The Sugarland Express
IMDB 6.7/10 (2026 votes)
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Produced by	David Brown Richard D. Zanuck
Written by	Steven Spielberg Hal Barwood Matthew Robbins
Starring	Goldie Hawn William Atherton
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Vilmos Zsigmond
Editing by	Edward M. Abroms Verna Fields
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	April 5, 1974 (USA)
Running time	110 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Sugarland Express is a 1974 feature film starring Goldie Hawn and William Atherton. The movie partially takes place and was partially filmed in Sugar Land, Texas^[1]. It is the second feature length film directed by Steven Spielberg. It is about a husband and wife trying to outrun the law and was based on a true story.

Background

In 1969, Ila Fae Dent helped her husband Robert escape from a Texas pre-release prison facility (the same one where the movie was filmed), because she feared losing custody of their child to Ila Fae's mother. During their flight, they overpowered and kidnapped Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Kenneth Crone, holding him hostage during a slow-moving caravan of up to 150 DPS vehicles, along with media in cars and helicopters and hundreds of curious bystanders, that passed through Port Arthur, Houston, Navasota, and finally Wheelock, near Bryan. Unlike the film, the events took just several hours.

At Ila Fae's mother's house, they encountered numerous officers including an FBI agent. The situation grew tense, with Crone held at gunpoint. The FBI agent and county sheriff shot and killed Robert. The trooper was uninjured. Ila Fae spent five months in prison. She died in 1992. Crone was an advisor on the film and had a small role as a deputy sheriff.

Film Promotion

Original movie poster

The promotors of the film played up the grassroots support that existed for a mother trying to claim custody of her child. Some posters used the tagline:

A girl with a great following
Every cop in the state was after her.
Everybody else was behind her.

For the DVD release, the first line was dropped.

Trivia

• The pre-release facility is located in the Jester III Unit of the Texas Deparment of Criminal Justice - Institutional Division, in present-day northwestern part of Sugar Land, Texas.
• Every Spielberg film from this one on has been scored by John Williams, except The Color Purple and Twilight Zone: The Movie.
• The movie misspells the name of the city (Sugar Land is properly spelled as two words, not one).

Notes

1. ↑ Internet Movie Database - Locations - accessed 20 March 2006.

References

• "The Sugarland Express Gang", Texas Monthly, September 1, 2001

External links

• The Sugarland Express at the Internet Movie Database