Portrait of a Showgirl

This TV movie tells the stories of three Las Vegas chorus girls as they prepare for a new show at Caesar's Palace.

This melodrama is quite fragmented in nature and doesn't have a main overall focus, splitting its time between the three different women. The dramas depicted include the story of the deluded husband of one of the women played by Tony Curtis who is constantly trying to land a big money deal, while another thread focuses on the succession of unsuitable male partners who orbit around another of the women, including her unfaithful partner who will not leave his wife, a sleazy congressman who wants to use her for sex and an immature younger guy who has a couple of hamsters he treats like people. The dramatics are pretty run-of-the-mill if truth be told and there isn't anything especially standout in this one. But it does have the distinction of being a nice time capsule of early 80's Vegas, a place which has changed a great deal since those days. On the whole, this is a pretty middling melodrama but one with a certain amount of charm.

An interesting melodrama, this production features Lesley Ann Warren, Rita Moreno and Dianne Kay as three dancers of differing skill levels who are hired for a new revue in Las Vegas at Caesar's Palace, where the picture is set, and focusses upon various travails within their private lives as they prepare for the opening of their show, with the eponymous Warren's character deservedly garnering the most screen time. As a Broadway dancer recruited for the engagement, Warren plays high-stepping Jillian Brooks, whose need for success upon the stage is altered by her affairs of the heart, while Moreno portrays a veteran hoofer whose husband (Tony Curtis) is a sucker for entrepreneurial scam artists, and Kay is an inexperienced beauty queen from the Midwest. The film could easily have been much less engaging, as cliched situations abound, but the episodic script is effectively utilized and includes a good deal of skillful dialogue, there is splendid editing by John Woodcock, and a strongly appropriate thematic underscore is provided by Jimmie Haskell, while the performance of the talented and generally underprized Warren goes beyond the expected implications stemming from her comeliness.

1982 movie with super hot Leslie Ann Warren Tony Cutis, and Rita Moreno. Beleive it or not, in the late 70's and early 80's some broadcast made for TV movies approached an R rating status. Leslie Ann Warren was at the forefront of these films, making a handful of adult oriented fare where she appeared in various forms of undress. She was one hot toddy. Rita Mereno was nothing to sneeze at either back then. And you'll not recognize Las Vegas. It looks nothing like this today.

When this movie originally aired on television in May of 1982, I was just wrapping up my freshman year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, majoring in Hotel Administration. At that time, not even the most forward thinking of the professors running the program at that time could have ever guessed the massive growth/changes that would occur in the city over the next 30 years.

The Las Vegas of 1982 is barely recognizable in the context of today's city. Many, maybe most, of the big hotels of that time are now gone, replaced by mega-resorts. Caesar's Palace, where most of the action in this movie is set, was easily the class of the town at that time, and while it remains one of the better resorts, it is clearly not the number 1 place in town. Even the slot machines kicking out coins with a jangle is largely a thing of the past--they have been replaced with debit/credit card readers that take your money almost without your realizing it! Like many Vegas old-timers, I miss the city that is portrayed in this movie. It was a smaller town and much greater attention was paid to the individual visitor. That said, the boom we experienced for almost 30 years made many wealthy people.

As a movie, this isn't half bad. Watching reminded me why I once had a crush on Lesley Anne Warren. Tony Curtis (who lived here for many, many years) is his usual charming self, and Rita Moreno is up to her normal high standards as an actress.

If you are a longtime Las Vegan, someone who has gone there over a period of many years, or just curious to see what the old town was once like, catch this movie. It's a pretty good way to spend a couple of hours.

It's just a portrait of a crappy film... an overly dramatic film about 3 showgirls and their personal lives. I love to see the real Las Vegas showgirls onstage (on film I've never been out there) BUT I don't care to see a boring film on the fictional mundane lives of 3 fictional showgirls.

I also did not care to see Rita Moreno doing her best Rhoda impersonation - oh my gosh spare me with the shouting every single line!!! The rest of them are just melodramatic.

If you want to see several familiar faces from the 1970s and early 1980s in a very boring film about the boring and dramatic lives of 3 showgirls then you might like this film. If not you can easily skip this yawn.

1/10