THI

'Inside Daisy Clover' Stumbles on Plot That's Hard to Swallow

By W. WARD MARSH Perhaps an even more appropriate title for "Inside Daisy Clover" would be "Inside the Warner Brothers Lot."

Here is a kind of story about how talent might be discovered and made a star overnight.

NATALIE WOOD plays a happy wharf rat who scrawls mild curses on walls against people. She makes a record on her own, sends it to the studio and she is so good she is snapped up for stardom.

Allen, Richmond, Riverside "Inside Daisy Clover"

*

24

Another New Star Is (Almost) Born. Due to plot difficulties or rather, lack of convincing plot, the star "dies" a-borning.

drama in Panavision and Technicolor. "INSIDE DAISY CLOVER," comedy directed by Robert Mulligan. Screen play by Gavin Lambert based on his novel. Music: Andre Previn. Words: Dory

Daisy

•

cast:

Wade Lewis ...............................

The Dealer ....................................

Natalie Wood.

Roddy McDowall.

Ruth Gordon.

Being all she has been, it's which is not only played serinot easy to swallow the story ously but is dated back to the initial version of "A Star is Born." The plot and the style are of the same vintage.

While I am sure "Daisy Clover" will be immensely $3-bill to me. popular, it is as phony as a

NATALIE DOES well

Previn. A Warner Brothers Picture proby the following cartikula and played Jenough in a wild-child role. duced by Alan J. Raymond Swan this Christopher Plummer: Christopher Plummer Baines Robert Redford time is the heavy. He is the Melora Swan studio head who makes her a star, tolerates her temperament, and ultimately slugs her when she ties up producition.

Katharine Bard.

head takes her, which breaks Directly after that she falls his wife's heart. In the end, for a male star. Being a the "star" pulls out of her drunk would be enough to grief. The "pulling out" is The best in the picture is condemn him without throw-almost pure slapstick which Ruth Gordon, who plays the ing in the further and needadds no palatable flavor to role of Natalie's dippy mother, less condemnation that he is what has been a straight given to solitaire and fortune also a homosexual, melodrama with some com-via cards.

On the rebound, the studio edy tones at the outset.

Roddy McDowall as as the studio chief's secretary, chauffeur and muted Greek] chorus after a fashion, has little more than walk-ons. He does several of them, all impressive. Katharine Bard as the wife who cracks up, does a real crack-up job of cracking up.

The picture is lavishly staged.