... Where She Danced

Angel Baby (Madera; Allied Artists) is a Bible Belter that brings to the movies Salome Jens, whose performance as the range "whorse" in Jean Genet's Balcony captivated New York's off Broadway last season. Now there is reason to believe that her seductive hallelujahs as a prurient evangelist may well make her the toast of the movie tabernacles. For Salome (she pronounces it Sal-o-way) is that rare actress whose vernal essence comes from within, breathing innocence, poignancy and a strange soft beauty into an otherwise wooden face.

Unhappily, the vehicle of her movie debut creaks--and reeks too much of Elmer Gantry. "Do you feel the Lord's name burning in your throat?" asks Preacher George Hamilton of Salome, who has lost her speech in infancy and "grown up wild." Well, then, "Believe! Believe and say 'God!' Say it! Say it!" Salome, swept away by George's oil-slick, sensual emotionalism, says it--"God!"--again and again "in humility and gratitude and ecstasy." George runs a traveling caravan that swizzles bourbon with its brimstone, and Salome, or Angel Baby, as they call her, hooks up. Brother George was long ago spliced to Mercedes McCambridge, a twisted, Bible-quoting shrike, but their platonic trailer-camp marriage is as punishing as purgatory. So those "illustrated sermons," in which Salome dances (not as her Biblical namesake but as Delilah of the "soft, yielding flesh and evil painted face"), give Preacher Hamilton the torments. Finally, Sister Mercedes, who cannot help noticing, has a conniption.

Spouting Matthew 5:28 ("Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart") and calling Salome "devil, slut, harlot," she tries tempting George herself and beckons him to "go through the holy fire" with her. George not only spurns Sister Mercy, he whops her good.

Meantime, Angel Baby, "swept up by this powerful sense of calling," gets herself billed as "The Preacher of the Ages." But when she finds out she is only a mockery as a miracle worker, Salome goes out of her head. Yet at film's end, for reasons known only to God and the moviemakers, she heals a crippled child just by praying over him. Her faith restored, even if the audience is confused, she and George head for his cozy trailer and, presumably, the troubled trail again.

Despite the tinhorn sound of the story, the movie manages to capture some of the sad, tawdry flavor of tent-show revivalism. There are authentic twangs to the score, a sweaty, sensuous realism in the swaying backwoods crowd, and vivid glimpses of gnarled God-fearing faces in Grant Wood gothic. The actors are so good they sometimes manage to make what they say seem important.

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