Ode to Billy Joe
“What the song didn't tell you, the movie will.”
Synopsis
Set in sultry 1950s Mississippi, two teenagers grapple with surging hormones and the enticing promise of love, unknowing of the tragedy that looms ahead.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 19
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Frank MorrissShot by Michel HugoScored by Michel Legrand
Box Office
1976 · Box office
💰 Box-office hit — grossed 25× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$27.0M
Also known as
- Die Verführungde
- Ode a Billy Joeit
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Cast & Crew
19 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Robby Benson
as Billy Joe McAllister
Glynnis O Connor
as Bobbie Lee Hartley
Joan Hotchkis
as Anna 'Mama' Hartley
Sandy Mcpeak
as Glenn 'Papa' Hartley
James Best
as Dewey Barksdale
Terence Goodman
as James Hartley
Becky Bowen
as Becky Thompson
Simpson Hemphill
as Brother Taylor
Ed Shelnut
as Coleman Stroud
Eddie Talr
as Tom Hargitay
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
2Other crew
5Parents Guide
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