The Night They Raided Minsky's
| The Night They Raided Minsky's | |
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Theatrical release poster
(artwork by Frank Frazetta) |
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| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Produced by | Norman Lear |
| Written by |
Screenplay: Norman Lear Sidney Michaels Arnold Schulman Novel: Rowland Barber |
| Starring |
Jason Robards Britt Ekland Norman Wisdom and Bert Lahr |
| Music by |
Charles Strouse Philip J. Lang (orchestrations) |
| Cinematography | Andrew Laszlo |
| Edited by |
Ralph Rosenblum Pablo Ferro (title design) |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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99 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3 million (US/ Canada rentals) |
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.
Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland), an innocent Amish girl from rural Pennsylvania, arrives in New York's Lower East Side, hoping to make it as a dancer. Rachel's dances are based on Bible stories. She auditions at Minsky's Burlesque, but her dances are much too dull and chaste for the bawdy show. But then Billy Minsky (Elliott Gould) and the show's jaded straight man, Raymond Paine (Jason Robards), concoct a plan to foil moral crusader Vance Fowler (Denholm Elliott), who is intent on shutting down the theater. Minsky publicizes Rachel as the notorious Madamoiselle Fifi, performing the "dance that drove a million Frenchmen wild." This will invite a raid by Fowler and the police. But Billy will let Rachel perform her innocuous Bible dances, thus humiliating Fowler.
During the run-up to her midnight performance, Raymond and his partner, Chick (Norman Wisdom), show Rachel the ropes of burlesque, and they both fall for her in the process. Meanwhile, Rachel's stern father (Harry Andrews), who even objects to her Bible dances, arrives in search of his daughter. The film climaxes when Rachel takes the stage after her father has called her a whore and she realizes that the Minskys are just using her. Her father tries to drag her off-stage, but she pulls away and accidentally tears a slit in her dress. The sold-out crowd spurs her on and Rachel begins to enjoy her power over the audience and starts to strip. She looks into the wings and sees Raymond, who senses a raid and perhaps the end of an era, leaving the theater for good. Rachel calls and throws out her arms to him, inadvertently dropping the front of her dress and baring her breasts. Fowler blows his whistle and the police rush the stage and close down the show. A madcap melee follows. In the end, most of the cast members are loaded into a paddy wagon, including Rachel's bewildered father.
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