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The Stripper (1963) More at IMDbPro »

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Woodward Great In Run Of The Mill Drama, 9 April 2001
Author: Eric-62-2 from Morristown, NJ

"The Stripper" is not at all what you think it might be if you go only by the title and the posters and publicity stills. In fact, I think it wins the award for the most shamelessly misleading promo campaign in the history of movies. First off, Woodward's Lila Green (a well-acted performance I might say) is a failed actress/magician's assistant who is not a stripper by trade, except when forced against her will late in the movie by her sleazy manager. Second, the posters and ads all show a smiling, teasing Woodward in her stripper's outfit as though the film promises something out of the climax of "Gypsy" (and then on top of that, they cast Gypsy Rose Lee herself in a small part!) but in fact Woodward's only strip number is a brief one done very flatly to represent her character's disgust with her plight. Quite obviously Daryl Zanuck figured that by misleading the public he could lure a lot of lecherous men into the cinema who didn't realize that they were going to just get a very run of the mill drama story that is really saved only by Jerry Goldsmith's jazzy score and Woodward's performance.

This was Franklin J. Schaffner's first feature movie after a decade in live television. Fortunately he went on to much better projects with "Planet Of The Apes" and "Patton", which are both cinematic masterpieces.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Joanne Woodward shines in lacklustre film drama., 11 November 1999
Author: Arne Andersen (aandersen@landmarkcollege.org) from Putney, VT

Franklin Schaffner's first directorial effort is an adaptation of William Inge's play, A LOSS OF ROSES. As Lila Green, a childlike and effusive second rate performer, Joanne Woodward gives a superb performance. She is surrounded by a cast of highly abusive characters, both men and women, who nearly destroy her and her dreams. She does however gain self-respect by the end of the film, enough to walk out on all of them. This is a film for Woodward fans and for students of acting. Since she is the ONLY character who is likeable, the film suffers badly from Inge's writing. Everyone else in the cast including Beymer and a strangely cast Gypsy Rose Lee are merely adequate. Oddly Oscar nommed for Costume Design - what costumes? Did you see a costume? True, Lila has a few flashy outfits and a bubble surround for her last turn as a stripper, but really!!!!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
da da da - de da da da, 25 April 2005
6/10
Author: ptb-8 from Australia

Sad and lonely mid west American towns photographed in black and white seem to be a very potent atmospheric early 60s film drama location that should be recognized as almost iconic in this new century. Other films of the time that each look as though they are all filmed nearby or around the corner from each other: HUD, BUS RILEY'S BACK IN TOWN, BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL , LILIES OF THE FIELD, KISS ME STUPID, IN COLD BLOOD all make a great set of rural wasteland town settings each with potent imagery and lonely people going slowly mad or frustrated or hankering for a change. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW perfected this feel in 1971. Stills from all these films would make a superb coffee table book...all that lonely black and white, crisp and windy farms and streets etc. yet obviously sad 60s. THE STRIPPER must have been the only film made at FOX in 63 with every other dollar of Zanuck's money going to feed CLEOPATRA. Apart from the misleading title, THE STRIPPER offers Joanne Woodward in a Lee Remick performance or is that a Lee Grant performance or is that a Kim Novak performance...because either of those women are interchangeable in those above films as well. 40 years later, like CLEOPATRA, this early 60s era of film making is being celebrated as having produced atmospheric and enduring films of fascinating visuals and emotional performances. I was lucky enough to enjoy THE STRIPPER in a cinema seeing a 35mm cinemascope print, and even if the story was a let down, the visuals and feel for that period and location is so well captured that it almost becomes the most enjoyable part. I am also a great fan of BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL which captures this loneliness and isolation with B&W photography that now borders on masterpiece. See it as part of the above series of films if you can and be overwhelmed by what I have described. It is like sad memories created by someone else and they take that form especially because of the photography.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Misleading title, miscast Woodward, 18 September 2005
6/10
Author: moonspinner55 from redlands, ca

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 ****

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
maybe Joanne Woodward is the main point, 17 January 2007
7/10
Author: Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA

At first glance, "The Stripper" looks like eye candy: a cute young sideshow woman gets dumped by her manager and takes up with a local woman and her son, thereby developing a relationship with the son. But I do think that there was more to the movie than just that (if only a little more). In the lead role, Joanne Woodward gravitates between insecure and self-standing, not about to take from anyone. She does as good a job here as she did in "The Three Faces of Eve". Claire Trevor also does quite well as the woman taking Woodward in, but many of the characters come across somewhat silly as teen rebels. It seemed to me like Richard Beymer was channeling his role as Tony from "West Side Story" (although Carol Lynley and Michael J. Pollard weren't bad).

Anyway, "The Stripper" is a movie worth seeing. And if I may say so, Joanne Woodward was really hot in some of those clothes! Also starring Gypsy Rose Lee. I bet that no one imagined that director Franklin Schaffner would later direct the likes of "Planet of the Apes", "Patton", "Papillon" and "The Boys from Brazil".

PS: Not that this really relates to anything, but right after I finished watching this movie last night, Joanne Woodward's husband Paul Newman was the guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman"!

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Good Movie from a Great Play by W. Inge!, 19 October 2004
8/10
Author: shepardjessica-1 from United States

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!

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Older woman and younger man...., 19 May 2009
Author: seasprite211 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

In a conversation several years ago, I asked Ms Woodward about this film. It receives short shrift by those who would discuss her career. The story has several interlocking plot lines: a woman caught in the struggle to survive, the men who use and abuse the situation toward their own ends and the teenager who falls for her. A teenager becoming enamored with an older woman was nothing new. The teenager having an affair with the older woman was a story somewhat ahead of it's time in 1963. The Women's Liberation Movement did not start until the late 1960s and the word 'cougar' referred to mountain lions. Ms. Woodward talked about the confused or disjointed impression this film gives and stated that the original director, whose name I cannot remember, died half way through filming. Mr. Schaffner, who finished the project, had a different point of view. Regardless, Ms Woodwards' acting is, in my opinion, remarkable. She provided each director with the desired performance expressing his vision. Unfortunately, the final cut is reflective of each and gives the film a sense of choppy disconnect.

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"Celebration", 11 February 2008
6/10
Author: Joe from Springfield, Oregon

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.

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Another Monroe connection, 10 August 2007
6/10
Author: Boomer-51 from Bradenton, FL, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Growing up, 15 April 2007
Author: dbdumonteil

The Woodward/Beymer team does not work very well because there are only eight years between them whereas the writers wanted us to believe that she could be his mother.Woodward plays some kind of Blanche Du Bois (a woman with a racy past) wearing an awful Monroe-like wig.They say that the movie was "remade" by the producer: the scenes Kenny/Miriam were imposed on Schaffner whereas the suicide of Lila was ruled out .

It's not uninteresting though.Both Kenny and Lila are immature adults.His mother treats him like a kid -a handsome boy she is proud of ,but still a kid: do not forget your coat,you could catch a cold! - whereas Lila really strips bare -more than she will do later- in the marvelous scene in the old school when she talked about her first day in first grade.Woodward is so talented an actress we see the whole scene without any flashback.

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