Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

The other day one of my students asked for recommendations for movies about burlesque and I remembered this one…

The Night They Raided Minsky’s, directed by William Friedkin, MGM, 1968.

Based on the book of the same name, this movie, set in 1925, tells the tale of Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland), an Amish girl who dreams of dancing on stage in New York. She arrives at the National Winter Garden, a burlesque house, run by Billy Minsky (Elliot Gould).

Minsky is beleaguered by Vance Fowler (Denholm Elliott) a zealous anti-vice crusader who wants to raid the theater. Straightman Raymond Paine (Jason Robards) and top Banana Chick Williams (Norman Wisdom) realize they can solve this problem by informing Fowler that Mademoiselle Fifi will be performing her dance that drove a million Frenchmen wild at the midnight show. Of course, the performer will actually be modest Rachel, doing her Biblical interpretive dance. The raid will be a bust and Fowler humiliated.

Meanwhile Minsky is courting gangster Trim Houlihan (Forrest Tucker) in hopes that he’ll invest in the theatre, but Houlihan thinks that investment gives him exclusive rights to Mlle. Fifi… But not if Raymond Paine seduces her first… And Rachel’s father is storming into the city from Pennsylvania. His daughter had better on the last train home or he will disown her.

Suffice it to say, almost every man in this movie wants Rachel for something.

It’s not spoiling anything (since they announce it at the start of the movie) to say that Rachel gets on stage, discovers the power she has over an audience, and invents the striptease.

The movie betrays its 1960s creation with the saturation of the colors and Britt Ekland’s bouffant hair. However, it does slip in some actual footage from the 20s, and the Lower East Side is dressed up pretty accurately. There’s a nice bit where they transition from the vintage footage to black and white film of a street scene and then take it to color.

The best reason to watch this movie is the burlesque show. Throughout the movie you see the show in progress. A chorus line of 10 terrific girls (but only 9 costumes) prance and shimmy on the stage in skimpy costumes. One of them looks like she’d rather be anywhere else and another just can’t dance. There are classic comedy sketches like “Meet me Round the Corner” and “Crazy House”, some of them including talking women. The candy butcher does his spiel, pitching bonbons along with the promises of gold watches and racy pictures of Mlle. Fifi.

In 1968 there were plenty of people who still remembered burlesque and some of those people were in the movie. The Master of Ceremonies is played by burlesque tit singer Dexter Maitland. Bert Lahr, playing a retired straightman, got his start as a burlesque comic, before his fame as The Cowardly Lion. When he died before filming was complete, burlesque comic Joey Faye stood in for him. Morton Minsky, the youngest Minsky brother, was the technical advisor.

It’s a fun film with a great cast, but the highlights are the scenes onstage and backstage.

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