User reviews

In Braddock, North Caroline, the free-spirited and poor Ruby Corey (Jennifer Jones) is a sexy woman in love with Boake Tackman (Charlton Heston), who belongs to a former wealthy family that lost their land that is flooded. Ruby has lived during high-school with the wealthy businessman Jim Gentry (Karl Malden) and his wife Letitia Gentry (Josephine Hutchinson) that had unsuccessfully tried to teach etiquette to Ruby. Later she returned to the house of her father Jud Corey (Tom Tully) and her pious brother Jewel Corey (James Anderson) in the swamps. When Boake decides to marry the rich Tracy McAuliffe (Phyllis Avery), Ruby is courted by Dr. Saul Manfred (Bernard Phillips) but accepts to marry Jim that has recently widowed.

The population of Braddock does not accept the marriage of Ruby and Jim. Then, Ruby dances with Boake in a club and Jim has a fistfight with Boake and calls Ruby a tramp. On the next morning, Jim apologizes with Ruby and they go sailing. However there is an accident and Jim drowns in the sea. Ruby is accused by the population of murdering Jim and she decides to revenge, using the money she inherited from Jim and foreclosing on the debts of the hometowns. But Ruby is still in love with Boake and her behavior will lead them to a tragedy.

"Ruby Gentry" is a melodramatic romance directed by King Vidor, the master of this genre. The melodrama is excessive, with a wild young woman in love with a popular young man in a conservative town. Her revenge against those that blame her is great but the conclusion is silly. Rubby working as a skipper of a fishing boat does not make sense for a woman with her strong personality (and money). My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Fúria do Desejo" ("The Fury of the Desire")

Jennifer Jones is so big in this film she makes Charlton Heston appear to be underacting - no mean feat! Nonetheless she's a fascinating actress to watch, and the whole film is fresh. Does it seem like "real life" North Carolina? No, but I don't really think it matters. It's an effective, entertaining melodrama that was a big hit in its day.

Ruby Gentry was filmed on location (mostly in rural California), and what a nice, uncomplicated, outdoor feeling the film has. It's not studio-bound at all, even when the occasional use of process photography is obvious. Who could ever forget that amazing love scene played in the convertible careening down the beach, for example? You can almost feel the fresh sea air and smell the salt water. Heston and Jones, in this and other steamy scenes (at least for the time) make a surprisingly effective team.

Photographed in real light, Jennifer Jones looks just about five years too old for the part; she seems to compensate by overdoing the tomboy aspects, strutting about and speaking too loudly to people standing three feet away from her. Playing a tramp-ish character, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, she's hardly as naturally sultry or sexy as, say, Ava Gardner. She works at it, and works a bit too hard, at times. A scene in which she pours coffee for a group of horny guys, where all she has to do is stand there looking good, is played with so many varied facial tics and expressions. She can't throw away a scene, or a moment.

Yet her performance is appropriate to the character and the film. She commands the screen and is never boring for a second. What's great about Jennifer Jones is her incredible sensitivity, so that when Ruby is slighted by the people of her town for her low social status, despite (and because of) her marriage to Karl Malden's wealthy character, her hurt and rage are palpable. She really lives the part. And this drives the film. She has a great deal of life on the screen.

Charlton Heston is great. Looser than usual, calling his girl, "baby." He doesn't seem to rely as much on his mellifluous voice this time. He plays a regular American guy. It's a shame he didn't get to demonstrate the casual quality of his Boake Teckman, here, in other roles. But I guess when you play Moses and Michelangelo you don't get that much of an opportunity.

Karl Malden was still pretty new to moviegoers at this time but he became very popular, very fast, after his Oscar winning role in Streetcar. In many ways he's always reminded me of Spencer Tracy with his sharp yet warm, human portrayals. Unfortunately he didn't have Tracy's good looks and wasn't in line for leading man parts. But that didn't stop him from becoming a top star. He blends into his part expertly and makes us forget he's acting. He just seems to be Jim Gentry.

The brilliant director King Vidor went through a long melodramatic period and it was most enjoyable. Ruby Gentry was a highlight.

The score (for harmonica and orchestra) is one of the most memorable things about the film, the theme music became a big hit called "Ruby."

This hormone driven drama should have provided fodder for a good prime time soap opera the way Joan Crawford's Flamingo Road was later turned into one for television. The characters and plot line are right up there with Dallas and Falcon Crest.

Jennifer Jones is driving all the men crazy here. First we have Charlton Heston who's the scion of the town's leading family. Good bloodlines, but a cash flow problem. He just wants a roll in the hay with her bad, but marry her and soil the family name, heaven forfend. Then we have Karl Malden, the town's richest man who stayed faithful to and invalid wife, but who also lusts for Jennifer and then marries her before the wife's body is cold. And we can't forget the Yankee doctor who comes to this North Carolina town and takes one look at Jennifer Jones in a tight blouse and he's hooked. Bernard Phillips who plays the doctor is the narrator and it's his eyes from which we see the action unfold. And we can't forget Jennifer's brother James Anderson, a wild religious fanatic who is constantly warning her about the wages of her sins, but there's more than a little hint of some incest he'd like to engage in.

Charlton Heston said in his memoirs that he enjoyed working with Jennifer Jones, Karl Malden and the rest of the cast, but David O. Selznick, Jen's husband and svengali was one royal pain.

The movie is trash, it don't pretend to be anything else, but it made a mint at the box office. If you liked Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, etc., you'll love Ruby Gentry.

The turbulent life of a female sea captain is revealed. Jennifer Jones does quite well in the meaty leading role of Ruby, a swamp girl from the Carolinas who infiltrates an indifferent high society after marrying wealthy businessman Karl Malden. However, that marriage was just a convenience for this hellcat, who has pined her whole life for intrigued childhood hunting pal Charlton Heston, himself a recent newlywed to a girl who hails from the right side of the tracks. Silvia Richards' screenplay, which originated from a story by Arthur Fitz-Richard, is alarmingly direct, cutting right to the action despite a few well-placed flashbacks. Still, the narrative is somewhat confused (who's telling this story? If it's supposed to be Bernard Phillips' smitten doctor, he isn't around a whole lot). Jones sidesteps camp (just barely) with some enjoyably wild behavior in the film's second-half, and yet this portion of the movie doesn't quite fit comfortably alongside the rest--it plays almost like an unrelated episode. Director and co-producer King Vidor's strongest work comes in the earliest sequences, which have a well-wrought sense of character and pacing which the finale tends to lack. **1/2 from ****

This is the story of Ruby Gentry, as it is told by the town's doctor. Ruby Gentry was born in the wrong side of the town, she never considered herself a lady, and so nobody else did so. When Boake Tackman returns from North America to his hometown, Ruby Gentry believes that their old passion will keep her dreams alive, and that she will finally win his heart. But Boake (Charlton Heston) betrays her love,and marries a wealthy towngirl. Now Ruby marries Jim Gentry, played excellent by Kard Malden, the richest person in the town, but after some months he dies and the whole town turns against her, believing that she has caused his death. Ruby tries to revenge above all, Boake, but with the help of her fanatic christian brother tragedy comes and Ruby looses everything that she wanted.

Jennifer Jones had a big success with this movie, after 5 box-office flops. Its is a well known story, directed very good by Charles Vidor, and supported excellent by Karl Malden. Charlton Heston show the kind of acting that will follow for the rest of his career,and comes out rather convincing.

A good film you would like to see again...(but not a masterpiece)

Jennifer Jones plays a feisty tomboy with a sadistic streak who's in love with young masochistic Charlton Heston and will do anything to have him - or to reject and ruin him at varying times, it seems - in this slight and silly offering from director King Vidor. What Heston's character sees in this nut-job Ruby is any viewer's guess. Jones and Heston aren't bad, and Karl Malden is also a welcome asset to the cast in a supporting role. The ending is interesting amidst a well-photographed swamp background. But overall this is a dressed up and rather tacky melodrama that's much better directed than it probably had any right to be. ** out of ****

It's no big surprise that RUBY GENTRY receives such mixed reviews, because the theme of the film will not appeal to small-town America. Ruby is a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, as the narrator at the beginning of the film states. What this is code for in classic Hollywood is not necessarily straight translation. In other words, we are in the realm of a lost art form: the romantic film, or the melodrama. King Vidor was a master of this craft.

Ruby, then, was different. She was a free spirit, an unconventional thinker, and a seductive beauty. This is a lethal combination in the small, conservative town Ruby grows up in. She falls in love, of course, with the 'popular' boy, the rich kid, who the most well-bred society girls are after. Of course none of them have anything except their money against Ruby, and Boake (Charlton Heston) knows it! So there is an essential conflict between what Boake wants (Ruby) and what he is expected to have. He, unlike Ruby, is rather weak, and afraid. Deep down he loves her, but he lacks her spirit and wisdom. He won't go after someone looked down on by the town. He has to be 'respectable.' He cares what others think. Ruby does not, so she is willing to fight for him, but at the same time she does not want to be taken for granted. She wants her love to be fulfilled through marriage; he only wants her as a sex object.

I think it is important to note that Ruby Gentry is not necessarily a femme fatale, nor does she necessarily sin. She simply follows her heart. However, a series of accidents, including the death of her wealthy husband, occur, and Ruby is involved in scandal after scandal. The people always choose to believe the worst of her because she represents what they despise: an independent woman with beauty and natural intelligence, and class mobility.

RUBY GENTRY is a masterpiece. King vidor, my favorite director, is at the top of his form. Jennifer Jones, a talented and underrated actress, makes Ruby both sympathetic and believable. Charlton Heston is extremely effective as a complex character--one who on the surface seems shallow, but beneath the surface you can still feel his love for Ruby (which he struggles to hide, or deny).

Boake and his family feel they are above Ruby. Even Ruby's brother is judgmental and calls her a 'sinner,' based on assumptions. The final event in the film is a tragedy, but noteworthy because it was not the fault of Ruby or Boake, but a judgmental, hypocritical, and merciless society, imposing religious and social institutions which hinder us all.

The film is not dated. If anything, it proves melodrama is more effective than realism sometimes, where larger-than-life human emotions are concerned. People who call a movie like RUBY GENTRY 'trash' are actually in denial that the theme, and the emotions, are as vividly real and relevant now as ever. Anyone who thinks social class, sex appeal, and money do not count for everything in today's world, just as then, hasn't a clue. These are timeless themes, and the relationships in the film, and how they were negatively affected by the prejudice and snobbery around them, can be compared to any number of contemporary homosexual or interracial relationships, among others. How's that for relevance?

Sometimes the bigger emotions, the tragedies, are more appropriately told in melodramatic terms--because they are serious and heartbreaking and should not be reduced to cinematic language that conveys anything less!

Once again, JENNIFER JONES has problems while stirring up raging hormones in every man within sight, even when she's married to a respectable but boring middle-aged man (KARL MALDEN), because they all know she's still lusting after the man who got away (CHARLTON HESTON).

This is such over-baked, melodramatic corn that you can almost visualize it better as a silent film with tacky sub-titles while a woman with heaving bosom goes to pieces over a man she can't have because she is considered by the townsfolk to be an unworthy tramp and beneath the station of a well-to-do aristocrat.

But the soundtrack isn't silent and does produce a haunting melody, "The Theme from Ruby Genty" which was very popular at the time of the film's release. That and the pulp fiction quality of the film, directed in over-the-top manner by King Vidor, gave it a camp quality that had people comparing it to "Duel in the Sun".

It's strictly a minor melodrama with an overwrought Jennifer doing another interpretation similar to her Pearl Chavez.

This well directed film by classic Hollywood filmmaker King Vidor delivers unsettling passions , emotion , meandering drama and resulting in sad tragedy . Enjoyable melodrama set down in the Carolina swamplands , where they have names like Ruby , Jud, Boake , Jewel , Cullen . Despite their different social stratum , white-trash girl Ruby (Jennifer Jones) and upper-class Boake (Charlton Heston) grew up together in the 1950s North Carolina. Ruby Corey lived with her poor family in the swamps while Boake Tackman lived in a mansion with maids . As long as their friendship stayed within the socially decent limits no one objected . In adulthood their friendship becomes a mutual romantic attraction resulting in a passional love story . But then things go wrong when she marries wealthy financer (Karl Malden) and to spite him she seeks a cold comeuppance. So dangerous...destructive...deadly to love! The swamp hellion who wrecked a town - Sin by Sin !. The story of Ruby Gentry, who wrecked a whole town -- man by man ...sin by sin.

Yet another overheated and turgid Hollywood melodrama about a doomed damsel in distress from the wrong side of the swamp . Ordinary plot about a crazy love story in which an easy-virtue Southerner Jones marrying rich Malden to spite Heston , the man she loves . Vintage Southern theme of revenge , nice filmmaking and interpreation loft it a notch . The picture is acceptable , though displays some artificial roles .As Jennifer Jones gives a throughly exaggerated performance as the sexy but poor young girl marries a rich man she doesn't love, but carries a torch for another man . As Jennifer Jones overacting while tosses her hairb tempestuously and making the sultry even if sometimes looks like a re-run from he early character as Perla in Duel in the sun. Along with the two top-drawer actors , Jones and Heston , appearing great secpndary players , such as : Karl Malden , Tom Tully , Barney Phillips , James Anderson , Josephine Hutchinson , among others.

It contains an atmospheric , evocative cinematography in black and white by Russell Harlan . As well as adequate and romantic musical score by classical composer Heinz Roemheld . The picture was competently directed by King Vidor , though it has some uneven scenes . Here King shows some his peculiar visual style . In addition , the picture went on to become a box office hit . King Vidor directed other enjoyable movies as Westerns :¨Duel in the sun¨ , ¨Northwest passage¨, ¨Billy the Kid¨ , and ¨Texas Rangers¨ . And made several classic movies as ¨War and peace¨ , ¨Comrade X¨ , ¨Stella Dallas¨ , ¨Fountainhead¨ , ¨Our daily bread¨ , ¨The citadel¨ , ¨The crowd¨ , ¨Big parade¨ and several others . Rating : 6.5/10 . The flick will appeal to Charlton Heston and Jennifer Jones fans .

This film has Oscar winners, Jennifer Jones, Charlton Heston, and Karl Malden in an unusual love triangle. Jennifer Jones plays Ruby, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who can play with the men. She's in love with Heston's character but he can't marry her because of the scandal. But it doesn't mean that he doesn't lust after her. As a girl, she went to Mr. Gentry's home for a couple of years. Years later, Gentry (played by Karl Malden) invites her to help care for his sick wife played by Josephine Hutchinson. When she dies, he offers a proposal of marriage to Ruby. In the small town of Braddock, North Carolina, Ruby's marriage to beloved Gentry doesn't sit too well with the country club. Anyway, Heston's character is still pining for Ruby. I have to say that I liked Jennifer Jones in this role as Ruby Gentry. She allowed her to develop into a complex character than just a cardboard cut-up of the studio system.

A drama set in a small town in North Carolina that doggedly holds on to the strict social division between the classes, all the more so given the fact that powerful post war 20th century economic forces are changing everyone's fortunes, and now the old money (what's left of it) can only grasp onto the past in order to maintain their weakened grip on their obsolete social hierarchy. To threaten the social order more is saucy Jennifer Jones, who all the upper class guys lust after, a woman from the wrong side of the tracks with a born again brother (James Anderson) who throughout the film reminds her that her soul is doomed to eternal damnation as she tempts and pleases Charlton Heston, who's upper class family has only their good name left, and who is promised to only moderately attractive and far less sexy Tracy McCauliff (Phyllis Avery) who's family is still rich AND respected. It's quite a trade off. The best scene comes after Heston and Avery marry and are at the local country club for a dance, and Heston and Jones dance provocatively while Jone's husband, the rich and jealous Karl Malden, who she decided to marry after she lost out on Heston,can't believe that this is happening to him. The film falters somewhat as it lurches towards the end, but pacing wise and photographically (B&W by the great Russel Harlan) it's definitely worth checking out.

Another of King Vidor's hot-house melodramas about another girl from the wrong side of the tracks who marries on the rebound while still carrying the torch for the bad apple who threw her over in the first place. Jennifer Jones is "Ruby Gentry", pouting and pushing her ample bosom in the faces of all comers, Charlton Heston is the heel she pines after and Karl Malden is the nice, if somewhat overly jealous, widower she marries.

It's just the kind of sow's ear that Vidor was expert in turning into a silk purse; style oozes from every frame and both Jones and Malden are excellent. Even Heston, playing a bad boy for a change, passes muster. Of course, hysteria is never far from the surface and at just eighty-two minutes there's a lot of plot to cram in. What might have been just tawdry in the hands of a lesser director here becomes something of an American tragedy.

Charlton Heston is at the height of his hunk stage and played an unusual type, against his rugged, frontier persona. Jennifer Jones is sultry and moody through several decades, backed by the haunting "Ruby" theme. Richard Hyman's harmonica is a perfect compliment to the two lead character types. I think it is even more effective in black and white than it could ever have been in color. Perhaps this element underscores the black and white social mores of the era. This movie is the first to really make me believe Jennifer Jones character is principally an emotionally grounded person, touchable by others. I usually find her too self contained to feel deeply. I have seen this movie several times, and thoroughly appreciate it each time.

Jennifer Jones is quite good as the attractive but actually pretty toxic "Ruby". She comes from the "swamp" end of town but has aspirations to join the middle-class of this North Carolina community. A nasty mishap followed by a chance meeting with the gentle and caring but ailing "Letty" (Josephine Hutchinson) sees her set her first foot on that ladder. She is to stay with the wealthy "Gentry" family and help look after her new benefactress alongside her husband "Jim" (Karl Malden). As she blossoms, she attracts the attention of most, but especially of "Boake" (Charlton Heston). He has dreams, but cannot compete with the now widowed "Jim" who decides to marry her. This is where the snobbery of their two-faced friends rears it's ugly head - feelings that only worsen when a maritime tragedy ensues pitching her against just about everyone in town, even her own hell hath no fury brother "Jewel" (James Anderson). Vengeance may be the lord's, but the now wealthy and powerful "Ruby" has a good go at exacting plenty of it for herself, even on "Boake" - but he may just be one man too many for her revenge? The three atop the bill work well together building quite a solid story that packs quite a lot into eighty minutes of largely sentiment-free drama. I didn't love the ending, but I suppose it's not predictable and was probably the only way this story of rags to rather hollow riches could realistically conclude. Worth a watch, this.

Watch this one with a friend so you'll have someone to laugh with. Jennifer Jones and Charlton Heston bring their over-acting talents to new heights in this fun melodrama. Watch how he violently drags her into his arms and the two disproportionate faces, his gigantic forehead and her softball size cheekbones almost fit together. Listen to his forced gravel of passion and her snarling lisp. Watch them face each other with the same odd posture of caved in waists and flat behinds. See them try to walk across a room without knocking anything over, shoulders swinging and arms flinging as they go.

I would like to think this film would have been better with more subtle actors but even the story lacked credibility. We are told repeatedly that the town didn't like Ruby because she was born on the wrong side of the tracks, but I think her blatant public flirting and major anger issues might have had a lot to do with it.

Jennifer Jones and Charlton Heston both give steamed-up performances in this sexy melodrama. The beginning of the film starts off a little slow, but when Heston's character marries someone else, all the stops get pulled out. Of course, there are other actresses who could have played the role of Ruby: Ava Gardner and Gene Tierney quickly come to mind. What Miss Jones gives it, however, is a realistic tomboyish quality. For the first half of the film, she wears modest clothing (mostly denim) and acts rough and unsophisticated. She transforms herself into something more mature and glamorous when her character marries a wealthy man (played by Karl Malden). Miss Jones previously received direction from King Vidor on David Selznick's earlier production, DUEL IN THE SUN. Not too surprisingly, Mr. Vidor's direction is excellent, and without a doubt, he sets this production apart from his other films and from other run-of-the-mill melodramas.