Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beatnik Film Stars Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Shot by Robert Frank

Sure, you could expe­ri­ence the Beat sen­si­bil­i­ty on film by watch­ing The Beat Gen­er­a­tion. But why set­tle for that high-gloss Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er fea­ture treat­ment when you can get an unadul­ter­at­ed half-hour chunk of the real thing above, in Pull My Daisy? Both films came out in 1959, but only the lat­ter comes from the lens of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Frank, he of the famous pho­to­book The Amer­i­cans. And only the lat­ter fea­tures the uncon­ven­tion­al per­form­ing tal­ents of Allen Gins­berg, David Amram, Del­phine Seyrig, and Jack Ker­ouac. That Ker­ouac him­self pro­vides all the nar­ra­tion assures us we’re watch­ing a movie ful­ly com­mit­ted to the Beat mind­set. “Ear­ly morn­ing in the uni­verse,” he says to set the open­ing scene. “The wife is get­tin’ up, openin’ up the win­dows, in this loft that’s in the Bow­ery of the Low­er East Side of New York. She’s a painter, and her hus­band’s a rail­road brake­man, and he’s comin’ home in a cou­ple hours, about five hours, from the local.”

Ker­ouac’s ambling words seem at first like one impro­vi­sa­tion­al ele­ment of many. In fact, they pro­vid­ed the pro­duc­tion’s only ele­ment of impro­vi­sa­tion: Frank and com­pa­ny took pains to light, shoot, script, and rehearse with great delib­er­ate­ness, albeit the kind of delib­er­ate­ness meant to cre­ate the impres­sion of thrown-togeth­er, ram­shackle spon­tane­ity. But if the kind of care­ful craft that made Pull My Daisy seems not to fit with­in the anar­chic sub­cul­tur­al col­lec­tive per­sona of the Beats, sure­ly the premis­es of its sto­ry and the con­se­quences there­of do. The afore­men­tioned brake­man brings a bish­op home for din­ner, but his exu­ber­ant­ly low-liv­ing bud­dies decide they want in on the fun. Or if there’s no fun to be had, then, in keep­ing with what we might iden­ti­fy as Beat prin­ci­ples, they’ll cre­ate some of their own. Or at least they’ll cre­ate a dis­tur­bance, and where could a Beat pos­si­bly draw the line between dis­tur­bance and fun?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1979)

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road (And More Great Cul­ture from Around the Web)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.