Rosas perdidas

At first glance, "The Stripper" looks like eye candy: a cute young sideshow woman gets dumped by her manager and takes up with a local woman and her son, thereby developing a relationship with the son. But I do think that there was more to the movie than just that (if only a little more). In the lead role, Joanne Woodward gravitates between insecure and self-standing, not about to take from anyone. She does as good a job here as she did in "The Three Faces of Eve". Claire Trevor also does quite well as the woman taking Woodward in, but many of the characters come across somewhat silly as teen rebels. It seemed to me like Richard Beymer was channeling his role as Tony from "West Side Story" (although Carol Lynley and Michael J. Pollard weren't bad).

Anyway, "The Stripper" is a movie worth seeing. And if I may say so, Joanne Woodward was really hot in some of those clothes! Also starring Gypsy Rose Lee. I bet that no one imagined that director Franklin Schaffner would later direct the likes of "Planet of the Apes", "Patton", "Papillon" and "The Boys from Brazil".

PS: Not that this really relates to anything, but right after I finished watching this movie last night, Joanne Woodward's husband Paul Newman was the guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman"!

Franklin J. Schaffner is one of my favorite directors, thanks to super movies such as: "The Planet of the Apes" (1968), "Patton" (1970), "Papillon" (1973), "The Boys from Brazil"(1978), "Sphinx" (1981), all different as topic and genre. This "The Stripper," one of his first feature films, another genre, has as lead one of the best actresses ever, the unique Joanne Woodward, which is totally exceptional, always, in everything I've seen her, no more comments. The other actors, Richard Beymer, Claire Trevor, Carol Lynley, Robert Webber, are also very good. It's not a superproduction like the others, it's just a small drama in a province's American city, but it's absolutely worth seeing.

Sad and lonely mid west American towns photographed in black and white seem to be a very potent atmospheric early 60s film drama location that should be recognized as almost iconic in this new century. Other films of the time that each look as though they are all filmed nearby or around the corner from each other: HUD, BUS RILEY'S BACK IN TOWN, BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL , LILIES OF THE FIELD, KISS ME STUPID, IN COLD BLOOD all make a great set of rural wasteland town settings each with potent imagery and lonely people going slowly mad or frustrated or hankering for a change. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW perfected this feel in 1971. Stills from all these films would make a superb coffee table book...all that lonely black and white, crisp and windy farms and streets etc. yet obviously sad 60s. THE STRIPPER must have been the only film made at FOX in 63 with every other dollar of Zanuck's money going to feed CLEOPATRA. Apart from the misleading title, THE STRIPPER offers Joanne Woodward in a Lee Remick performance or is that a Lee Grant performance or is that a Kim Novak performance...because either of those women are interchangeable in those above films as well. 40 years later, like CLEOPATRA, this early 60s era of film making is being celebrated as having produced atmospheric and enduring films of fascinating visuals and emotional performances. I was lucky enough to enjoy THE STRIPPER in a cinema seeing a 35mm cinemascope print, and even if the story was a let down, the visuals and feel for that period and location is so well captured that it almost becomes the most enjoyable part. I am also a great fan of BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL which captures this loneliness and isolation with B&W photography that now borders on masterpiece. See it as part of the above series of films if you can and be overwhelmed by what I have described. It is like sad memories created by someone else and they take that form especially because of the photography.

The studio tried to cash in with a provocative title, but the film is based on William Inge's failed Broadway play A LOSS OF ROSES. Yet the trades were abuzz with casting rumors for the lead role of Lila, a broken down would-be actress traveling with a bum magic show who gets stranded in the town where she grew up. Mentioned were Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Natalie Wood, etc., but the role went to Joanne Woodward. The role was actually assigned to Marilyn Monroe, but she died. Anyway, Lila is taken in by kindly Mrs. Baird (Claire Trevor) who has a 19-year-old son (Richard Beymer) hanging around the house. Well it's no surprise that Lila and the boy create some sparks, especially as he has a virginal girlfriend (Carol Lynley). When the manager (Robert Weber) comes back to town to get Lila for a strip club gig, she must make the decision to stay with the kid or go with the cad.

With a bush of platinum hair piled on her head, Woodward makes for a flashy Lila, and she's a good enough actress to make Lila a person and not a caricature. Beymer and Trevor are also good. Lynley has only a few scenes. Briefly seen are fellow show folk Louis Nye and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Inge's troubled play, which takes place in the 1930s, failed on Broadway although it did win Warren Beatty a Tony nomination. The play starred Carol Haney as Lila and Shirley Booth as Mrs. Baird, but Booth dropped out during out-of-town tryouts and Betty Field opened on Broadway. The play lasted only 25 performances in 1959.

The film version was updated to present-day 1963. It also features Michael J. Pollard and Danny Lockin as Beymer's friends. Another of Inge's Kansas-set plays with the "you can't go home again" theme. The film is very underrated.

"The Stripper" is not at all what you think it might be if you go only by the title and the posters and publicity stills. In fact, I think it wins the award for the most shamelessly misleading promo campaign in the history of movies. First off, Woodward's Lila Green (a well-acted performance I might say) is a failed actress/magician's assistant who is not a stripper by trade, except when forced against her will late in the movie by her sleazy manager. Second, the posters and ads all show a smiling, teasing Woodward in her stripper's outfit as though the film promises something out of the climax of "Gypsy" (and then on top of that, they cast Gypsy Rose Lee herself in a small part!) but in fact Woodward's only strip number is a brief one done very flatly to represent her character's disgust with her plight. Quite obviously Daryl Zanuck figured that by misleading the public he could lure a lot of lecherous men into the cinema who didn't realize that they were going to just get a very run of the mill drama story that is really saved only by Jerry Goldsmith's jazzy score and Woodward's performance.

This was Franklin J. Schaffner's first feature movie after a decade in live television. Fortunately he went on to much better projects with "Planet Of The Apes" and "Patton", which are both cinematic masterpieces.