JohnHowardReid The Big Street is one of those sentimental little yarns blown up from the whimsical attractiveness of print to the harsher light of the cinema screen. It is the sort of story that Damon Runyon excels in - and here he is producing it for the screen himself! Alas, the principal pleasure in reading his stories is his very characteristic literary style - a tongue-in-cheek amalgam of East Side slang and back of Broadway jargon - that is extremely difficult to transfer to the screen without losing the bite and humor that is an essential ingredient of its flavor. One-dimensional characters which seem so amusing on the printed page are also much less appealing on the screen unless the players can achieve exactly the right balance between fancy and reality.This adaptation is only moderately successful. The direction is routine and production values are very moderate. A lot of obvious process work doesn't really help either. On the other hand, Russell Metty's lighting photography is so polished and atmospheric and the sets and costumes are so attractive as to overshadow the lack of craftsmanship in other departments. Furthermore, the cast is outstanding. True, some of the more interesting players like Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead and Barton MacLane have only small parts, but Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball make a worthy team. Fonda manages to bring absolute conviction and sincerity to the incredibly naive and almost impossibly devoted Little Pinks. As for Lucille Ball, she herself and many critics regard her characterization of the willful and conceited Gloria as her finest screen performance.N.B. Similarity of the plot and principal characters to those of Midnight Cowboy (1969) should not go unnoticed. Miss Ball's singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears.

mark.waltz To laugh at Lucy is not to know her as a dramatic actress, and in this Damon Runyeon drama, she is at her dramatic, bitchiest best. The wise-cracking girl of "Stage Door" (1937) has grown up, and here she is a gangster's moll nightclub singer. Busboy Henry Fonda is enamored of her to the point where he refers to her as "Your Highness", a nickname Lucy's maid Louise Beavers goes mad over. "Coming, Your Highness!" she responds to Ball's "Hey Ruby, move your big fat feet!", Beavers adding on that boisterous laugh that jolts her own heart full of gold. But to Lucy, Fonda's "Little Pinks" has a heart full of mush, something she'll need when her "daddy" (Barton MacLane) pushes her down a flight of stairs after she threatens to leave him and blames it on the fact that she was drunk. Her Broadway pals all disappear on her with the exception of Fonda and Beavers. Broke and desperate, Ball moves in to Fonda's small apartment, continues to abuse him, and lives off the champagne and caviar that he scrapes together nightly so she can continue to live in her dream world. Her desire is to go to Florida so she can see the man she really loves (William T. Orr), a socialite bore not worthy of her time. Fonda quits his job and pushes her there in her wheel chair, where his pals Violet (Agnes Moorehead) and Nicely Nicely Johnson (Eugene Palette) have opened a ocean front burger dive. It is there that Ball learns the true meaning of total unselfishness, something she had earlier been ignoring in her own spirit.Yes, the idea of Henry Fonda pushing Lucille Ball from New York to Florida in a wheelchair might sound absurd, but somehow, the movie pulls it off. To see Lucy playing such a hard character might be difficult for her comedy fans to accept. More than 20 years after her death, Lucy still reigns as TV's top female clown. But before that, she had a very versatile movie career, singing and dancing in "Best Foot Forward" and "DuBarry Was a Lady", and clowning around Lucy Ricardo style in "Her Husband's Affairs" and "The Fuller Brush Girl". This is Lucy at her cinematic best. Henry Fonda seems a bit out of sorts as the busboy whose unrequited love for her goes unnoticed. Two years after his dramatic triumph in "The Grapes of Wrath", this is almost a step down for him, but he does so with noble results. And that supporting cast. Wow. Agnes Moorehead goes from the shy Violet who replaces Eugene Palette in an eating contest to his nagging wife, and is very funny. Palette is adorable here, playing Nicely Nicely much different than Stubby Kaye would later do on Broadway and in the film version of "Guys and Dolls". MacLane is appropriately mean, Beavers loving, and Ray Collins the Greek Chorus of the plot. Add on Marion Martin as a Florida socalite and Sam Levene, who would be Nathan Detroit 8 years later when "Guys and Dolls" made it to Broadway. All in all, this is a film that can't be skipped.

kenjha A busboy (busman, really) so adores a nightclub singer that he devotes his life to caring for her after she becomes paralyzed; she treats him like dirt. It sounds like a good premise for a romantic comedy except that this is a serious drama. Ball plays such a self-centered, ungrateful jerk that it defies logic that anyone would voluntarily cater to her. Fonda loves her so much that he pushes her in a wheelchair from New York to Florida! And remember, this is not played for laughs. The finale is so utterly ridiculous that one figures it must be a comedy. No - still serious. The fine supporting cast features the likes of Palette, Moorehead, and Levene, but the script is lame.

jimmyburrell I have always been thrilled to see Lucille Ball in the old Hollywood movies in which she starred many years before her stardom in the sitcom "I Love Lucy". She held the grace of the top stars at the time and I can certainly understand why Desi Arnaz fell madly in love with her after seeing this film. I sincerely believe that if you have never seen "The Big Street" then you have not seen Lucille Ball at her best. She was an incredibly talented Hollywood movie actress and I only regret that I hadn't discovered that sooner. This movie made me want to collect all of Lucy's old movies because this one was a real surprise for me! I loved Lucy before, but now I respect and appreciate her even more for being a survivor and holding her own among the likes of Grace Kelly and Greta Garbo. Lucy certainly was a bombshell in her day! See this movie and you will understand why. It will win over even the toughest critic.