Ned Beatty Trippe in "Deliverance" (1972), starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, and set in northern Georgia. Beatty's character is forced to strip at gunpoint by two mountain men who humiliate and rape him, a scene so unprecedented, horrifying and shocking that it is still referenced as a screen milestone. In 1972, he also appeared in "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean", a western with Paul Newman. In 1973, Beatty made "The Thief Who Came to Dinner", "The Last American Hero" and "White Lightning". The latter film reunited Beatty with his "Deliverance" co-star, Burt Reynolds. He also appeared in an
White Lightning (1973 film) White Lightning (1973 film) White Lightning is a 1973 American action film directed by Joseph Sargent, written by William W. Norton, and stars Burt Reynolds as the main character Robert "Gator" McKlusky, Jennifer Billingsley, Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, R.G. Armstrong, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. Reynolds called the film "the beginning of a whole series of films made in the South, about the South and for the South. No one cares if the picture was ever distributed north of the Mason-Dixon line because you could make back the cost of the negative just in Memphis alone. Anything outside of that