Watch The Stripper For Free

Really Surprised!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Joanne Woodward is the one reason this movie gratuitously called 'The Stripper' is worth a look. She comes across as genuine and sincere in a movie that for the most part is full of clichés, a fair of them quite dated.To me, it seemed the screenplay was based on much of the heartbreak that was Marilyn Monroe, with Woodward's character never having a real family as a child, much like Norma Jean Baker.She's hardly a 'stripper', as Joanne's character is basically a platinum blonde magician's assistant who is led into the striptease world by the very capable actor Robert Webber as her cruel and sadistic 'pimp'. This transformation occurs very late in the movie, so by this time the audience is well aware that the title of the film was false titillation.And Joanne is pretty much covered with many balloons when her strip act is revealed. Tack on a rather phony happy Hollywood ending, and there you have 'The Stripper'. I did enjoy seeing the very talented and original Louis Nye in a comic part. And the inclusion of Gypsy Rose Lee was a bit of inspired casting. As I say, Woodward somehow manages to rise above the rather unimaginative script. Like Beymer's character professes to Woodwad's character in the end: you do 'care' about this woman. Too bad the script didn't.

As a young kid in Junior High School (Middle School) I was fascinated when the movie crew came to our small town of Chino, California to film "The Stripper". I hate to ruin the perception of some that it was actually filmed on location somewhere in the mid-west. But since we were only about 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles, and Chino was a small farming and dairy town of about 10,000 population, we looked like many mid-western towns. But back then some of the crew told me that the film had a working title of "Celebration". Every day after school I would ride my bike to whatever part of town they they happened to be filming in. I think it took about a week or two to film all of the outside shots. They were filming at my school, Chino Junior High School, with some classroom shots and a shot outside on the steps of the old building. That was really exciting to me as a 13 year old student. Other days they were filming in other various spots in our small town. One day I spent all afternoon watching them film the shots of the old car pulling into Esparzas' gas station in the old downtown of Chino. I think Louis Nye, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joanne Woodward and Michael J. Pollard were in that scene. Another day watching Joanne Woodward walking up and down the front walk of an older wood frame house in her nightgown. She was very nice. As she saw me watching she smiled and said "Hi". Have to admit though, when the movie came out, I was a bit disappointed. Having all of those scenes stored in my mind in vivid color, the way that I remembered it and saw it acted out, the resulting black and white version seemed somewhat dull and dreary.

The Woodward/Beymer team does not work very well because there are only eight years between them whereas the writers wanted us to believe that she could be his mother.Woodward plays some kind of Blanche Du Bois (a woman with a racy past) wearing an awful Monroe-like wig.They say that the movie was "remade" by the producer: the scenes Kenny/Miriam were imposed on Schaffner whereas the suicide of Lila was ruled out .It's not uninteresting though.Both Kenny and Lila are immature adults.His mother treats him like a kid -a handsome boy she is proud of ,but still a kid: do not forget your coat,you could catch a cold! - whereas Lila really strips bare -more than she will do later- in the marvelous scene in the old school when she talked about her first day in first grade.Woodward is so talented an actress we see the whole scene without any flashback.

"The Stripper" is not at all what you think it might be if you go only by the title and the posters and publicity stills. In fact, I think it wins the award for the most shamelessly misleading promo campaign in the history of movies. First off, Woodward's Lila Green (a well-acted performance I might say) is a failed actress/magician's assistant who is not a stripper by trade, except when forced against her will late in the movie by her sleazy manager. Second, the posters and ads all show a smiling, teasing Woodward in her stripper's outfit as though the film promises something out of the climax of "Gypsy" (and then on top of that, they cast Gypsy Rose Lee herself in a small part!) but in fact Woodward's only strip number is a brief one done very flatly to represent her character's disgust with her plight. Quite obviously Daryl Zanuck figured that by misleading the public he could lure a lot of lecherous men into the cinema who didn't realize that they were going to just get a very run of the mill drama story that is really saved only by Jerry Goldsmith's jazzy score and Woodward's performance.This was Franklin J. Schaffner's first feature movie after a decade in live television. Fortunately he went on to much better projects with "Planet Of The Apes" and "Patton", which are both cinematic masterpieces.