The Subterraneans (film)
[5][6] This adaptation changed the African American character Mardou Fox, Kerouac's love interest, to a young French girl (played by Leslie Caron) to better pacify racists.While it was derided and vehemently criticized by Allen Ginsberg, among others, for its two-dimensional characters, it is an example of the way Hollywood attempted to exploit the emerging popularity of Beat culture as it grew in San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York, without really understanding it.A Greenwich Village beatnik bar setting had been used for scenes in Richard Quine's film Bell, Book and Candle (1958), but Ranald MacDougall's adaptation of Kerouac's novel, scripted by Robert Thom, was less successful.The Subterraneans was one of the final films Arthur Freed produced for MGM and features a score by André Previn and brief appearances by jazz singer Carmen McRae singing "Coffee Time," and saxophonists Gerry Mulligan, as a street priest, and Art Pepper.[1] According to Filmink "I completely buy Peppard’s performance in this movie as a self-loathing, boozy aspiring writer, who gets consumed by his passions… after all, he was that in real life to a certain degree (he’s certainly better cast than Roddy McDowall and Jim Hutton as beatniks).