GC to transport vacationers to his struggling resort in Port St. Joe, Florida. When the two first meet, Julia is a precocious 13-year-old who develops an immediate crush on the young Ward Hamilton, which, fortunately, Ward doesn’t take advantage of even though the book is set at a time when sex with underage girls wasn’t necessarily frowned upon (“I like to pluck ‘em young, too,” a sleazy EF&CG rail executive tells Ward conspiratorially when he discovers Dayton Fredrick’s teen daughter in Ward’s company). Her feelings change, kind of, when Ward buys EF&GC, and she swears she hates him as much as she loves him, even though Ward and her father continue to be friendly. Ward’s feelings also change, from viewing Julia as a smartass kid to seeing her as a woman and realizing he has romantic feelings for her (mitigating factor: by the time Julia is in her twenties Ward’s balls are the color of Concorde grapes).

Ward’s fortunes begin to turn as the 19th century draws to a close. He is granted a divorce from Lily, but by the time it’s final Julia has married someone else — Hobart Bayard, now a bank president. Ward’s son Robin will have nothing to do with him, while Belle is uncontrollable, having been kicked out of every school she’s been enrolled in. Then Belle marries Laddie, an arrogant aspiring artist and abusive prick who beats Belle as regularly as she cheats on him. 

The stresses aren’t confined to Ward’s personal life, however. Industrialist Henry Flagler needs a railroad to transport guests to his Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine, and the railroad he wants to buy is Ward’s. He asks Ward to name his price, but Ward is too proud to sell. But Flagler’s not the type of man to take no for an answer. If Ward isn’t going to sell willingly, Flagler will use his power and influence to make sure he’ll have to sell. Still, Ward holds out, until a hurricane forces his hand.

Harry Whittington by Any Other Name is Just as Good

I’ll admit that I was wary of this one before I started reading it. Several years ago, I read Whittington’s second Blaine Stevens novel, Embrace the Wind, which was marketed as a bodice-ripping romance, and found it tough going for its first fifty pages or so, when Whittington really leans into the romance genre, adopting an uncharacteristically florid prose style (the book picks up when it becomes more of an adventure story). Thankfully, Whittington keeps the flowery descriptions to a minimum in The Outlanders, the novel being more discount John Jakes than Johanna Lindsey rip-off, though the eBay seller I bought it from categorized it as a western, probably because of the cover.

The Harry Whittington copyright
was enough to sell me on this book.

Essentially a rags-to-riches story, The Outlanders doesn’t necessarily offer a lot of surprises—you’ll realize early on that Dayton Frederick’s story foreshadows Ward’s, that Ward and Julia are destined to end up together—but that doesn’t diminish its entertainment value. Whittington’s writing keeps the story moving, and he cleverly weaves in real people (Flagler, Dr. Lue Gim Gong) and events (e.g., using prison labor to build railroads), as well as a few Easter eggs. One character that I thought was a real person in history was Marve Pooser, leader of a homesteader uprising against Ward’s ever-expanding railroad. I was sure I’d read about him somewhere before. And I had: that was the name of the villain in Whittington’s 1959 novel, A Moment to Prey (a.k.a. Backwoods Tramp).

If I have one quibble with the book, it’s that while Whittington successfully keeps us in the world of the late 1870s, a few of his characters behave as if they stepped out of the 1970s, specifically Julia. Yes, she’s supposed to be wise beyond her years, but sometimes she’s a little too sexually blunt for the time. The likelihood of a young woman in this time period declaring, in her father’s company, that she would like to go to bed with a man, and that her father would not rebuke her for doing so, strains credulity. Less anachronistic, though still behavior more closely associated with our time, is when Ward’s sister-in-law Lavinia seduces him (hey, Ward was bound to stray sooner or later), immediately giving him a BJ (He felt her face pressed against him, her breath across her parted lips hot and moist upon his glans). I realize blowjobs were discovered long before the Summer of Love, but I don’t think one would be so freely given by a young woman with limited sexual experience and raised in the Antebellum South. But considering that readers of the 1970s expected at least a dash of smut in their pop fiction, this can be written off as fan service. The sex scenes, BTW, aren’t all that frequent and are just explicit enough to make it clear what’s going on without straying too far into raunch.

I find Harry Whittington to be a safe bet, no matter what the genre. Even his lesser books are, if nothing else, entertaining. The Outlanders, while no classic, is a satisfying read, well worth checking out if you should happen upon a reasonably-priced copy.