Except for the widescreen image, one might think this a low-budget, made-for-TV movie: except that Liz Taylor was priced out of such efforts. The script is abominable, and it is impossible to develop any rapport with the over-aged delinquents that Fran Taylor (Elizabeth Taylor) and Joe Grady (Warren Beatty) portray. It is obvious enough that Las Vegas, even more the focus of low-brow, bad-taste materialism in America at the time, would be garish enough, but the domestic set is no relief.
It's hard to imagine the (then in her late thirties) Elizabeth Taylor being cast as a chorus girl, and perhaps such was the attraction of this play as a fountain of youth for her. I could imagine her as a choreographer or as a trainer of chorus girls, but not (with her build) as a chorus girl herself. Warren Beatty plays a singularly one-dimensional character, a superstitious, money-obsessed gambler, and not a good one. Both characters can hardly elicit any sympathy from either of us.
The play, should it have ever been transformed into a cinematic project of any kind, could just as well have been done as a low-budget made-for-TV movie with the use of casino scenes in Las Vegas and nearby sets. Instead, the ethos of this movie remains Warren Beatty fashioning a $100 bill into a boat and letting it sail down a drain way to a gutter. Too bad for all the starving children (adaptation of a line from the play), says Grady, in a time in which $100 was a week's salary for many people.
The investment was huge, and it seems to have gone into the gutter.
Avoid it.
It's hard to imagine the (then in her late thirties) Elizabeth Taylor being cast as a chorus girl, and perhaps such was the attraction of this play as a fountain of youth for her. I could imagine her as a choreographer or as a trainer of chorus girls, but not (with her build) as a chorus girl herself. Warren Beatty plays a singularly one-dimensional character, a superstitious, money-obsessed gambler, and not a good one. Both characters can hardly elicit any sympathy from either of us.
The play, should it have ever been transformed into a cinematic project of any kind, could just as well have been done as a low-budget made-for-TV movie with the use of casino scenes in Las Vegas and nearby sets. Instead, the ethos of this movie remains Warren Beatty fashioning a $100 bill into a boat and letting it sail down a drain way to a gutter. Too bad for all the starving children (adaptation of a line from the play), says Grady, in a time in which $100 was a week's salary for many people.
The investment was huge, and it seems to have gone into the gutter.
Avoid it.