Les loups et l'agneau

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"!

The play that Warren Beatty (and Michael J. Pollard from B & C) did on stage was turned into a "semi-exploitation" flick with the title change from A LOSS OF ROSES to THE STRIPPER. Joanne Woodward is phenomenal as always, creating a "Marilyn" type character that is fragile, almost used-up and not even 35 yet. Richard Beymer (so great on TWIN PEAKS on TV) is the young lad, Claire Trevor is his mom and there's a sanctimonious air to the atmosphere (including the sleazy Robert Webber as a sleaze (who was an under-rated)) and M. J. as Beymer's buddy.

A well-intentioned script in '63 that was too "HUD"-like (starring Ms. Woodward's cool husband, Paul Newman), but it just wasn't gritty enough or well-directed enough to spark SPARKS. Very good acting, great locales and cinematography. Worth your time!

The Woodward/Beymer team does not work very well because there are only eight years between them whereas the writers wanted us to believe that she could be his mother.Woodward plays some kind of Blanche Du Bois (a woman with a racy past) wearing an awful Monroe-like wig.They say that the movie was "remade" by the producer: the scenes Kenny/Miriam were imposed on Schaffner whereas the suicide of Lila was ruled out .

It's not uninteresting though.Both Kenny and Lila are immature adults.His mother treats him like a kid -a handsome boy she is proud of ,but still a kid: do not forget your coat,you could catch a cold! - whereas Lila really strips bare -more than she will do later- in the marvelous scene in the old school when she talked about her first day in first grade.Woodward is so talented an actress we see the whole scene without any flashback.

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.

As a young kid in Junior High School (Middle School) I was fascinated when the movie crew came to our small town of Chino, California to film "The Stripper". I hate to ruin the perception of some that it was actually filmed on location somewhere in the mid-west. But since we were only about 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles, and Chino was a small farming and dairy town of about 10,000 population, we looked like many mid-western towns. But back then some of the crew told me that the film had a working title of "Celebration". Every day after school I would ride my bike to whatever part of town they they happened to be filming in. I think it took about a week or two to film all of the outside shots. They were filming at my school, Chino Junior High School, with some classroom shots and a shot outside on the steps of the old building. That was really exciting to me as a 13 year old student. Other days they were filming in other various spots in our small town. One day I spent all afternoon watching them film the shots of the old car pulling into Esparzas' gas station in the old downtown of Chino. I think Louis Nye, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joanne Woodward and Michael J. Pollard were in that scene. Another day watching Joanne Woodward walking up and down the front walk of an older wood frame house in her nightgown. She was very nice. As she saw me watching she smiled and said "Hi". Have to admit though, when the movie came out, I was a bit disappointed. Having all of those scenes stored in my mind in vivid color, the way that I remembered it and saw it acted out, the resulting black and white version seemed somewhat dull and dreary.