Inside Daisy Clover (1965) Queer Film C+

In 1936 Angel Beach, California, Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) is a tough, chain‑smoking fifteen‑year‑old tomboy living with her eccentric mother (Ruth Gordon) in a rundown trailer. Dreaming of stardom, she sends a recording of her singing to Swan Studios. Studio head Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) signs her, rebrands her as “America’s Valentine,” and promptly commits her mother to an institution to sanitize Daisy’s public image.

Daisy marries fellow actor Wade Lewis (Robert Redford), but he abandons her during their honeymoon. She later learns Wade is bisexual and has had affairs—including with Swan’s wife. Daisy retrieves her mother from the institution, only for her to die suddenly. Swan’s manipulative control over Daisy’s career intensifies her emotional collapse. After a failed suicide attempt, Daisy decides to walk away from Hollywood entirely. In the film’s iconic ending, she blows up her beach house and strolls off, declaring, “Someone declared war.”

Although Redford insisted that his character be changed from homosexual (as in Gavin Lambert’s novel) to bisexual, it was still a bold choice of role for the time, and one that helped launch his career. Natalie Wood throws herself into the role of Daisy, though her singing is dubbed by Jackie Ward. Yet because Lambert had to eviscerate his own book in the translation to screen, and because Robert Mulligan’s direction is uneven, Wood’s work here cannot match the high‑water marks of Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, or Love with the Proper Stranger (also directed by Mulligan).

The film’s finest performance comes from Ruth Gordon, in what would become her signature screen persona: the eccentric yet sympathetic older woman. She earned her first Oscar nomination for the role and would win three years later for Rosemary’s Baby.

A BO and a critical failure at the time, the film has developed a cult following over the years.

The beach house that Daisy demolishes at the end of the movie once belonged to silent movie queen Barbara La Marr.

Cinematography: Charles Lang

Produced by Alan J. Pakula

Warner Bros.

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