Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film by Jimmy McDonough

Author:Jimmy McDonough [McDonough, Jimmy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: 20th Century, Biography, Entertainment
ISBN: 9780307338440
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2005-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

Strapping On Fox

They’re all whores, those Hollywood people. They wouldn’t do anything good for anybody.

—RUSS MEYER

Richard Zanuck and David Brown were not the only ones who’d taken notice of Russ Meyer’s appearance in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. On May 8, 1968, two weeks after the article appeared, came a short letter to the editor commending the paper for acknowledging RM, whom the author compared favorably to Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway. “Is it not time for a major studio to sign Mr. Meyer? His films are more alive and interesting than most current action pictures costing twenty times as much. And his heroines, heaven knows, are technically interesting as well.” It was signed Roger Ebert.

Long before becoming America’s thumb of cinematic judgment, prior to winning the first Pulitzer awarded for movie criticism in 1975, Roger Ebert was Russ Meyer’s unlikeliest partner in crime. He wrote the screenplay for what Meyer considered his masterpiece, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and, under various aliases, contributed to three more Meyer pictures, and at least an equal amount of unrealized scripts. It was Ebert who came up with the final title of RM’s autobiography, A Clean Breast. Other than John Moran, Roger Ebert was Meyer’s greatest screenwriting collaborator. “He writes the words, I put in the music,” said RM. “Just like Rodgers & Hammerstein.” Although he stopped reviewing Meyer’s pictures once he became involved in them, Ebert remained an outspoken supporter of RM’s work in the press, authoring the first major in-depth appreciation of Meyer’s entire oeuvre in a landmark 1973 article for Film Comment.

“An odd and talkative kid,” Roger Ebert was born June 18, 1942, in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He was a movie buff early on. “Television came late to Champaign-Urbana, and so, for my age, I spent more time at the movies than most other American kids.” He started his newspaper career at the tender age of fifteen, as a sportswriter for the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. “His father died while we were working there,” said co-worker Betsy Hedrick, who maintained that Ebert suddenly became “an instant grown-up.”

One day around 1959 or so, Ebert ventured across the street from the News-Gazette’s offices to the oldest and smallest theater in town, the Illini, and wandered into a showing of the The Immoral Mr. Teas. “College students jammed the place,” said Ebert. “There were lines down the street. I think the movie ran for two years.” Sitting there in the dark theater, Ebert connected with Teas. “Russ’s film was unlike any similar adult film that had ever been made—it wasn’t smutty, it looked great, it was positive, and it was cheerful, like all of Russ’s other films. Russ had a very healthy, go-ahead, unapologetic way of celebrating the female form.” Ebert followed RM’s career with interest, unaware he’d become a major player in it after that one little letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Eagle-eyed Meyer took notice of the dispatch and wrote Ebert an appreciative note, suggesting they meet. “I found him to

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