''Hard Traveling'' is a 1986 American drama film written and directed by Dan Bessie and starring

J. E. Freeman James E. Freeman (February 2, 1946 – August 9, 2014) was an American actor and poet. He was often cast in menacing roles, such as the evil mobster Marcello Santos in David Lynch's '' Wild at Heart'' (1990), the terrifying henchman Eddie ...

, Ellen Geer and Barry Corbin. It is based on the 1941 novel ''Bread and a Stone'' by

Alvah Bessie Alvah Cecil Bessie (June 4, 1904 – July 21, 1985) was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the movie studios for being one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities ...

, the father of Dan Bessie.

Premise

Illiterate and unemployed, Ed Sloan marries widowed schoolteacher Norah Gilbert and becomes the stepfather of her two sons; but after not being able to find employment, Ed ends up murdering a businessman.

Cast

as Ed Sloan * Ellen Geer as Norah Gilbert Sloan * Barry Corbin as Frank Burton *

James Gammon James Richard Gammon (April 20, 1940 – July 16, 2010) was an American actor, known for playing grizzled "good ol' boy" types in numerous films and television series. Gammon portrayed Lou Brown, the manager in the movies '' Major League'' and ' ...

as Sergeant Slattery * Jim Haynie as Lieutenant Fisher *W. Scott DeVenney as Bill Gilbert

Reception

Walter Goodman of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' gave the film a negative review and wrote, "A true story? Sure. It's true to an ideology-generated fiction that was always false to life and to art." Kevin Thomas of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' also gave it a negative review and wrote that the film "is all the more disappointing because it so clearly could have been so much better."

References

External links

* * 1986 drama films American drama films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films {{1980s-US-film-stub