Critical Evaluation
Although no comparably substantive treatments of her career have surfaced thus far, Graves and Tarantino are far from alone in citing the integrity of Haynes' work - though some also note a corresponding failure of filmmakers to put it to good use. In her 1977 review of Rolling Thunder in New York Magazine, Molly Haskell remarks:
The men... come off better than the women because they are excused from ever uttering a word. Linda Haynes, who was so exciting and authentically rural in Robert Mulligan's Nickel Ride, has that most thankless role of the adoring and impossibly patient woman who must babble on to fill the silences.
In his book-length critique of cinema's track record, regarding the homecoming veteran, author Emmett Early discusses the same film:
Linda Haynes plays the barmaid with measured abandon. She says at one point, after Charlie has involved her in a violent scene, "Why do I get stuck with crazy men?" Charlie replies, "That's the only kind that's left." He describes himself as already dead when she tries to make love to him. Like Charlie, the movie fails to take advantage of her talents.
Reviewing the 2011 DVD release of The Nickel Ride, Slant Magazine's Fernando F. Croce (who elsewhere cites "the unheralded Linda Haynes") notes that its downtrodden protagonist (portrayed by sometime playwright Jason Miller):
nevertheless hangs on to a thread of taciturn self-respect largely thanks to his "cracker wife" Sarah (perennial "Whatever Happened To?" case Linda Haynes, a sort of thrift-store Sissy Spacek who can imprint a whole blowsy lifetime into the way she shimmies her hips).
Reviewing the same film, critic Glenn Erickson notes that the protagonist's "intensely loyal... ex-dancer girlfriend' is portrayed by "the remarkable Linda Haynes."
Read more about this topic: Linda Haynes
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