Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film

by Jimmy McDonough

  Dolls is rich with all sorts of absurd personal touches: Meyer scoring a beheading with the mighty 20th Century Fox logo theme; Ebert’s homage to Citizen Kane during the death of Harris Allsworth; Meyer naming one lead after an obscure character actor (Porter Hall) and another—the abortion doctor Downs—after a particularly despised 166th commanding officer. Perhaps the only legitimate complaint about Dolls is that, like so many other Meyer films, it feels a bit too long. Meyer sets the bar so high there’s no way to maintain such a fevered pitch, and the picture sputters to a close. “I always have seven endings,” said RM. “How do you come down? ‘The End’ never got anybody a laugh.”

  Meyer tangled with the MPAA over the movie’s rating. According to RM, Zanuck had instructed him to make an “R minus” picture—as hard as possible without losing the R. But the MPAA slapped on an X. At the studio’s insistence, RM returned to the ratings board three times to plead his case, to no avail.*7 Meyer would bitterly complain forever after that the picture got the dreaded rating because of who he was, not what it contained. “I think so, too, because I don’t think there was anything in it that really deserved an X,” said Richard Zanuck. Meyer was doubly indignant because he’d cut nudity to get an R and, with the release date looming, it was too late to put any of it back. “There was never any other version than the one you’ve seen—but there could’ve been,” maintained Ebert. “Russ always regretted that, because he had great nude scenes.”*8

  Fox was not happy to be saddled with another X. Unfortunately Dolls would be tainted by association with the lingering stink of Fox’s other X-rated scandal, the disastrous Raquel Welch–Rex Reed sex change epic Myra Breckenridge (one Fox board member had simply quit in disgust due to the studio’s involvement). Based upon the celebrated Gore Vidal novel, the movie version was an incomprehensible mess. Undiscerning (and invariably offended) viewers lumped the pictures together, and unfairly; Myra’s chaos was the result of ineptitude, while that of Dolls was lovingly designed. The result was Fox’s distribution arm wanted to dump Dolls in wide release and be done with it. Meyer fought them and Zanuck backed him up. According to RM, when told there were no theaters available for a special release on such short notice, Zanuck barked, “Well, then buy one.” Dolls premiered at the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard on June 17, 1970. It took in $7.5 million in its first six months, becoming one of Variety’s top grossers of the year. Financially, it was a hit. The reviews were another story.

  Dolls is a diabolical achievement. There is something so peculiar and particular about its brand of nothingness. Unlike Pussycat, which possesses certain passions, however bizarre, this picture is defiantly empty, a glittering, glowing void in a gold frame. It’s a genuinely nihilistic picture, utterly cynical about humanity. “I have no message,” boasted RM, and here’s the proof: a picture that seems to exist only to thrust a big middle finger to the world.

  The critical reaction to Dolls was violent, as if Meyer had abducted the critics’ children and shot the family dog. “Utter garbage,” sniffed Stanley Kauffman of the New Republic, who felt the film’s climax went “past trash into obscenity. . . . If this is what 20th Century Fox needs to save itself, why bother?” Critic John Simon found Dolls to be “true pornography. . . . The only people it can arouse are those whose idea of sex is totally divorced from reality.” “As funny as a burning orphanage,” said Variety. “A treat for the emotionally retarded, sexually inadequate, and dimwitted . . . a grievously sick mélange of hyper-mammalian girls . . . a totally degenerate enterprise,” wrote a disturbed Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times. In a lengthy companion piece covering both Dolls and Myra Breckenridge, Champlin went on to bemoan the “breakdown” the films represented, there being “not a damn thing redemptive about either one of them.” “He thought it was the end of the film business!” chuckled Meyer. “It was really great to have that sonofabitch go off. . . . I was in SATANIC glee!”

  Screw awarded the film a mere 11 percent on its infamous phallic-shaped review chart—the Peter Meter—and demanded that the severed head of Meyer be hoisted high in Times Square. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, RM’s old nemesis Charlie Keating agreed, holding a rally in Hollywood to protest the picture and demanding that both Meyer and Richard Zanuck be “arrested and jailed.”

  Even those who’d defended RM in the past were vexed. “Meyer’s earnestly vulgar sensibility . . . has become patronizing,” said Vincent Canby in the New York Times. “Maybe Dolls represents the end of what he can do,” mused Leslie Fiedler, the highbrow critic who’d championed RM at the beginning of his career. For some the outrage still simmers over thirty years later: Los Angeles Times critic (and longtime Meyer admirer) Kevin Thomas declared to this author that Dolls is “a piece of shit. There’s something unsavory about it, unattractively decadent, godawful and depraved.”

  At the time, fingers were pointed at Roger Ebert, who some felt had turned RM into a parody of himself. (Meyer fans seem to be divided over his scriptwriters: there are Roger Ebert and John Moran camps, Beatles-versus-Stones style.) “Ebert forced Meyer to acknowledge what he was all about,” wrote Myron Meisel, declaring it “a disaster.” Even John Simon found the union a mismatch: “It is as if Harold Robbins had collaborated on a novel with Gore Vidal.”

  Back in Chicago, Ebert was feeling the heat. Fellow local critics Mike Royko and Gene Siskel demolished the picture, leaving a glum Ebert to ponder, “Will this be a bad thing for my career?” “I was so close to it I didn’t know what to think,” said Ebert, who admitted he was “shocked” by some of the gory touches Meyer slipped into Dolls. Meyer soon arrived in town with Edy Williams in tow, and they dragged Ebert off to the Roosevelt Theater, where the trio watched the picture with a live audience. When the crowd went wild, Roger felt redeemed. “That movie really does play,” he said. “It really plays.”

  Meyer maintained that he threatened to throw Siskel out a skyscraper window for giving his pal Roger such a hard time. Although Ebert would contribute to a number of other Meyer projects under various pseudonyms, he would not contribute to RM’s second Fox picture, ending his “Hollywood” screenwriter career. Ebert’s boss at the Sun-Times had given him an ultimatum: either keep the gig as a film critic or become a full-time screenwriter. “I went for the job security,” said Ebert. “I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if I’d gone to Hollywood—would I have become a screenwriter or a director? Maybe I would’ve destroyed my life. Who knows.”

  Despite indifference from Fox, who Meyer continually maintained was “ashamed” of the movie, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has taken on a life of its own. Although fairly hard to see over the years due to poor prints and a spotty video release history, it has become a bona fide cult classic, with maniacal fans crowding revivals to mouth every word of dialogue. Mike Myers is said to have acknowledged the movie as a major influence on his Austin Powers franchise, and as recently as 2003 Dolls enjoyed another successful and well-reviewed theatrical run. As RM liked to say, you couldn’t kill the picture with a stick.

  For the filmmaker, there was no question where it ranked in his oeuvre. “The ultimate Russ Meyer film has already been made—Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” said RM in 1977. “Something special happened with that film. . . . I’d never be able to approach again.”

  It’s hard to say which people found more surreal: the triple marriage at the end of Dolls or the next legal union of Russell Albion Meyer. On June 27, 1970, Meyer wed Edy Williams. Friends and enemies alike were stunned. “He didn’t like Edy—that’s what was so weird,” said Erica Gavin. “And all of a sudden he’s getting married?” But Meyer made clear that he got off on the sordid nature of it all. “We were an extraordinary couple: a sex bomb with an old pornographer.”

  The ceremony took place at the posh Bel Air Hotel. In attendance were Dolls cast and crew, various war buddies, and, pipe firmly in hand, Hugh Hefner, accompanied by his current girlfriend, cornfed Hee Haw cutie Barbi Benton. Critic Kevi
n Thomas recalled Edy’s dramatic entrance, swathed in “a Marie Antoinette dress with an overskirt pulled back and draped . . . only Edy didn’t put the underskirt on.”

  “You talk about a cartoon!” exclaimed Manny Diez. “There must’ve been a couple of hundred guests there. About thirty yards away from me there’s this man standing there looking at all this. And it was Buck Hall, first assistant director on Dolls. I walked up to Buck, put my arm around Buck’s shoulder, and said, ‘Buck, why are you standing here?’ He was just . . . looking. And he shook his head and said, ‘Why?’ That’s all he could say. ‘Why?’ Because everybody thought this was a giant mistake. Nobody could understand it. Nobody.”

  Edy claimed to be optimistic. “I thought, ‘Hey, this will be swell—like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, y’know?’ ” But the newlyweds quarreled even on their wedding night. “No pussy,” wrote RM in his autobiography. This was a union born to implode, a tormented, angry dance. Edy was a high-maintenance filly and just as stubborn as Meyer, who always let it be known that whatever he wanted to do came first. “He ignores me,” moaned Williams to writer John London. “That really exasperates me. The audacity to come in and see me lying in bed and go into the living room to read scripts. It blows my mind. And turns me on.”

  Such a glamorous couple deserved a ritzy Hollywood home, even though RM couldn’t have given a shit. “Russ was a very modest guy, he didn’t like ostentatious things,” said Manny Diez. Meyer asked Diez if he knew a real estate agent for something in the $100,000 range. “Next thing I know they’re living in a two-million-dollar house. It was a star house, fabulous, but not for Russ—he’d be living in a tent somewhere. That’s what Edy wanted.”

  Rumored to be the former residence of film noir icon Lizabeth Scott, the house in Coldwater Canyon was both palatial and secluded. Meyer referred to it as Xanadu, his Castle-on-Mulholland. It had a swimming pool that extended into the living room, crystal chandeliers, Louis XIV furniture, a fireplace you could stand in, plus a two-way mirror in the bedroom. Not to mention a touch of trailer park as soon as the Meyers moved in. When Stu Philips visited he was stunned at what a pigsty the joint was. Beer cans and bottles filled the fireplace; newspapers and magazines were stacked everywhere. “The place looked like nobody had cleaned it. It was almost disgusting to walk in there.” Meyer liked to recount a discussion he had with Edy’s mother. “Your daughter doesn’t do dishes,” complained RM. “How can she do dishes when her eyes are on the stars?” responded Mom.

  Meyer’s friends were not impressed by the naked ambition of the new Mrs. Meyer. David Friedman recalled Russ and Edy making a visit to his Cordova Street office in downtown L.A. “Edy said to me, ‘Is that your car?’ ” When Friedman nodded, she said, “ ‘Hmm, that’s interesting. That’s bigger than Russ’s car.’ I knew right then and there, here’s a low-class broad. Edy was a mistake.”

  Williams was known for her jealousy, and Meyer later confessed that he continued to see both Uschi Digard and the ubiquitous Miss Mattress, Janet Buxton (RM even admitted to having filmed one of their sweaty couplings at his editing suite on the Fox lot, but strictly for his own edification). Richard Brummer remembers Edy coming into the editing room and peering over his shoulder as he cut, studying the female face fluttering on the Moviola screen. “She grabs Russ when he gets back to the cutting room and says, ‘That’s why you went up to Bakersfield! You were screwing that girl!’ Edy was convinced what she saw was evidence of foul play. And Russ was not gonna hear this from her. He walks out of the cutting room, she follows him, screaming as he walks up the street trying to get away from her.”

  Edy has her defenders. Jim Ryan found her to be a smart cookie and appreciated what she had to put up with living with the King. Each morning Meyer would hand her a decree of daily duties scrawled out on one of his ever-present yellow legal pads—Clean This, Fix That, Don’t Do This, Call Me at 0700 Hours. “She came to me with the list and said, ‘Do you see what he’s doing? He’s driving me crazy!!’ I said, ‘Edy, would you rather be back working for $750 a week for Fox?’ ” If Edy thought life was to be a series of Edy Williams films directed by Russ Meyer, she’d misunderstood. She was now a prisoner of war in Camp Meyerville. “He wanted to be the star, and anytime I did anything I got yelled at . . . He didn’t want me to be in the limelight. He wanted me to stay at home. He didn’t want any guests in the house for the first year.”

  Decades later, Meyer would claim that Edy had taken one look at Lydia, in failing health and wheelchair-bound, and said, “I don’t want your mother around here. She’s a cripple.” In almost the same breath he maintained that Edy had suffered a miscarriage after slipping by their pool while engrossed in an article on herself in the Los Angeles Times. RM told David K. Frasier that when it came to this wife, his particular weakness was the fact that he “could not stand being embarrassed, and that’s one way she knew how to get me. She’d throw a tantrum in the middle of the fucking desert. Bedouins would come in out of nowhere.” But then there were those ten fabulous seconds when they got along, some of them even in the sack.

  Mused Meyer, “I don’t think I’ve known any woman who made me happier or more unhappy. She’s the ultimate bitch and the ultimate sex symbol. Nothing in between.”

  Critics might’ve held their noses watching Dolls, but the picture raked in the dough. Meyer was riding a big wave. In February 1970, Yale held its very first film festival—a two-day Russ Meyer retrospective. Richard Schickel, covering the event for Harper’s, favorably compared RM to Walt Disney. In May, Fox announced they’d given the filmmaker a three-picture deal, with a $150,000 salary for the first one alone. The studio sweetened the deal with a pair of new Corvette Stingrays for him and his missus. Meyer was clearly amused by such studio excess. “If your luggage is broken, they’ll repair it—at enormous cost to the stockholders.”

  “We’re exceptionally pleased with Mr. Meyer’s work,” proclaimed Richard Zanuck. “We sincerely feel that he can do more than merely undress people.” In July 1971, the Museum of Modern Art paid homage to Meyer by screening six of his films in New York City. The audience went gaga over Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. “It was fantastic,” said RM, who compared navigating the frenzied crowd that night to a “bullfight. They were just trying to rip Edy’s clothes off.” An ecstatic Meyer noted that once he and Edy slipped away from the fans, they managed to re-create the lusty Bentley/Rolls scene from Dolls, this time in the back of a Big Apple limo.

  Meyer preferred the assignation of filmmaker rather than director. The latter, he felt, referred to “someone who takes himself seriously, who wears suede shoes and leather vests.” Well, suddenly Russ Meyer had taken to wearing gaudy neckerchiefs. He, too, had become A Director. RM was living in a mansion with a sexy young starlet, had signed a three-picture deal with a major studio, and had plenty of cash in the bank. Not bad for a high-class pornographer.

  Meyer had big plans, places to go, people to see. “The sex film?” mulled our King Leer. “I think it’s on the way out. I want to get into horror films. Suspense, mystery.” He was the man with the Midas touch, the one who could do no wrong.

  And then everything went kaflooey.

  Meyer’s three pictures for Fox were to be a project called The Final Steal, a film based on Irving Wallace’s best-seller The Seven Minutes, and, oddest of all, Everything in the Garden, a housewives-who-become-hookers Edward Albee play that Jerome Kilty, another renowned playwright, was to adapt for the screen. Meyer planned to do The Final Steal first, from a script by Manny Diez involving nerve gas, stolen diamonds, and a double-crossed Native American seeking vengeance. RM was considering casting Johnny Cash as the latter. Unfortunately, Zanuck and Brown had other ideas. They’d made a very expensive deal with author Irving Wallace for three of his best-sellers and, as previous director Richard Fleischer had left the project, someone was needed to helm the author’s most recent hit. Meyer’s camp maintained that Russ had no interest in the property. “They shoved The Sev
en Minutes down his throat,” said Manny Diez.

  But Meyer felt he could use this tale about the politics of censorship as a way to get back at the only person who’d ever beaten him—Charles Keating. RM even stuck a group in the movie called the Strength Through Decency League (after Keating’s Citizens for Decent Literature). Fox executives arranged a meeting between Meyer and Irving Wallace, then “more or less talked Russ into it,” as producer David Brown remembers. “He agreed, like a good soldier.” Meyer told reporters that it was his “most fervent hope and desire to hold a spectacular world premiere . . . in Cincinnati, Mr. Keating’s home town.”

  Where Dolls had been anarchy, The Seven Minutes would be studio-square. Brown laid down the law: the picture must get an R rating. Meyer even sent the MPAA a script before production began for insurance. This time when Dolls music contributor Lynn Carey submitted a soundtrack song, Fox’s Lionel Newman—whose hands had been tied on Meyer’s initial effort for the studio—rejected it because it contained the lyric “lay of the land.” “Instead they used ‘Midnight Tricks’—which is about a hooker!” noted Carey. As usual, Meyer packed the crew with combat buddies.

  The plot revolves around a controversial book, also called The Seven Minutes, referring to the average time it takes a woman to achieve orgasm. In hopes of getting the volume declared obscene, conservative power mongers attempt to blame the tome for inciting a rapist, overlooking the fact that the accused didn’t commit the crime. The climactic court battle in the film reveals that author J. J. Jadway is actually pornography-fighting retired movie star Constance Cumberland (Meyer’s big twist: in Wallace’s book it’s a male Supreme Court justice). She provides the court with concrete proof that the accused couldn’t have committed the crime—he’s impotent. Yes, a limp pecker is the root of all unhappiness in the land of Meyer, and the movie ends in bed with the hero defense lawyer about to get it on with his new girlfriend. Once again, the world’s problems are solved by some good, old-fashioned fucking.