Daisy Clover's Insides

Tomorrow, July 20, is the birth anniversary of actress Natalie Wood, so it's unsurprising that TCM is running some of her movies on Monday. One that I haven't blogged about before is Inside Daisy Clover, which comes on at 4:45 PM.

Natalie plays Daisy Clover, who at the start of the movie is turning 15 (in reality, Wood was 26/27 when she made the movie). She lives in a trailer near the boardwalk in Angel Beach, CA, with her mother (Ruth Gordon), who makes a meager living as a card dealer on the boardwalk. Dad took a powder ages ago, and Daisy's sister Gloria (Betty Harford) got married to a rich guy and left too.

Daisy supplements their meager income by running some sort of stall on the boardwalk that's Hollywood-related. She's got a love for Hollywood, and one day she goes and records her voice for 25¢ to send to the Swan Studio, run by producer Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer). Somebody at the studio hears it, and decides that Daisy should be brought in for a screen test. Not that Mom wants any of it. She's either going senile or has some other mental illness and, while Daisy loves her mother, the mental problems can also be embarrassing.

Sure enough, Swan likes Daisy's performance and wants to make her a star. But this is where the problems begin for Daisy. The studio decides that her life story as is is not something audiences accept, so they're going to say that both of her parents died young, putting Mom in a sanatorium to hide her from the public. (What's going to happen if Dad comes back?) Daisy can't really resist, because she's a minor who can't legally sign a contract on her own, which is where Gloria comes in again.

The studio tries to build Daisy up, but she's lonely in Hollywood, especially without Mom. One night, when running out on a party at Swan's house, she runs into Wade Lewis (Robert Redford), who is also running out on the party, which is because he's got secrets of his own. But he's a charming man, and he probably really does like Daisy as a friend, even though she naïvely thinks he's much more than that.

The studio does make Daisy into a star, but she's still not satisfied, in part because the studio bars her from seeing her mother. Wade tries to get her out of her predicament by proposing marriage to her, but it's on the day of their marriage that Daisy learns the truth about Wade when he walks out. And then Daisy's mom dies and Swan pressures her into completing the movie she's working on, something that may destroy her.

I'm sorry to day that I didn't find Inside Daisy Clover appealing. It runs 128 minutes, and it's something that probably could have been cut down by a half hour. It's overlong and self-indulgent. I couldn't believe Wood as a teenager either, which is a problem since she's the main character of the movie The musical numbers don't really work either. All of the actors do the best with the material they're given, but it's not the best of material.

As always, however, I suggest that if I don't like a movie, you might still want to watch and judge for yourself. Inside Daisy Clover is avaialble on DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.