Watch A House Is Not a Home For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

Awesome Movie

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

"A House is Not a Home" is a piece of pure 1960s trash. However, it's set apart from other such pictures because, inexplicably, decent mainstream actors appear in the movie. How they got Robert Taylor, Shelly Winters, Caesar Romero and Broderick Crawford to appear in this film is beyond me!When the film begins, Polly (Shelly Winters) is a poor, struggling nice girl in 1930s Chicago. However, when she is raped, she is tossed out of her house and is forced to find a place to live. Frank (Taylor) offers to share an apartment with her. However, over time she slowly begins to help Frank by throwing parties for him and his bootlegger associates...and soon these become more regular and Polly finds herself a madame! She likes the work and doesn't need to sleep with anyone. Not surprisingly, complications arise and the glamorous life of a madame isn't all it's cracked up to be. Through the course of the film, it alternates between drama, melodrama, sleazy exploitation movie as well as a comedy...and the way the film changes so rapidly is unconvincing and weird. Sadly, some of the funniest scenes are supposed to be poignant--such as the smack- addicted prostitute as well as the New Years celebration. Interspersed throughout the film is some incredibly preachy narration by Polly....again, meant to be poignant but eliciting laughter instead! Awkward and uncomfortable to say the least...as well as about as subtle as a board upside the viewer's head!! It's loud, over-the- top and utterly ridiculous trash...much like you'd see in "Valley of the Dolls". How this film isn't more infamous, I have no idea...but it's really bad and you have to see it to believe it! Entertaining garbage and nothing more.

Shelley Winters plays Polly Adler, real-life New York City cathouse proprietress in the 1930s who fell inadvertently into the sex-for-sale business after seeking help from a big-time bootlegger following a rape and an eviction. Although adapted from Adler's (ghostwritten) autobiography, this entertainingly tawdry movie plays more like an adult version of TV's "Playhouse 90" rather than a salacious expose. Dotted with 'shocking' words ("I'm a WHORE!"), and saddled with a bland production design so generic it's often difficult to get a reading on the characters, it isn't any wonder the only aspect of the film to survive the years is its title tune, written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Winters is fine in the latter portion of the plot (and does well with a teary telephone scene in the final reel), but she's hopeless when depicting the more demure Polly in her early years. Raquel Welch makes one of her first movie appearances as one of Polly's girls (she's usually found hovering on the edges of group shots), while Cesar Romero plays gangster "Lucky" Luciano as if he were running for office. ** from ****

The problem I found with A House Is Not A Home is that it was made at the worst time possible. Ten to fifteen years earlier the cast would have been better suited for their roles. Ten to fifteen years later and the Code would have been gone and a more honest film might have emerged.Shelley Winters a tad younger would have been perfect casting in the part of New York City's famous bordello madam. Still she does the best she can with the part. Folks like Robert Taylor, Cesar Romero, and Broderick Crawford are too old for the roles they played and show it. Romero plays Lucky Luciano who was in his late thirties when Thomas E. Dewey sent him to prison not in his fifties as Romero is, distinguished as he always looked. According to The Films of Robert Taylor, he was not happy with his work here, but took the role because he had a young family to support. And a more brutally honest film was something he'd never have consented to appear in anyway.Some young actresses who played Polly's girls gave some over the top performances. Understandable they didn't have careers of any substantial length.A House Is Not a Home will not be remembered by Robert Taylor's fans as one of his great films and it was a bad bump in the road in the career of Shelley Winters.

This is not a great movie, but it is not a bad movie either. It looks more like a movie made in 1944 than one made in 1964. The fact that it is in black and white probably adds to that feeling.Shelly Winters does a good job with the script she has to work with. It has some cute scenes and some omissible ones Good costumes, and workable scenery. If you are looking for an accurate portrayal of Polly Adler or even a good story based on the book, this movie comes up lacking. But like a lot of not great movies, it is very watchable.Lots of great actors appear in cameo roles in this movie, making it a good movie to say, "I never knew he/she made a movie like this."I saw this movie in the theater and it has taken me 40 years to see it again. While I liked it better the first time, it provides a good trip down memory lane and one I am very glad to have in my collection.