of a five-year prison term in a women's correctional facility. Upon getting out, she obtained the right to live with her son, convincing authorities that she was able to do so. Cast Goldie Hawn as Lou Jean Poplin William Atherton as Clovis Michael Poplin Ben Johnson as Captain Harlin Tanner Michael Sacks as Patrolman Maxwell Slide Gregory Walcott as Patrolman Ernie Mashburn Steve Kanaly as Patrolman Jessup Louise Latham as Mrs. Looby Dean Smith as Russ Berry The actual kidnapped patrolman, James Kenneth Crone, played a small role in the film as a deputy sheriff. Historical accuracy The film's Lou Jean Poplin and Clovis Michael Poplin are based on the lives of then-21-year-old Ila Fae Holiday/Dent and 22-year-old Robert "Bobby" Dent, respectively. The character of Texas Highway Patrolman Slide is based on then-27-year-old Trooper J. Kenneth Crone. The character of Captain Tanner is based on Texas Highway Patrol Captain Jerry Miller. In real life, Ila Fae did not break Bobby out of prison – he had been released from prison in April 1969, two weeks before the slow-motion car chase began. Unlike in the film, Bobby died instantly (about an hour later in a Bryan hospital) when he was shot at Ila Fae's parents' house near Wheelock, Texas where they had gone to visit Ila Fae's two children (born from a previous marriage). Ila Fae was sentenced to five years in prison, serving only five months. She died in 1992, in her mid-40s. Production Steven Spielberg persuaded co-producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to let him make his big-screen directorial debut with this true story. A year later, Spielberg's next project for Zanuck and Brown was 1975's blockbuster hit Jaws. A clip from the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoon Whoa, Be-Gone! is shown in silence during a scene at a drive-in theater. This was the first movie to use the Panavision Panaflex camera. Reception The Sugarland Express holds an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.2 out of 10 from 52 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Its plot may ape the countercultural road movies of its era, but Steven Spielberg's feature debut displays many of the crowd-pleasing elements he'd refine in subsequent films." Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "If the movie finally doesn’t succeed, that’s because Spielberg has paid too much attention to all those police cars (and