Well well well… Look at what the cat dragged in… You guys! I love you guys!

Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. This week, we’ve got ourselves a TV movie. Not only that but a TV movie that is also a Primetime Emmy nominee from 1982! This week, I’ll be talking about Portrait of a Showgirl. Now, check it out… Somewhere along the way, this movie also got titled Portrait of a Stripper. My guess is that the second title there was a little sexier and so it became marketable. I’m not sure if the movie could have been aired on network television as Portrait of a Stripper back then. However, could it have been named that for home video or a cable release? It would certainly be a tiny bit more provocative and attract a little more attention.

Either way, the movie stars some pretty recognizable folk who I’ll talk about here shortly. Directing this TV movie is a director who did a bunch of them. In fact, it’s not even the first time I’ve brought him up. Steven Hilliard Stern made this movie four years after directing the season five finale of B-Movie Enema: The Series – The Ghost of Flight 401. Wait… did I say I talked about Steven Hilliard Stern? I’m sorry, that episode was hosted by Geoff Bob Buckle, that smooth-talkin’ film enthusiast from possibly Texas. I sometimes forget that I took that week off. I do know that he was also the director of the bitchin’ Rolling Vengeance that was about a kid customizing his own revenge death machine. I guess you could say that it was a good year for Steven Hilliard Stern here at B-Movie Enema. As for his career, in just under 30 years, he racked up over 60 credits with a vast majority of those being either episodes of TV shows or TV movies like the one we’re looking at today.

Starring in this movie is a trio of recognizable, and dare I say huge, stars. First up, for the second time on this blog, we have Tony Curtis. Curtis previously appeared as an undead Egyptian from the Manhattan part of town in The Mummy Lives. He was a pretty damn big star in a six-decade career. His Best Actor Oscar nomination came for 1958’s The Defiant Ones. His big hits continued as he followed that up with Some Like It Hot and Spartacus. He is also the father of Jamie Lee Curtis. If you’re reading this blog, you know who she is… The Ensure spokeswoman. Gotta keep your poops regular!

The top-billing for this movie belongs to Lesley Ann Warren. Warren has kind of tiptoed around massively important movies, TV, and other pop culture things. I’d argue she’s maybe not quite as well known as she used to be, but she is a triple threat of being an actress, dancer, and singer. Maybe kind of perfect for this movie, I dunno. While she was the Academy Award-nominated Supporting Actress contender for 1982’s Victor/Victoria, most people of a certain age likely knew her (and some might have even lusted after her) as Miss Scarlett in 1985’s Clue. Before all of this, Warren appeared in a 1975 televised version of the Broadway musical It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman. That was a play from the 60s around the time that the Batman television series was hitting the ground running. It’s… Not great. BUT… Briefly, she did get consideration to play Lois Lane in the Superman film that Richard Donner was casting for in 1977. Of course, she was among many actresses including Anne Archer, Susan Blakely, and Stockard Channing to be considered for the role, but she was screen-tested.

The biggest star, and maybe one of the performers in general who will achieve immortality for her talents, is Rita Moreno. Moreno was born in Puerto Rico in 1931. She is the Primetime Emmy nomination for this movie in the Best Support Actress category. It is one of TEN nominations she’s received. Naturally, her biggest, and most memorable, performance was in 1961’s West Side Story. It won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the Steven Spielberg remake in 2021 in which the role she made famous sixty years earlier, Anita, won Ariana DeBose the same Oscar Moreno won. Moreno is one of the very few people who have won the EGOT, or the Grand Slam of Hollywood show business. That’s winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. She achieved that status at the age of 45 (the sixth-youngest) in 1977 when she won the Emmy for her guest appearance on The Muppet Show.

Let’s dig in and live the glitz and glamour of a Vegas Showgirl, yeah?

The movie opens with a rockin’ soundtrack and a car driving down a desert road and getting pulled over by a cop. This is Jillian Brooks, played by Lesley Ann Warren. Apparently, the cop knew it was Miss Scarlet tearing down the road because he made sure his hair was not messy so he could look good for the lady. Jillian has no time for his bullshit when he wants to make small talk about her being from New York City. She tells him she’s still got a lotta miles to go, so make with the ticket.

Now, previously, we looked at Showgirls. This movie is giving me vibes right out of the gate and it’s not just because a variation of “Showgirl” can be found in both titles. When we met Elizabeth Berkley’s Nomi at the start of that movie, she had an attitude and was determined to make it Las Vegas. Jillian has a similar vibe in this movie.

We then transition to meeting pretty much the remainder of the cast of characters. This includes veteran dancer, Rosella DeLeon, played by Rita Moreno. She’s married to Joey, a kind of a loser who is always trying to find ways to get rich. Joey DeLeon is played by Tony Curtis. Also arriving in Las Vegas is another up-and-coming dancer, Dianne Kay’s Marci. Kay was known at this time for being on the TV series Eight Is Enough and in the movie 1941.

Rosella is irritable this morning. It sounds like this might be the opening day for a new show. That must be why Jillian and Marci is coming into town too. Rosella makes mention that maybe she’s been doing this for too long. Joey says he’s been in Vegas for 17 years and she’s doing pretty well for herself. That doesn’t exactly change Rosella’s opinion that maybe, for all the success she’s had, she might be aging out of her career as a showgirl.

In a much softer way, Rosella reminds me of Gina Gershon’s Cristel from Showgirls. I don’t doubt that this will be quite a bit milder than the infamous mid-90s movie, but there’s a feeling that we’re going to be meeting a few personalities and I have to believe we’re setting up for warring personalities. In fact, when Rosella arrives to get warmed up for rehearsal, she immediately spots Jillian and comments on how good she looks.

And when Jillian introduces herself to the producer of the show, she’s all business and takes herself pretty seriously by saying she mostly worked for Fosse originally.

So here we are… Jillian is the driven, self-serious dancer from New York brought in as a ringer to give a little legitimacy for the showgirl revue that Caesar’s Palace is planning to put on. Rosella is the old veteran who is the top dog. Then Marci Steiner is the new girl who seems overly sweet and probably gonna get steamrolled by the business. During lunch, Rosella meets Marci and explains that maybe she’s old news now with someone like Jillian around. She even says maybe Jillian will “get the message” around here about how things are done.

After lunch, Rosella sees Jillian showing the director a new move she wants to show the other dancers. It’s a professional move that the others struggle with. The director likes the move, but the other girls can’t keep up with her. After the rehearsal, Rosella introduces herself to Jillian. She tells her that what she was trying to get the other girls was pretty tough. She then says that most of the girls who work at the casino are not trained like Jillian is. In fact, most of them are really only able to do basic moves because the showgirl revues in Vegas aren’t all that high-brow. As Rosella puts it, the girls here aren’t dancers, they are just trying to make a living.

Jillian says that, the way she’s sees it, they’ll have to simply be hired to be dancers.

And so the two leading ladies of this movie are off to a smashing relationship with one being a stuck-up asshole and the other being sort of a den mother for the troupe. Marci, on the other hand, is sweet and very friendly and she and Rosella are becoming fast friends. So much so, that Rosella invites the Midwesterner to dinner at her place.

We learn a little more about Joey. He’s always scheming. He works for a hotel and he’s fast-talking, and always looking for where he can invest money. He meets a couple oil guys from Oklahoma who are staying in the penthouse. So we can kind of see that he’s a bit of a car salesman type of guy. He wants to be relied upon so that people are keeping him on the top of their minds, and possibly let him in on any deals they are putting together.

Jillian and Rosella’s strained relationship bubbles over during practice one day. Rosella told Marci that she thought Jillian’s car, clothes, and house came from a high roller that bankrolled her almost like a prostitute. The rumor got back around to Jillian. On top of that, when the producer of the show asks the girls to chip in to buy flowers for the wardrobe girl’s mother who just had surgery, Rosella refuses to take money from Jillian. Jillian stands up for herself to Rosella straining their relationship that much more.

Later that night, we learn that Jillian does have a boyfriend, a guy who is cheating on his wife and wants her to come back to New York. He begs her for six months to dissolve his marriage and send his daughter off to boarding school. She basically left him to get her own shit together. So while she is kind of prickly, Jillian may have some fair reasoning for being that way.

Marci’s story is our third side of this character triangle. As I mentioned previously, she came from the Midwest, St. Louis to be exact. She is definitely not a real professional dancer. She told Rosella that she really only danced at fairs and never really anything official like this revue. She’s not particularly good and already has been warned by the director that if she doesn’t pick it up, she’ll be fired. At the casino, she comes across a woman who is very clearly spinning a yarn about needing to find a place to live. Marci mentioned she needed a roommate. The woman says she has a small, well-trained dog which turns out to be a quite large, particularly poorly-trained dog. Dogs and cats are explicitly not allowed in her apartment. The next morning, the woman she thought would become a roommate ran off with everything.

It’s kind of clear that we have three different girls with different situations… Marci is the bumpkin who is naive and has not experienced the big, bad world. Opposite Marci is Rosella who is street-smart and full of experience. Jillian is guarded and cynical, but truly talented. Then, as a smaller, supporting character, we have Joey who is desperate to buy into a business that will hit big. He’s lost money in every other venture he attempted to get in on, and he’s chasing this big whale of an opportunity to buy into an oil well. He’s naive in a different way from Marci and lacks the good instincts his wife Rosella has.

What we’ve got here isn’t so much a movie with a plot but a character study. These are the different types of people who work in Las Vegas or go to the city to get an opportunity. The movie is mildly compelling. There are character elements that indicate an almost episodic nature to short plotlines. Marci’s naivete led to her getting all her stuff stolen. Rosella’s husband Joey will lose everything if he keeps up his investment gambles. Jillian’s snobbish nature makes her an outsider. These are little things that build the entire movie by playing off of the character traits.

Jillian is approached by the revue’s producer to ask her to entertain a congressman who is coming into town. She initially turns him down, but he kind of leans into the idea that this guy is powerful and important. They have dinner and the congressman lays it on thick about her being beautiful. He claims he’s a gentleman. After all, he’s married and has kids. BUT… He’s fighting his urge to ravish her. After all… he “respects” her and what she does as a dancer. He asks her if it’s cool that he take her to bed. She offers a rebuttal… She cuts right through the idea that he wants her to accept his offer of sex because of his power, but she suggests money. He rejects that because that would be purely transactional and it would ruin his ethics and morals. She basically tells him to fuck off because if all he thinks is she will desire him for his power which is totally useless to her, he’s beneath her. Also… that’s not mentioning the fact that he claims to have morals and he’s trying to cheat on his family with a showgirl.

After she stormed out of the congressman’s hotel room, she meets a valet who tried to get another aggressive guy to leave her alone. They hit it off and Jillian shows her softer side for once. Elsewhere, Joey empties out his and Rosella’s bank account to buy into this oil deal, so that’s going to be their storyline. When Marci’s fired from the revue after a collision with Jillian during rehearsal, Jillian works with her personally to try to teach the steps so they can convince the director, Stevie, to hire her back. Marci and Jillian have a great scene together where Jillian’s “ice queen” facade fades and she boosts Marci and does everything she can to help.

Dennis, Jillian’s married boyfriend, suddenly arrives back in Vegas to tell her that he’s divorcing his wife. But Jillian, who is already into that valet she’s connected with, Paul, tells Dennis it’s too late. It doesn’t matter if there was or wasn’t another guy in her life, the more he treated her as his mistress, the less likely she would ever marry him. She tells him good luck and sends him packing so she can be with Paul.

Now, Jillian had a quick turnaround to become a much better, more likable character. If it isn’t exactly explicit, it can very easily be read that her softening came around the same time she met Paul. That basically gives the impression that she came to Vegas because of a man and is now happy in Vegas because of another man. As much as I like Lesley Ann Warren in this movie, she does come off as a little hollow. She’s appropriately snobby early on, and she is incredibly likable after her turn and that scene with Marci where she props up the dancer who isn’t so sure of herself was charming as hell.

I do kind of wish that Lesley Ann Warren could be the lone star of this movie. She comes in as a ringer to add some legitimacy to a casino’s revue of showgirls. She helps the new, young, and unsure girl get better. She proves herself to be a very good dancer and, along the way through friends she makes on the stage, she softens. That would be good.

As much as I hate to say it… Rita Moreno’s character, and, by extension, Tony Curtis as well, is superfluous. She’s not needed here. She’s a powerhouse name and would make it so that people tuned in and watch or get some legitimacy to this movie about Vegas dancers who are often thought of as strippers or prostitutes, but she’s not really bringing anything. She comes in, says some lines, and then started a whole thing with Jillian that made her character come off as territorial and kind of an asshole.

It’s entirely possible that Rosella, who is supposed to be the warm, almost motherly, figure in this troupe who defends them from this snobby pro who is asking too much from the girls just trying to collect a paycheck, is the villain of this movie.

I mean it. Most of this movie has followed Warren’s Jillian. It’s her story of finding her independence and feeling comfortable being in Vegas doing a showgirl act. Marci’s character is a good supporting character. However, Moreno comes in and mostly interacts directly with Marci. When Rosella interacts with Jillian, it’s confrontational. If Jillian wasn’t going through this metamorphosis in terms of her character, you’d think Rosella is the one who is protecting her flock. The problem is Jillian IS much more likable now in this portion of the movie, so guess what, Rosella is confrontational to the leading character who we are mostly following and going through a transformation to make her incredibly likable. That kinda makes Rosella an antagonist, right? That’s what antagonists do, right?

That’s kind of the problem with this movie. Because the plot is not as strong as the characters interacting with things that are going on in the movie, we have to interact with how these characters are presented to us. Jillian was stuck up early on, now she’s sweet and we kind of have to like her. Marci is always sweet and nice and we like her from moment one. Rosella is the problem here. I feel like you needed Moreno to make the movie sound like something more than just exploitation, but her place in the movie is a combination of confusing and unnecessary. As we move into the third act of the movie, I find myself wanting more of Marci and Jillian and a lot less of her.

All that said… I guess we do have to deal with her part of this story. So Joey got the $12,500 to give to the oil guys he met when they were staying at the hotel he works at, right? Well, he keeps trying to call and follow up on his investment and they won’t answer. She goes to see a big shot in Vegas who does a lot of business investment deals. He confirms her worst fears that they swindled Joey and took all their money.

Rosella rightfully takes Joey to task over how long they struggled and fought to save the money they had and how quick and easy it was for him to be taken by a couple of con men. He breaks down crying knowing that he’s financially wrecked them. While Rosella and Joey are kind of on the rocks, Jillian and Paul are strengthening their relationship as she offers to help him get back into med school to finish his doctorin’ classes.

Now, another issue I have with this whole Rosella and Joey story presents itself only moments after their big dramatic moment. So that big shot that Rosella went to talk to ask about the legitimacy of the oil deal? He tells Joey that he kept his knowledge of this deal to himself and said nothing to Rosella. It turns out those oil guys WERE legit and they were both invested. He buys Joey out for twice as much as he bought in and everything there is a-ok thanks to a little deus ex machina.

Meanwhile, Paul returns to Berkeley to go back to med school, but in a roundabout way, he ends up crashing the car in Arizona… the not correct place for him to be if he was returning to Berkeley or Las Vegas. He reveals to Jillian that he got scared of the prospect of returning to school to become a doctor and the pressure of getting married to Jillian. He basically asks for space and time. She tells him she’s not going to waste any time with someone who isn’t mature enough to handle a relationship. So… she dumps his ass to remain in control of her life. Again… Jillian proves to be a heck of a likable person who takes her life into her own hands.

It’s the night of the big new show at Caesar’s. Rosella apologizes (in her own way) to Jillian because she heard about how she helped Marci get with the program of the performance. Never mind that had to be weeks ago now and Rosella had a long time to have this moment with Jillian, but whatever. Anyway, the last few minutes of the movie is just the performance of the dancers. It’s… It’s fine. If you like this sort of thing, you might like this. I mean the ladies aren’t wearing much and they all have nice legs, so there’s that.

This turned out to be kind of light entertainment. I could see this being something people watched in 1982 on TV and then afterward, they’d nod and say, “Eh. That was alright.” It had a tiny bit of that Showgirls feel where there were personalities that clashed a little bit. Obviously, no one is wiping their period blood on people or going full tits out here, but you get what I’m getting at, right? Rosella and Jillian didn’t like each other but I guess that worked out. No one got tossed down the stairs, so that’s something. Everyone’s problems seem to be what outsiders think is what happens in Vegas. It just comes off like what you’d think old people would want to go and see at a casino. It’s mild. It’s milquetoast. Eh… It was alright.

Next week, let’s ratchet up the fun action exploitation a bit in nice 1980s style… Actually, scratch that. Let’s ratchet up that fun action exploitation Bill Rebane style. We’re headed to the pastoral fields of Wisconsin to get a whole heapin’ amount of Twister’s Revenge! Until then, if there’s one thing I know about Las Vegas and things that showgirls have to worry about, it’s this…