Honkytonk Man

A boy with a music talent goes on a journey with his uncle for a stage concert. As this movie opens on an Oklahoma farm during the Great Depression, two simultaneous visitors literally hit the Wagoneer home: a ruinous dust storm and a convertible crazily driven by Red Stovall (Clint Eastwood), Emmy's (Verna Bloom's) brother. A roguish country-western musician, he has just been invited to audition for the Grand Ole Opry, his chance of a lifetime to become a success. However, this is way back in Nashville, Red clearly drives terribly, and he's broke and sick with tuberculosis to boot. Whit (Kyle Eastwood), fourteen, seeing his own chance of a lifetime to avoid "growing up to be a cotton picker all my life", begs Ma to let him go with Uncle Red as driver and protégé. Thus begins a picaresque journey both hilarious and poignant. —Paul Emmons <pemmons@wcupa.edu> During the Great Depression, struggling singer-songwriter Red Stovall (Clint Eastwood), who's led a hard life, which includes excessive drinking, is heading east through the American south on his way to Nashville, where he has an audition to appear at the Grand Ole Opry. Making it on the Opry would be his big break and his dream come true. Without telling them beforehand, he stops at his sister Emmy Wagoneer's (Verna Bloom's) farmstead in Oklahoma, the Wagoneers, who live by cotton sharecropping, and who, despite having no money, are planning on moving to California to escape the drought which has ruined their current season crop. Under these circumstances, two of the Wagoneers end up accompanying Red on his way to Nashville. The first is Grandpa (John McIntire), Emmy's father-in-law, who was born and raised in Tennessee, there where he wants to die instead of California. And the second is Red's young teen nephew, Whit (Kyle Eastwood). Although not the oldest of the children, Whit is the one Red requests, Whit, who buys into Red's dreams. Emmy allows her son to go as she knows Red needs someone to take care of him, with Whit and Red to make their way to California after Nashville. As Red needs to make stops along the way to earn some money to get them to their destination, including one stop to collect on a substantial IOU, the trio gets into one misadventure after another, one which includes a young aspiring singer named Marlene Mooney (Alexa Kenin), who plans to use "Marlene Moonglow" as her stage name, and who truly believes that her and Red's lives were destined to be intertwined. In their time together, Whit gets to see the real side of his uncle. What happens with them is affected by the largely unspoken elephant in the room, one with which Whit, in his tender years, may be unable to cope despite the growing up he does on this trip, and which accounts for Red's haste in wanting to make it in the business this time around. —Huggo In the Oklahoma dustbowl of the 1930s country singer Red Stovall drops in on his sister's farm. He has an opportunity to play at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville but doesn't have enough money to get there. He eventually sets off with his teen nephew Whit and Whit's grandfather for company. For Whit this is his first chance to experience the wider world. —grantss