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The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063348/

The Night They Raided Minsky's is a 1968 musical comedy film directed by William Friedkin and produced by Norman Lear. It is a fictional account of the invention of the striptease at Minsky's Burlesque in 1925. The film is based on the novel by Rowland Barber, published in 1960.

  Jason Robards  ...  Raymond Paine  
  Britt Ekland  ...  Rachel Schpitendavel  
  Norman Wisdom  ...  Chick Williams  
  Forrest Tucker  ...  Trim Houlihan  
  Harry Andrews  ...  Jacob Schpitendavel  
  Joseph Wiseman  ...  Louis Minsky  
  Denholm Elliott  ...  Vance Fowler  
  Elliott Gould  ...  Billy Minsky  
  Jack Burns  ...  Candy Butcher  
  Bert Lahr  ...  Professor Spats  
  Gloria LeRoy  ...  Mae Harris  
  Eddie Lawrence  ...  Scratch  
  Dexter Maitland  ...  Duffy  
  Lillian Hayman  ...  Singer in Speakeasy  
  Richard Libertini  ...  Pockets (as Dick Libertini) 

A naive young Amish woman (Britt Ekland) with dreams of becoming a dancer arrives at Minsky’s Burlesque Theatre in New York City, and quickly wins the hearts of comedic partners Norman Wisdom and Jason Robards. Meanwhile, Robards and the club’s owner (Elliott Gould) concoct a sure-fire plan to foil a group of do-gooders intending to raid the club that night. 

This bawdy historical comedy — directed by William Friedkin — purports to tell the story of the first ever (unintentional) striptease, but is really more concerned with simply honoring and celebrating the infectious joys of burlesque theater. Through ample exposure to ribald skits and songs on stage, one gets a sense of what audience members (primarily men, though women were present as well) were there to enjoy. Friedkin moves the story along at a brisk pace (in nearly real time), neatly juxtaposing the night’s early acts with the converging tales of an innocent Amish girl (Ekland is well-cast) who wants nothing more than to break into show business, and an upcoming raid on the club by local do-gooders. Along the way, Ekland becomes fodder for the romantic interests of both womanizing Jason Robards and his more sincere partner, Norman Wisdom; while we feel concern for her extreme naivete, she shows surprising reserves of chutzpah, and makes for an appealing heroine. 

Although the terms are used interchangeably today, "burlesque" and "vaudeville" were two distinctly different types of shows. Vaudeville was a variety show that included comedians, singers, magic acts, tumblers and animal acts. It was invariably clean, family entertainment. Burlesque featured sketch comedy by a stock company of comedians and song-and-dance numbers by chorus girls and featured dancers (later strippers). In the beginning, burlesque was also relatively clean, but as competition from vaudeville, Broadway stage shows and motion pictures increased, burlesque became bawdier to attract overwhelmingly male audiences. The Minsky brothers are by far the most famous burlesque impresarios of the era.

In his book "Minsky's Burlesque," Morton Minsky (with Milt Machlin) wrote, "As for April 20, 1925, the day that the raid on which the book was based took place, it was hardly epochal in the history of burlesque, but it did turn out to be a prelude to much greater troubles ... Anyway, the raid story was fun, but the raid itself was simply one of dozens to which we had become accustomed. Certainly no big crisis."

The Minskys were raided for the first time in 1917 when Mae Dix absent-mindedly began removing her costume before she reached the wings. When the crowd cheered, Dix returned to the stage to continue removing her clothing to wild applause. Billy Minsky ordered the "accident" repeated every night. This began an endless cycle: to keep their license, the Minskys had to keep their shows clean, but to keep drawing customers they had to be risqué. Whenever they went too far, they were raided.

According to Morton Minsky, Mademoiselle Fifi was actually a woman named Mary Dawson from Pennsylvania. Her father was a policeman and a straitlaced Quaker, although he never came to New York City and never led a raid to shut down one of the Minsky burlesque houses. Furthermore, Dawson was not a stripper; she was an "exotic" dancer who never showed any forbidden parts of her body—until that night.

Morton Minsky suggests that Billy persuaded Dawson to expose her breasts in order to create a sensation. By 1925 it was permissible for girls in legitimate shows staged by Ziegfeld, George White and Earl Carroll -- as well as burlesque—to appear topless as long as they didn't move (as a "living tableau"). Madamoiselle Fifi stripped to the waist but then moved, triggering the raid. "Although the show in general had been tame," he wrote, "Fifi's finale and the publicity that soon followed the raid ensured full houses at the soon-to-be opened [Minsky] theater uptown [on 42nd Street]."

Norman Lear originally announced that production would start in the fall of 1966. However, filming didn't begin until a year later, early in October 1967. It was filmed at Chelsea Studios in New York City.

On May 23, 1967, the Los Angeles Times reported that William Friedkin was set to direct. Friedkin's first film, Good Times (1967), starring Sonny and Cher, had just been released. A musical comedy which spoofs various movie genres, including mysteries, westerns and spy thrillers, it was a critical and box office flop.

Tony Curtis was announced for the Minsky's cast in June 1967, likely as Raymond Paine, but dropped out in September over concerns with the revised script. Jason Robards was announced in the Paine role about a month before filming began. (Raymond Paine was the name of a real burlesque straight man who appeared in the Minsky show that night. He was killed in a hit and run accident in 1934.) In August 1967, Alan Alda was announced for a role in the film, probably as the young Billy Minsky. However, Alda was appearing on Broadway and was unable to leave his role in "The Apple Tree." Elliott Gould, who was then married to Barbra Streisand, was signed and made his film debut.

The Night They Raided Minsky's was the first musical shot entirely on location in New York. The budget exceeded $3 million, making it the most expensive film shot in the city up until that time. A block of East 26th Street between First and Second Avenues was transformed into the Lower East Side circa 1925. (The vacant tenements on the block were scheduled to be torn down as part of an urban renewal project; the city postponed demolition for the filmmakers.) A portion of an elevated train station 30 feet tall and 56 feet long was built. Exteriors were shot there for two weeks.

British comedian Norman Wisdom had made a series of low-budget star-vehicle comedies for the Rank Organisation, beginning with Trouble in Store in 1953. The film earned him a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Film in 1954. Never highly thought of by the critics, they were very popular with domestic audiences and Wisdom's films outsold Sean Connery's James Bond features from 1955 through till 1966. That year, Wisdom moved to New York to star on Broadway in the James Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn musical comedy Walking Happy. His highly-acclaimed performance was nominated for a Tony Award. The Night They Raided Minsky's was his first American film, and he received good notices. Variety wrote: "So easily does Wisdom dominate his many scenes, other cast members suffer by comparison." And Time compared him to America's comedic Old Guard: "Wisdom recalls Keaton in his split-second spills and deadpan pantomime."

Bert Lahr, best known for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, was a burlesque veteran. On November 21, however, Lahr was hospitalized for a back ailment. In Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr, John Lahr wrote: "Bert Lahr died in the early morning of December 4, 1967. Two weeks before, he had returned home at 2 a.m., chilled and feverish, from the damp studio where The Night They Raided Minsky's was being filmed. Ordinarily, a man of his age and reputation would not have had to perform that late into the night, but he had waived that proviso in his contract because of his trust in the producer and his need to work. The newspapers reported the cause of death as pneumonia; but he succumbed to cancer, a disease he feared but never knew he had."

Most of Lahr's scenes had been shot. Norman Lear told the New York Times that "through judicious editing we will be able to shoot the rest of the film so that his wonderful performance will remain intact." The producers used a double to fill in for Lahr.

Filming was scheduled to wrap on December 22, 1967. The movie was released exactly a year later, on December 22, 1968.

According to an interview in the Manchester Evening News (10/22/07), The Night They Raided Minsky's is Britt Ekland's favorite film. Ekland divorced Peter Sellers four days before the film was released. They were married in 1965 and have a daughter, Victoria Sellers, born the same year. Ekland was quoted on the web site whatsonstage.com  "I loved William Friedkin who directed me in the film The Night They Raided Minky’s because he was very specific and honest and young. He got the performance out of me which he knew I had in me. Many years later he directed The Exorcist and he wanted to test my daughter for it, but he warned me if she did that film she’d be changed forever, so I said no way, I wouldn’t allow her to test. She was furious with me about that. I think it took her a while to forgive me."

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "'The Night They Raided Minsky's'" is being promoted as some sort of laff-a-minit, slapstick extravaganza, but it isn't. It has the courage to try for more than that and just about succeeds. It avoids the phony glamour and romanticism that the movies usually use to smother burlesque (as in Gypsy) and it really seems to understand this most-American art form."

New York Times critic Renata Adler wrote, in part, "The nicest thing about the movie, which is a little broad in plot and long in spots, is its denseness and care in detail: The little ugly cough that comes from one room of a shoddy hotel; the thoughtfully worked out, poorly danced vaudeville routines; the beautifully timed, and genuinely funny, gags. 'I hear the man say impossible,' a man on the stage says when the man here hasn't said a word. And the vaudeville [sic] routines of innocence forever victimized, for an audience of fall guys, works pretty much as it must have worked in its time." (12/23/68)

Time called the film "a valedictory valentine to oldtime burlesque. In legend, the girls were glamorous, and every baggy-pants buffoon was a second W. C. Fields. In truth, the institution was as coarse as its audiences. Minsky's mixes both fact and fancy in a surprisingly successful musical...Minsky's was 58 days in the shooting and ten months in the editing—and shows it. Marred by grainy film and fleshed out with documentary and pseudo-newsreel footage of the '20s, the film spends too much time on pickles, pushcarts and passersby. But it compensates with a fond, nostalgic score, a bumping, grinding chorus line and a series of closeups of the late Bert Lahr, who plays a retired burlesque comedian. Like Lahr, the film offers an engaging blend of mockery and melancholy."

The film's poster was created by Frank Frazetta.