Jane Fonda wasn’t the star attraction, or even the prettiest actress on the screen in her third film, 1962’s “Walk on the Wild Side.”

The regal French beauty Capucine was higher billed. The versatile Anne Baxter and earth mama Joanna Moore were also on board, after all.

But try and take your eyes off Fonda in this melodramatic but rarely sentimental Great Depression tale of women, a Big Easy brothel and the innocent young man from Texas who doesn’t realize what his long lost love has been up to in the years since they parted.

Fonda pretty much steals the picture as Kitty Twist from Paducah, raw and broke and hungry and on the road until she makes her way to New Orleans where she’ll prove “a gal’s always…got other things she can use” to make a buck.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the madam of The Doll House brothel, so there’ll be no “stealing from the house” and no scene stealing on her watch, thank you very much.

Laurence Harvey has one of his better roles as lean, 30ish Dove Linkhorn, who just buried his daddy on the small family ranch outside of Arroyo, Texas. He meets the fiesty, amoral and light-fingered Kitty, who meets Dove on the tramp, hitchhiking and hoboing his way across Depression Era Texas for New Orleans.

Kitty takes Mr. “greenhorn” under her wing, jumping trains and showing a little leg to help with the hitchhiking.

“What’d you tell’em?” Dove wants to know about a compliant trucker.

“Never mind. Just cough now and then like you’re dying.”

Legend has it that Ben Hecht contributed to this screenplay. A safe bet would be that he wrote most of Hank Fonda’s daughter’s lines. Fonda lands the punch line like a pro.

“Talkers ain’t never cute, and the cute ones never talk.”

Dove is on his way to find a long-lost summer love, Hallie. But events conspire to sideline him at Teresina’s Cafe (Anne Baxter slinging the chicharrones and an accent) Cafe, for a bit. The utterly opportunistic Kitty goes her own way, for a while. And we miss her.

Turns out Hallie (Capucine, of “The Pink Panther”), an aspiring artist, lives and works in The Doll House. She’s in demand, which gives her throw weight about Madam Jo (Stanwyck) and her muscle, the sadistic Oliver (Richard Rust). She’ll need that pull when Dove finds her and tries to, as the cliche goes, take her away from all this.

The film, adapted from a Nelson Algren novel — he wrote the dope thriller “Man with the Golden Arm” — plays on screen likeTennessee Williams Lite, from its sordid New Orleans setting to the Big Themes of naive optimism struggling against cruel reality.

The abusive pimp puts on gloves before slapping around simple Georgia girl Precious (Moore, who gained a measure of immortality from a four episode arc on “The Andy Griffith Show,” of all things).

Ken Lynch, who played a lot of cops and heavies over the years, plays the city-hall-connected “friend” of the bordello, and a big fan of Hallie.

And Okie-lean John Anderson plays a judgmental, fire and brimstone street preacher who meets his match when he calls Hallie “harlot.”

“You’re no friend to God or man,” Dove barks, “standing there, hollering hate to the world. God is love. God is mercy and forgiveness! Try preaching that sometimes, Mister Preacher!”

Pretty topical, even today. And that’s an accurate taste of the South of that time, too. Every person you confront was liable to come back at you, and hot, with her or his own interpretations of Christiianity. I’ve seen it and it’s a wonder to behold.

But this movie is Jane Fonda’s “a star is born” moment. Stanwyck is fierce in her best scenes, a matriarch growing into her tough broad middle age. But Fonda lets us see Kitty working it, scheming it, sassing it, facing Terasina-might-steal-her-man-with-warmth with spit and a little xenophobia

“Tortillas? Chicharrones?”

“I hope it’s easier to eat than pronounce.”

It not as “Wild” as all that. It might be — OK it definietly is — Tennessee Williams Lite. But “Walk on the Wild Side” grabs its Southern sin and sadism cliches, its good-girl-gone wrong (NOT Kitty, oh no.) tropes and takes them for a spin. And in the hands of a pretty good director (Edward “Crossfire” Dymtryk) and a good cast including a future two-time Oscar winner, it more wild than mild, and that’ll do.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual (bordello) setting

Cast: Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter, Richard Rust, Karl Swenson and John Anderson.

Credits: Directed by Edward Dymytck, scripted by John Fante and Edmund Morris (with Raphael Hayes and Ben Hecht), based on a Nelson Algren novel. A Columbia release on Tubi, Amazon, Youtube etc.

Running time: 1:53