'The Night They Raided Minsky's' is one of the film titles on a marquee in the background of 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', which is how I became aware of it. The movie is now pretty obscure, but there is actually a lot of talent behind it.
The 1960 novel 'The Night They Raided Minsky's' is losely based on a true story. There really was a burlesque house called Minsky's in New York in the 1920's, it really was raided (multiple times) and is allegedly the birth place of the strip tease. The allegedly true story is that one night a performer began undressing as she came off stage, hearing a positive response from the audiance she came back on stage to continue undressing. The novel changes details of the story and greatly expands on them.
The novel was the subject of a bidding war, Debbie Reynolds was interested in the project as were some Broadway producers, ultimately those projects came to naught and the property ended up in the hands of United Artists. A pre sitcom era Norman Lear (interestingly I watched this the day he died at 101, but didn't learn of his death until the next day) decided to make this a follow up project to his successful 1967 picture 'Divorce American Style'.
Lear produced and co-wrote the picture, but brought in a young William Frediken to direct. The music and songs were done by the team of Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who had done the same on 'Bye Bye Birdy', remarkably as of this writting both are still alive and in their late 90's. Andrew Laszlo, who would later do the cinematography on projects as different as 'First Blood' and 'Newsies' would shoot the thing.
On the screen you have Elliot Gould in his first speaking part and Bert Lehr in his final screen appearance. Lehr, best known as The Cowerdly Lion in 'The Wizard of Oz', had actually worked in burlesque houses early in his career, he died during filming from a cancer he apparently didn't know he had, most of his scenes had already been shot so they edited around him.
A scene stealing Norman Wisdom and Jason Robards play the comedy team at the center of the story. Robards was a last minute replacement after Tony Curtis left for creative differences and Alan Alda had a scheduling conflict, I think the film is better for his presence. Britt Ekland plays the naive Amish girl who accidentally invents the strip tease. She appears nude very briefly in the film, later in 'The Wicker Man' she would use a body double. Ekland would file for divorce from husband Peter Sellers four days before the films release. In interviews she has stated this is her favorite of the films she appeared in.
Shot in late 1967, the initial rough cut of the film was deemed by studio exec David V. Picker as being the worst he had ever seen. Deciding that the film would need to be saved in the editing (director Frediken would acknowledge not knowing what he was doing on this project) an entire nine months was ultimately alloted for that process. Editor Ralph Rossenblum, who would later become Woody Allen's preferred film cutter, would state that he initially took the job because he figured a musical comedy would be a quick edit. Splicing in clips from period newsreels for effect, there are 1,440 cuts in the finished film.
Released in December of 1968 'Minsky's' got generally positive notices from critics, and while I couldn't find exact figures it apparently did better then the studio had anticipated. A charmingly grubby film, it's sadly mostly forgotten. If the concept of the film isn't a turn off, I would recommend. ***
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