A House Is Not a Home

1964 Directed by Russell Rouse

Story follows the life of Polly Adler, who grew to become one of New York's most successful bordello madams of the 1920s.

Shelley Winters Robert Taylor Cesar Romero Ralph Taeger Kaye Ballard Broderick Crawford Mickey Shaughnessy Lisa Seagram Meri Welles Jesse White Connie Gilchrist Constance Dane Allyson Ames Lewis Charles Steve Peck Michael Forest Stanley Adams Richard Reeves Roger C. Carmel J. Pat O'Malley Alice Reinheart Ben Astar Hayden Rorke Benny Rubin Tom D'Andrea Gee Gee Galligan Alex Gerry Edmon Ryan George Cisar Show All…

98 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Recent reviews

Review by Jeremy Allison ★★★

From Russell Rouse, the director of the camp classic THE OSCAR comes another star studded and bizarre melodrama... this time, based on a true story!
Not a great film, but definitely entertaining, and definitely strange. Shelley gives it her all as always, and Robert Taylor is nice and charming. But the story is told in such a strange way, it goes from straight drama to silly sitcom-esque comedy blackouts in the blink of an eye. Very weird.
I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed seeing great character actors like Cesar Romero, Jesse White, Kaye Ballard, Mickey Shaughnessy, J. Pat O'Malley, Broderick Crawford and Benny Rubin pop up in small roles.
Special mention to the first film performance of Raquel Welch as…
Review by RJSit10 ★★★½

This is either a well-acted message about the limited choies women have...or it is just canp trash.
It's a little hard to buy Shelley Winters as a sweatshop innocent -- she
is 44 here. But as the woman she grows up to e, she is everything we
love about her, Joan Blondelling through rooms and holding her own with the fellas..
The film keeps telling us this is Jazz Age New York, all "Speaks" and
Dance Halls, but the Production department did not get that memo.
Even Edith Head's costumes are unapologetically contemporary.
Three cheers for Kaye Ballard in a Valerie Harper role.
By the time one of the girls is a dope fiend, you know by the cymbal
crashes…
Review by Scott Free ★★★

Shelley Winters in a Polly Adler biopic seems like great casting. And Ms. Winters does a fine job with it. But this seems to have been made on about a TV level budget and there's no real attempt to recreate the feel or look of the era (early 20th century) so we're left with sort of a mix of modern and old fashion attitudes that never really lands.
Review by Ryan ★

It's a movie. And it's fairly bland, especially given the story.
Review by JaredAbbott ★★

“I pin my diamonds on loneliness and despair, and I’ll never have a home”
Plenty of camp value here, but tbh, a movie where Shelley Winters casually starts pimping out broads should be a lot more fun. A tonal spaz that bounces between fluffy mob farce and ruff-n-tuff prostitution biopic with ODs and suicides , the whole thing eventually gets completely bogged down by a snoozy romance subplot.