From John Doe

EDWARD DMYTRYK’S spectacularly lurid melodrama centering around a New Orleans cathouse begins, appropriately enough, with a sleek black feline on the prowl,slinking in step to Elmer Bernstein’s jazz score as the Saul Bass–designed titles list the star-glutted cast. Very loosely based on Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel of the same name, Walk on the Wild Side, set in the early 1930s, features one actress on the rise—Jane Fonda, in her second movie, plays juvie nympho Kitty Twist (the name continuing the cat fancy)—and a legend near the end of her film career. Fifty-four at the time of Walk on the Wild Side’s release in 1962, Barbara Stanwyck, as Jo, the dykey madam of the Doll House, would appear in only two more movies afterward (Roustabout and The Night Walker, both from 1964), though she stayed active on the small screen well into her seventies.