NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Joe 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.

Boomer-51 In the IMDb trivia section, it's stated that the role of Lila was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe. Of course, Marilyn was considered for a lot of roles that, had she not died, she may or may not have taken. What's interesting, though, is that just before her death she was fired from the 20th Century Fox production "Something's Got to Give." Fox owned the rights to the song entitled "Something's Gotta Give" because Johnny Mercer had written it for their 1955 Fred Astaire film "Daddy Long Legs." It had been re-orchestrated and re-recorded for the Monroe film. Then, it turns up in "The Stripper" as the song that Joanne Woodward sings as she strips. If my memory is correct (I saw the film in its first run when I was 8 years old) she's covered in balloons, and loud bunch of drunks burst the balloons with their cigars while she tries to sing. It was pretty tawdry business.In any case, Joanne Woodward got the part, and she was good. To the best of my recollection, "The Stripper," as other commenters have said, was a failed but interesting effort. It's too bad that it's not available on DVD.

moonspinner55 William Inge play "A Loss of Roses", originally written with Marilyn Monroe in mind, becomes showy dramatic vehicle for Joanne Woodward playing Lila Green, low-rent actress passing through her hometown in Kansas, ditched by her manager and boarding with an old girlfriend and her teenage son. The screenplay is entirely too straightforward, too rounded off; it should be more mercurial, mysterious, but instead it's routine soapy business. The character of Lila is an unconvincing creation: full of stories of users and hangers-on, she's a dreamer at the dead-end, hopeful but pathetic. Lila has been divorced, yet she's a little naive around men--it's never established how much of a tramp she is or where her reputation stands (as shown, she's more smoke than fire, more sad than sex-driven). It's to Woodward's credit the film is still quite interesting, yet the actress is too innately refined to be convincing as a kittenish tart. She is entirely serviceable, yet one can only watch and think what a more appropriate actress might have done with this material, weak as it is. This is one cleaned-up "Stripper" (awful title!), a film which never sinks to the sordid levels depicted, but remains a tidy middle-of-the-road tale. **1/2 from ****

shepardjessica-1 The play that Warren Beatty (and Michael J. Pollard from B & C) did on stage was turned into a "semi-exploitation" flick with the title change from A LOSS OF ROSES to THE STRIPPER. Joanne Woodward is phenomenal as always, creating a "Marilyn" type character that is fragile, almost used-up and not even 35 yet. Richard Beymer (so great on TWIN PEAKS on TV) is the young lad, Claire Trevor is his mom and there's a sanctimonious air to the atmosphere (including the sleazy Robert Webber as a sleaze (who was an under-rated)) and M. J. as Beymer's buddy.A well-intentioned script in '63 that was too "HUD"-like (starring Ms. Woodward's cool husband, Paul Newman), but it just wasn't gritty enough or well-directed enough to spark SPARKS. Very good acting, great locales and cinematography. Worth your time!