Broadway star Jo Van Fleet was not yet 40 when she made her film debut in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden, but her role in that film—which would win her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress—is of a rather older woman, the madame of a Salinas Valley brothel, overflowing with a lifetime’s disappointment. This would establish a pattern for Oakland native Van Fleet, whose slim but impeccable filmography is filled with some of cinema’s toughest old battle-axes and bitterest biddies. A tender tribute to a great screen specialist in hard-backed women.