Hard, Fast and Beautiful

Ida Lupino’s taut tennis drama depicts the complexities and limits of female ambition in postwar suburban America and contains an early exposé of corruption in amateur sports. Tennis prodigy Florence (Sally Forrest) is torn between her own dedication to her sport, using tennis to fulfill the materialistic dreams of her ambitious mother (Claire Trevor), and her desire to please her doting fiancé. Florence’s painful realization that she has been compromised by Mom in cahoots with and enthralled by a venal tennis promoter is soon echoed by her mother’s bitter comeuppance.