Movies

Mae and Raquel! MYRA BRECKINRIDGE Wednesday Night at Schlafly Bottleworks

By Tom Stockman | November 26, 2015

“Well, the end of another busy day. I can’t wait till I get back to bed. If that don’t work I’ll try to sleep!”

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE screens Wednesday night December 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks at 8pm

You never know what’s brewing at Webster University’s Strange Brew Film series, and there’s nothing stranger than this month’s entry, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE. Gore Vidal’s 1968 satirical novel Myra Breckinridge was considered un-filmable to begin with. That’s probably true. There’s no way that this story about a sex change operation could have ever become a classic mainstream movie. But the 1970 film version is not all that bad, In fact, thanks mostly to some really clever casting (bringing Mae West into the film was a stroke of genius and a young Farrah Fawcett is quite a sight) and a wonderful, bitingly funny and dead-on performance by a young Raquel Welch, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE is something of a counter-culture classic.

The basic story is a bizarre dark comedy involving a guy, Myron Breckinridge (Rex Reed – who claims Eddie Redmayne in THE DANISH GIRL gives “the performance of the year”…hmmmm), who has sex-change surgery to become his alter-ego Myra (Raquel Welch). As a female, Myra tries to shake down her uncle Buck Loner (John Huston) into giving her at least half of his popular acting school. There are a few side stories along the way, involving Mae West as a sex-mad Hollywood agent, Farrah Fawcett as a sunny-smiling dumb blonde, and Roger Herron as handsome young Rusty-the-Stud, who ends up being nothing much more than a boy-toy (both in the film and in real life – the actor was never heard from again after appearing in this movie)

The theme of this movie is Hollywood in great big letters. A fascination with the movie industry runs through it. It’s about everything we imagine Hollywood to be: actors, agents, Southern California, limousines, wild sex, drugs, nudity, the whole bit. There are references to, film clips of, and appearances by, classic Hollywood movies and stars. If you aren’t interested in Hollywood and what it represents— or used to represent— forget this movie. You won’t like it. That’s what it’s about.

Plopped directly into the middle of various scenes, often with no purpose whatsoever but to add “mood”, are dozens of film clips from old 20th-Century-Fox movies. The inclusion of these off-the-wall clips give the whole movie a slightly off-center, psychedelic feel that must have felt self-knowingly hip in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Two big highlights in this movie: the performances of Raquel Welch and Mae West. West got top billing, but is actually seen in a very small role; maybe 10 minutes of total screen time. Her scenes are completely self-contained; they don’t have much to do with the rest of the movie, but they are great fun to watch. Though this (and 1978’s SEXTETTE) were considered the nadir of her career, West was hilarious at the age of 77 when she made MYRA BRECKINRIDGE.

Raquel Welch was also at the very top of her form here. An absolute knockout to look at, Welch was drop-dead gorgeous, and she gives a biting, sarcastic, and also hilariously funny performance as Myra. MYRA BRECKINRIDGE tried, maybe a little too hard, to be hip and “adult” at the time, and so it’s got some needlessly raunchy language and situations in it (including a jaw-dropping female-on-male rape scene) It was awfully hard to even put a story like this on film in the first place, but director Michael Sarne did try 45 years ago, and he succeeded more than failed. MYRA BRECKINRIDGE used to play in ST. Louis double-feature with Russ Meyer’s BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS a lot at the old Varsity Theater. Now you’ll have a chance to see it on the big screen when it plays Wednesday, December 2^nd at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) as part of their Strange Brew film series . The movie starts at 8pm and admission is $5. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed beer.