The Night They Raided Minsky's is a 1968 American musical comedy film written and produced by Norman Lear, with music and lyrics by the duo of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, and directed by William Friedkin. Based on a 1960 novel by Rowland Barber, the film is a fictional account of the invention of the striptease at Minsky's Burlesque in 1925. It stars Jason Robards, Britt Ekland, Norman Wisdom, Forrest Tucker, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott, Elliott Gould and Bert Lahr.
The film was released by United Artists on December 18, 1968, to generally positive reviews. It was a financial success and later spawned a stage musical adaptation, Minsky's, in 2009.
Plot In 1925 Rachel Schpitendavel, 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 Billy Minsky and the show's jaded straight man, Raymond Paine, concoct a plan to use Rachel to foil moral crusader Vance Fowler, 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", hoping it will prompt a raid by Fowler and the police. Instead, Billy would let Rachel perform her innocuous Bible dances, thus humiliating Fowler.
During the run-up to her midnight performance, Raymond and his partner, comedian Chick Williams, show Rachel the ropes of burlesque, and they both fall for her in the process. Meanwhile, Rachel's stern father, 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 Raymond and the Minskys are just using her. Her father tries to drag her offstage, but she resists, tearing 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 to 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.
Cast
Background In his book Minsky's Burlesque, Morton Minsky (with Milt Machlin) wrote, "As for April 20, 1925, the day that the raid on which the book was based took place, it was hardly epochal in the history of burlesque, but it did turn out to be a prelude to much greater troubles... Anyway, the raid story was fun, but the raid itself was simply one of the dozens to which we had become accustomed; certainly no big crisis."
Minsky's theater, the National Winter Garden on Houston Street, was raided for the first time in 1917 when Mae Dix absentmindedly began removing her costume before she reached the wings. When the crowd cheered, Dix returned to the stage and continued removing her clothing to wild applause. Morton's older brother, Billy, ordered the "accident" repeated every night. This began an endless cycle; to keep their license, the Minskys had to keep their shows clean but to keep drawing customers, they had to be risqué. Whenever they went too far, however, they were raided.
According to Morton Minsky, Mademoiselle Fifi was a woman named Mary Dawson from Pennsylvania. Morton suggests that Billy persuaded Dawson to expose her breasts to create a sensation. By 1925, it was permissible for girls in legitimate shows staged by Ziegfeld, George White and Earl Carroll – as well as burlesque – to appear topless as long as they were stationary in a "living tableau". Mademoiselle Fifi stripped to the waist but moved, triggering the raid. "Although the show, in general, had been tame," Morton wrote, "Fifi's finale and the publicity that soon followed the raid ensured full houses at the soon-to-be-opened [Minsky's] theater uptown [on 42nd Street]." (The Minskys did not stage burlesque on 42nd Street until 1931 when they leased the Republic Theater. They had a short-lived venture at the Park Theater on Columbus Circle in 1922 but left that theater after only a year. They leased the Apollo Theater on 125th Street from 1924 until 1933, after which it became famous as a showcase for African-American talent.)
In 1975, Mary Dawson, then 85, refuted the legend. "I was never a stripteaser. I never did anything risque." She said that novelist Rowland Barber "just put all that in the book to make it better". She claimed she was not even at the theater that night. Her father was a police officer and a straitlaced Quaker, although he never came to New York City and never led a raid on one of the Minsky burlesque houses.The Utica Daily Press, December 30, 1975
Proposed Stage Show In April 1961, producer Leonard Key outbid several others for the stage rights to Rowland Barber's book. (Debbie Reynolds reportedly had sought film rights in 1961 as well.) At that time it was reported to be the highest price ever paid for such rights, and that the novel would be adapted by screenwriter Edward Chodorov.Dorothy Kilgallen's column, Niagara Falls Gazette, April 21, 1961 Later in the year, however, Key had enlisted screenwriter Julius J. Epstein."From Minsky's to Broadway," Utica Daily Press, October 23, 1961 At these early stages, Sammy Cahn as well as Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini were rumored to write the music. The show never found financial backing before the option for the stage rights ran out two years later in 1963.Dorothy Kilgallen's column, Schenectady Gazette, May 23, 1963 Production Development Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin bought the film rights in September 1965. Lear originally announced that production would begin in the fall of 1966. Dick Shawn was reportedly considered for the "lead role" (unspecified) in July 1966.Jack O'Brian's column, Schenectady Gazette, July 14, 1966, However, filming didn't begin until a year later, on October 8, 1967.
Lear and York had a two-picture deal with National General Pictures (NGP) which financed Divorce American Style (1967) from the team. However NGP did not like the script for Minsky's and turned down the project. Lear took it to United Artists who agreed to finance.
Editor Ralph Rosenblum recalled: "From the very beginning, the idea behind The Night They Raided Minsky's had been to create an 'old-fashioned musical with a New Look'...although what it was and how it was going to be accomplished no one knew...Had anyone dared to acknowledge that the New Look we hoped to achieve in Minsky's was essentially a [Richard] Lester look, we all might have been saved some anguish; but such an acknowledgement would have been considered inappropriate, if not blasphemous, and so it barely crossed our minds."Rosenblum p 12
Originally Bud Yorkin was meant to direct. However he went off to make Inspector Clouseau instead and another director was needed. On May 23, 1967, the Los Angeles Times reported that William Friedkin was set to direct. Friedkin's first film, Good Times (1967), starring Sonny and Cher, had just been released. A musical comedy that spoofs various movie genres, including mysteries, westerns, and spy thrillers, it was a critical and box-office flop but it impressed Lear and Yorkin. Friedkin was quoted as saying that The Night They Raided Minskys will be a "poetic reality".Quoted in Jack O'Brian's column, Tonawanda News, October 17, 1967
Arnold Schulman wrote the first draft but was replaced.McGilligan p 316
Friedkin said Lear "structured his screenplay like a burlesque show were everything was a series of one liners, including the characterizations."Clagett pp 39-40 He felt "the ony way to save that script was to Richard Lester it up with a lot of schtick which I hate doing."Clagett p 40
Casting Norman Lear wrote in his memoirs he always wanted to cast Britt Ekland and Bert Lahr.Lear p 212
Tony Curtis was cast as Raymond Paine in June 1967. (Raymond Paine was the name of a real straight man who was in the show that night. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident in 1934.) He dropped out a month later, reportedly over creative differences. In his memoirs, both Friedkin and Lear said the actor went to make The Boston Stranger instead.
Alan Alda, whose father, Robert Alda, had been in burlesque, was cast as Paine, but was unable to leave his role on Broadway in The Apple Tree.Buffalo Courier-Express, October 8, 1967, Walter Matthau, at one stage, was going to play Paine. Jason Robards took over the Paine role about a month before filming began.Lear p 214 Elliott Gould, who was then married to Barbra Streisand, was signed in August 1967 and made his film debut as Billy Minsky.
Mickey Rooney was said to be considered for the Chick Williams role,Harrison Carroll's column, New York and Brooklyn Daily, August 24, 1967, but Joel Grey, then on Broadway in Cabaret, was initially cast. Grey had to drop out, however, because the film had no firm end date and Grey was committed to starting rehearsals for George M!, a musical about George M. Cohan, in mid-December.Dorothy Manners column, September 22, 1967,
British comedian Norman Wisdom, who had recently been nominated for a Tony Award for his acclaimed performance in the James Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn musical comedy Walking Happy, was cast. Wisdom had made a series of low-budget star-vehicle comedies for the Rank Organisation. Never highly regarded by critics, Wisdom's films had enjoyed good box-office returns in his native country. The Night They Raided Minsky's was his first American film (although he made Androcles and the Lion for television), and he received good notices. A contributor to Variety wrote: "So easily does Wisdom dominate his many scenes, other cast members suffer by comparison", and Time compared him to Buster Keaton.
Songs The songs were written by the Broadway team of composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams, who had won a Tony Award for the musical Bye Bye Birdie in 1961. They would also write the theme song "Those Were The Days" for Lear's sitcom All in the Family.
Strouse said he and Adams wrote and recorded four songs before filming to save time: the title track, "Perfect Gentlemen", "Ten Terrific Girls" and "You Rat You."
The score was orchestrated and conducted by Broadway veteran Philip J. Lang, working on his only film made for theatrical release.
Shooting The Night They Raided Minsky's was the first musical shot entirely on location in New York City. The budget exceeded $3 million, making it the most expensive film shot in the city up to that time. A block of East 26th Street between First and Second Avenues was transformed into the Lower East Side 1925. (The vacant tenements on the block were scheduled to be torn down as part of an urban renewal project, but the city postponed demolition for the filmmakers.) Parking meters were disguised by garbage cans and barrels. Exteriors were shot there for two weeks. A portion of an elevated train station 30 feet tall and 56 feet long was built. A scene in a subway car was filmed on the Myrtle Avenue elevated in Brooklyn. Some interiors were filmed at Chelsea Studios. The theater sequences were filmed at what was then the Gayety Theater (now the Village East Cinema), at 181 Second Avenue on the Lower East Side.