Southern melodrama!

Speaking as a Southerner (well, a Southwesterner), I’ve always found in interesting that the rest of America loves to talk about how much they hate us but, at the same time, they also love books and movies set down here.  From the era of silent cinema to today with films like August: Osage County, people up north are obsessed with Southern melodrama.

It’s interesting because I’ve lived down south for most of my 29 years and there’s really not any more melodrama down here than there is anywhere else.  In fact, one of the main reasons that I enjoy watching Southern melodramas is because I enjoy seeing what the folks up north actually believe to be true.  I watch and I think to myself, “Northerners actually believe this shit.”  And then I laugh and laugh.

Take, for example, the 1961 film Ada.  Ada is pure Southern political melodrama.  (Admittedly, one of the best political films of all time — All The King’s Men — is a Southern melodrama but, to put it politely, Ada is no All The King’s Men.)

Ada tells the story of Bo Gillis (Dean Martin), a guitar-playing, singing sheriff who is running for governor of an unnamed Southern state.  Bo is running as a reform candidate but actually he’s just a figurehead for the wealthy and corrupt Sylvester Marin (Wilfred Hyde-White).  Bo is popular with the crowds, he has a great speech writer named Steve (played by the great character actor, Martin Balsam), and he has ruthless supporters who are willing to do anything to get him elected.  What he doesn’t have is a wife.  But that changes when he meets a prostitute named Ada (Susan Hayward) and marries her three weeks before the election.

At first, Sylvester demands that Bo get the marriage annulled.  Bo, however, refuses.  Fortunately, it turns out that the wife of Bo’s opponent is a drug addict.  Sylvester’s henchman Yancey (Ralph Meeker) leaks the news to the press and Bo is elected governor.

The only problem is that, once Bo is elected, he declares the he wants to run an honest administration and he starts to question Sylvester’s orders.  After the lieutenant governor is forced to resign, Ada lobbies to be appointed to the job.  Soon after Ada is confirmed, Bo is nearly blown up in his car.  While Bo is recovering, Ada serves as acting governor.  Will Ada be able to defeat Sylvester and convince Bo that she wasn’t responsible for trying to get him killed?

Watch and find out!

Or don’t.

Ada truly puts the drama into melodrama.  (It does not, however, bring the mellow.)  This is one of those films that’s full of overheated (yet strangely forgettable) dialogue and vaguely familiar character actors speaking in thick Southern accents.  Susan Hayward is so intense that you worry she might have killed a grip before shooting her scenes while Dean Martin spends most of the movie looking as if he’s waiting for the Rat Pack to show up and take him to a better party.

This is one of those films that you watch and you think to yourself, “Northerners actually believe this shit.”

And then you laugh and laugh.