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

by Jimmy McDonough

  The big secret to Meyer’s direction on Dolls? None of the actors were told the movie was supposed to be funny. “You create the greatest satire in the world if you direct everybody at right angles and don’t say it’s a comedy, just play everything straight. If you try to make it funny, it doesn’t come off,” RM told David K. Frasier decades later. “Two actors on Dolls understood—John La Zar and Michael Blodgett.” The rest were left to stumble around in the dark. A baffled Charles Napier would confront Ebert with the observation, “You wrote this, Roger. It reads like a comedy to me. But, hell, Russ treats it like Eugene O’Neill.”

  Shooting began on December 2, 1969, and continued for approximately three months. In the eye of the Dolls hurricane sat big Papa Russ and his starlets, a gaggle of girls saddled with the uneasy task of making Daddy happy. No doubt the making of his first big-budget picture upped the stress a notch. “Meyer was a man on the edge, always ready to explode,” said Stu Phillips, who witnessed Meyer constantly barking at the girls to lose weight. “He was very hard on them.”

  Dolly Read vividly recalled tooling along Pico Boulevard in her brown Dodge Dart on the way to 20th Century Fox to interview for her part in Dolls. Looming above the street was a gigantic billboard for Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly!, which our Dolly took as an omen: “I knew I was gonna get the part.” Her excitement was soon tempered by repeated clashes with Meyer. “Russ scared me to death—I thought he looked like Charles Manson. He had these wild eyes, those eyebrows. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. And he knew it. Everyone was on eggs around him. He was like a serial killer director.”

  Early on, Meyer leveled Dolly at a rehearsal meeting with other members of the production when he asked to inspect her merchandise. “He wanted to see my boobs. And I was quite proud of my boobs. So I showed them, and Russ was just so horrible. He said, ‘Well, they’ve really drooped.’ I was devastated. He knew how to push buttons.

  “He kept telling me I was gonna be fired during the rehearsals,” Read went on to say. “Russ would tell me at least two, three times a day that I could be easily replaced, I had to put more into the singing. I was an absolute wreck.” Much to Meyer’s annoyance, Read was spending weekends in Palm Springs with her future husband, comedian Dick Martin. “Russ wanted her to stick around and do rehearsing,” said Meyer’s assistant, Manny Diez. “He would not speak to her.” So he spoke to Diez, who then relayed his comments to Dolly.

  When Dolly’s parents arrived for a visit from the UK, Meyer then confounded Read with his gentler side by having a couch with a fold-out bed delivered to her apartment. Over the Christmas break, he took Dolly, her parents, and fellow Carrie Nation Marcia McBroom on an all-expenses-paid trip to San Francisco. And when an exhausted Read ended up in the hospital following production, RM was the first to visit her, a dozen red roses in his hand. “I think Russ loved women,” said Dolly. “But he wanted to dominate them, be in control.” She felt Meyer had “a great deal of anger inside of him that was probably a sad anger. Russ liked beauty, prettiness, but then he wanted to destroy it—and then have the ability to restore it.”

  Erica Gavin had a particularly hard time on the Dolls set. In the aggressively tasteless opening minutes of the picture she’s shown lying asleep in bed. Oblivious to a gloved hand clutching a gun invading her space, she instinctively sucks on the barrel before getting her brains blown out.*4 Erica saw the slaughter as symbolic. “I was Russ’s favorite child until Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and his new Hollywood clique. Then I was an adopted Cinderella, a leftover that didn’t quite cut it. I wasn’t his star anymore, I wasn’t his important girl. And all these other girls were.”

  Gavin had lost considerable weight after the shock of seeing herself in Vixen, and RM, further perturbed that Gavin had jettisoned her Spock-like Vixen eyebrows, took it as more betrayal. “Russ would say, ‘Can you feed her? Can you get her to eat?’ ” recalled Cynthia Meyers, whose on-screen dalliance with Gavin raised blood pressures for many a viewer. “I said, ‘Erica, do you like milkshakes?’”*5

  Intrigue bubbled after Gavin had managed to talk RM into hiring one of her fellow dancers from the Losers for the party scenes—a notorious Asian chick by the name of Bebe Louie. “Bebe Louie had long black hair. She was very exotic,” said Haji. “She wore those sleeveless Japanese dresses, and would stand in one spot and shimmy and her dress would crawl all the way up to her butt. And she’d be swingin’ her hair. Bebe brought the house down.” Erica had a tortured affair with Louie that went on for ten years. “She was probably the first girl I was really in love with. She had the most gorgeous little cone tits. Everything about her was perfect. She’d walk around naked with no makeup, nothing. Just take her and put her into my veins, okay?”

  Cynthia felt Bebe Louie did everything she could to undermine Gavin’s performance. “Bebe threw a few daggers with her eyes and all of a sudden Erica’s run off to her trailer. I was like, ‘You kissed me yesterday, what’s wrong today?’ ” Gavin laughed when I asked about the grip Louie had on her. “Bebe was a fucking cold bitch, man. I liked to live vicariously through her. She would just tell people to get fucked if they fucked with us. And Bebe was very possessive. She didn’t like anybody else around me.” Other romances revved up the Dolls set—John La Zar confessed that during the wrap party he was actually caught by his then-wife while entertaining a Dolls actress in his trailer—and Michael Blodgett seems to have bagged any female who fell for his dubious charm.

  “In 1969–70,” said Blodgett, “this town was just sizzling . . . it was a drug culture. Sex was wide open. There weren’t any diseases or problems.” No doubt this contributed to many off-camera soap operas that mirrored the Dolls action on-screen. “There was arrogance, there was pettiness, there were sexual flings,” said Charles Napier. “Meyer orchestrating it all, feeling good. I was relegated to a small part, but I also had a producer’s role—which was to spy on everyone else and report to Meyer. Who was doing what to whom, who was havin’ an affair. I was like his secret KGB.”

  “Russ would play one against the other,” said Dolly Read. “I had the feeling he was playing Erica against me. And me against Erica.” Read felt that RM was easier on the male actors, although he did make use of a clash between John La Zar and Michael Blodgett. “John was a classically trained actor and Michael liked to wing it,” said Manny Diez. “Michael would never do the scene twice the same way. For him it was a party. La Zar took it very, very seriously.” Things came to a head during rehearsals at RM’s spiffy new Avenue of the Stars Century Towers apartment. “La Zar went after Blodgett, and Russ and I had to separate them,” said Diez. So what did Meyer do? He made them stay in the same trailer during production. “Russ did that on purpose,” said La Zar.

  Blodgett is memorable as one of the oilier characters of the Dolls ensemble—Lance Rocke, a despicable Don Juan with limpid eyes, feathered bangs, and a self-satisfied smirk. Dolly Read took great pleasure in derailing Blodgett during one of Meyer’s trademark through-the-bedsprings love scenes. Right before the take, Dolly, gazing intently upon some imaginary imperfection on his face, murmured, “Uh-oh,” then, halfheartedly, “It’s fine, it won’t show.” Blodgett panicked. “Cut! Cut! Makeup! Makeup!” “He was too pretty,” Read chuckled. “Blodgett had an ego so enormous that I just loved to get him. He was so full of himself.”

  There are two supernovas in Dolls: John La Zar as Z-Man and Edy Williams as Ashley St. Ives. They play essentially the same part: irresistibly malevolent sexual predators, unsettling alien creatures that exist only to charm and overpower the humans they’re about to swallow whole. As a land shark in a crocheted bikini, with a lion’s mane of honey-brown hair and a glint in her eye perhaps shared only by the criminally insane, Edy talks in the unsettling throaty purr of a Marilyn on Quaaludes, uttering such memorable profanities as “You’re groovy, boy. . . . I’d like to strap you on sometime.” Personally, I find Ashley to be a hell of a lot scarier than Z-Man/Superwoman, which is sayi
ng something. Edy Williams is so intense you feel she might jump right off the screen and take a bite out of you. “Her idea of sexuality was the flaring of the nostrils,” said RM. Not the most popular figure in the Meyer circle, Edy, some cruel wags felt, was only playing herself. Director and star would soon be married.

  With his menacing good looks and ridiculous pseudo-Elizabethan doggerel, La Zar’s Z-Man is one of Meyer’s most peculiar creations: an Adonis sporting a secret vagina. Z-Man’s delivery is as odd as Ashley’s. Listen to the way La Zar tortures meaning out of Superwoman and you won’t be surprised that the inspiration for his performance was Olivier doing Richard III. Z-Man owns many of the most beloved lines of dialogue in the movie, such as “This is my happening and it freaks me out!” Not to mention “You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!” (Meyer was so fond of the last line he repeated it to greatly diminished effect in two later pictures.)

  The film climaxes in a wild four-character masquerade orgy that ends in same-sex couplings. Lance Rocke, dressed only in leopard-skin briefs as Jungle Boy, partners off with Z-Man, who’s now become his alter ego, Superwoman. Outfitted as Robin, the Boy Wonder (with Cynthia Myers wearing the actual togs Burt Ward wore for the Batman TV show), Casey Anderson slinks off with fashion designer Roxanne, herself costumed in a slightly vague Catwoman-with-cape get-up (too bad, as in an early draft she was dressed as Batman). The two women manage to get it on, but somehow it’s a little more difficult for Superwoman and Jungle Boy, and after one embrace (“My first movie kiss was kissing another man,” groused La Zar) things become even more convoluted as we discover Z-Man/Superwoman is actually a woman. Then the mood turns murderous, as the end result of these sexual hijinks is death for all involved. As Village Voice critic Michael Musto noted, the movie’s “gay content is deliriously unenlightened . . . where the mere suggestion of queerness practically drives characters insane.”

  Transformation into womanhood wasn’t easy for La Zar, who insisted on wearing sideburns as a reassurance of his masculinity. “The thing I didn’t want to do is wear the prosthetic tits. I begged not to do it.” The rubberized knockers were created by John Chambers, who’d won an Oscar in 1968 for his work on Planet of the Apes. “They had to bake the motherfuckers,” said La Zar, who spent two weeks with cleavage. “They had to shave my chest every morning and glue ’em on me.” At some point toward the end of La Zar’s ordeal, Meyer surveyed John and his boobs and muttered, “Y’know what you need, kid, after this? A good Western.”*6

  Despite her not-ample-enough-for-Russ bosom, soon-to-be-wife Edy Williams was the walking, talking embodiment of Meyer Female Philosophy 101, and she knew how to pitch it. “The way Indians could sniff out buffalo, Edy can sniff out flashbulbs,” wrote reporter Burt Prelutsky. “At the mere mention of the word ‘camera’ her lips automatically moisten and her teeth part.” Decked out in some skimpy concoction designed to make passersby walk into walls, she’d muse to one reporter, “There is a certain satisfaction in frustrating men. I’m getting back at them and it’s a good feeling.” In her prime, every day was a press conference for Edy. “You mustn’t let a man feel too sure,” she instructed. “Instead of giving him your whole box of candy, you’ve got to ration it out one piece at a time.”

  Five feet eight inches, most of it long hair and legs, she was born Edwina Beth Williams in Salt Lake City on July 9, 1942, and raised a Mormon. “I’m a baaaad Mormon. I drink and I smoke. Shoot!” With the help of her mother—“She made some of the dresses I wore—or didn’t wear”—Williams racked up wins in many a beauty contest: Miss Sherman Oaks, Miss Beverly Hills, Miss San Fernando Valley, Miss Los Angeles. In January 1967, she became a contract player at 20th Century Fox. Before Meyer came along, her acting career consisted of bit parts in The Naked Kiss (Williams does a cameo as a cigarette girl in a whorehouse; listen for her few lines, as the mannered delivery is already cemented in place) and I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew.

  Ebert takes responsibility for introducing Meyer to Edy in the Fox commissary. Both RM and Manny Diez maintained it was Richard Zanuck who insisted that Williams be cast in Dolls. “Russ did not want her,” said Diez. But Meyer and Williams had a thing or two in common. “He conned everybody,” said Edy. “Russ is really a schemer. He was telling me, ‘Oh, you’re going to be the star. You’ve got the greatest role in the whole film.’ Well, he was telling the same story to all the other girls, too.”

  On the set, Williams proved to be no pushover, and by her own admission she behaved like “a spoiled bitch.” A few years later Edy complained to writer Tony Crawley, “I didn’t look too good in Dolls. I was on downers.” Although Williams was most famous for wearing next to nothing in public, nudity on the silver screen was another matter. “I am really inhibited. When I first met Russ on Dolls I had never even done a nude scene. I had to take off the bottom part, my panties. . . . I was shaking. I even cried afterwards. I felt like I’d been disgraced. Russ and I got really close after that.”

  The classic Edy/Dolls moment occurs when Ashley St. Ives pulls up in her Rolls-Royce to seduce sad-sack pretty boy Harris Allsworth in its sumptuous backseat, musing loudly during the act over whether a Bentley or a Rolls was better for doing the dirty deed. A clash between two forces of nature like Edy and Russ was inevitable. Williams wasn’t used to a director who not only wanted her naked, but demanded she hold her own light reflectors. Edy stormed off the set, but by the time she returned, something about this crazy chick had already clicked with The Ultimate Voyeur. “I really met my husband when I was seducing another guy in the back of a Rolls-Royce. It was bizarre.”

  Unsurprisingly, a major Hollywood studio proved to be far smuttier than any Russ Meyer set. One Fox executive bitched to Meyer that Erica Gavin wouldn’t “swing,” while Cynthia Myers complained that another tried repeatedly to “meet” with her. But outside of the evening spent poolside with Ebert, RM didn’t indulge during the Dolls production. “People could not believe Russ could be around such beautiful women and not be bedding them all—and he wasn’t bedding any of them,” said Manny Diez.

  He did pimp for his friends, however. Diez related what must be the most curious casting-couch tale of all time, one which involves RM, and yet doesn’t. Jet Fiore, Meyer’s publicist buddy at Fox, had become enamored with a Vegas showgirl and unwisely told her he could get her in Meyer’s movie. Because he was fond of Fiore, RM begrudgingly agreed to see the girl. “She and Jet come in to the secretary’s office, and she was spectacular. Six feet, an endless series of fabulous curves,” said Diez. Meyer met with her, dispatched the pair, then beelined for Manny’s office.

  “Russ comes in and closes the door, which was very unusual. He said, ‘Did you see her?’ I said I had. Now, to be in this picture, this girl would’ve done him in a New York minute. So Russ says, ‘OK, here’s the deal: I’ve told her Manny Diez is the one who decides if she’s gonna be in this picture. I told her to come back tonight at six.’ We hadn’t started Dolls yet, everybody went home at five. He said, ‘You can fuck her on your sofa or you can fuck her on mine, but tomorrow you will give me a full report.’ And I had a giant problem with this, because I really can’t do that with a total stranger—I just can’t!”

  At six, the guard buzzed, telling Diez his visitor had arrived. “Everybody was gone, I was in the office by myself—and she walks into the office with an obviously gay guy. And I thought, ‘Oh boy, I’m off the hook, because I’m not here alone with her.’ ” Even though Meyer had her in mind only for the nude walk-on part that Haji ended up with, he instructed Diez, “Build this up, make her think she’s got a line, give her something to read.”

  “So I felt even worse. I’ve got a page of the script. And I give it to her and I say, ‘See this piece right here? You learn that.’” While she studied her line, Diez bullshitted with her pal about how they’d driven down from Vegas in a Volkswagen. A few minutes later, “she opens the door, sticks her head out, and says, ‘I’m ready.’ I go inside, clos
e the door, sit on the sofa next to her, and say, ‘Let me have the line.’ So she says it. I give my line, she gives her line. I thought, ‘That’s enough of this nonsense,’ so I stood up, walked to the door, and said, ‘Fine. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got the part.’

  “I’ll never forget the look on her face—the typical deer trapped in headlights. Because she thought, ‘This guy’s gonna want head, he’s gonna want something.’ She said, ‘That’s it?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ So she got up, gave me a big hug, and she and the guy leave. The next morning Russ said, ‘How did it go?’

  “I shoulda lied. Shoulda said she was great. But I told the truth. Russ was livid. How dare she? ’Cause he wanted me to get laid. He picked up the phone and called Jet and said, ‘Jet, that cunt’s not gonna be in the picture.’ End of story.”

  With shooting completed, Meyer hunkered down in the editing room. RM claimed that once the movie was cut, he proceeded to “recut the entire picture, even though I had two picture editors. This took three months.” Meyer outdid himself here, because the pace of Dolls is brutal; like its maker, it never stops. If you look at the script, you’ll find that he’s snipped away every extraneous bit of dialogue—and some that are not so extraneous. Anything to keep the picture moving, regardless of whether it made sense. “Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut—get a rhythm,” Meyer told David K. Frasier. “A punishing rhythm. Pummeling the audience.” The trailer is even more extreme: barely registering blips of outrageous images covered with overheated text, the earnest narrator shouting RM’s bombastic hype.