No Down Payment

Director Martin Ritt explored the frictions of suburban life in this story of four married couples who live in a California development. Joanne Woodward, Tony Randall, Sheree North, Jeffrey Hunter, Cameron Mitchell, Patricia Owens, Barbara Rush, Pat Hingle, Robert Harris, Aki Aleong., Set amidst the homogenized splendor of a 1950s suburban housing tract, this drama chronicles the struggles of four families living therein. One is a used car-salesman with big dreams and no luck. Unable to cope with unending failure, he finds solace in booze. Meanwhile his wife considers a divorce. In another home, the wife of an electrical engineer is raped by a different drunk who gets his before the story ends. In still another house, a war veteran endures his job managing a gas station and dreams of becoming the chief of the subdivision’s police while his wife dreams of having oodles of children. Then there is the home of a hardware store owner. He generates controversy for lobbying to allow his Japanese American assistant to find a home in the tract, something that his wife, who wants a “whites only” neighborhood, strongly argues against.