Hollywood After Dark(1961)
A young girl comes to Hollywood to try to break into the movies, but winds up being taken advantage of by sleazy producers, and is forced to become a stripper.
A young girl comes to Hollywood to try to break into the movies, but winds up being taken advantage of by sleazy producers, and is forced to become a stripper.
Behind the scenes of Hollywood's low-budget movie industry. It is a powerful portrait of the fragility of fame and the cost of stardom. B-pictures have long been the spawning ground of today's and tomorrow's stars. They started the careers of Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone among many others, as well as now super star directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Ron Howard and James Cameron. The film examines the evolution of starry-eyed newcomers arriving in Hollywood and discovering the harsh reality of getting into pictures.
The Film Crew gives a commentary track to Walk the Angry Beach (1968), aka Hollywood After Dark, featuring Rue McClanahan as a stripper. Beloved, sassy Golden Girl Rue McClanahan stars as an unbeloved, depressive stripper who wants to become a movie star but can’t get any roles better than, say “Stripper #3” in Mondo Topless. But love is in the air, mingling with LA smog, as Rue falls for assistant junkyard attendee Tony, played by Anthony Vorno (Sweet trash, Jailbait Babysitter). Surprisingly, things go wrong and one of them turns up dead. There’s plenty of dimly-lit Burlesque dancing on a bare, presumable filthy stage, plus pale, hairy men in tight swimsuits, and drug-laced creepy sex! HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD! It’s up to the Film Crew to turn this bleak cautionary tale into a hilarious, um, cautionary tale. Lunch is provided.
Jerry Lewis’s patented form of slapstick made him a 20th-century comedic icon. But former co-stars directors say he was a bully who sexually harassed—and in at least one case, sexually assaulted—women with impunity.