Customer Reviews

Portrait Of A Showgirl

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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
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An interesting melodrama, this production features Lesley Ann Warren, Rita Moreno and Dianne Kay as three dancers of differing skill levels who are hired for a new revue in Las Vegas at Caesar's Palace, where the picture is set, and focusses upon various travails within their private lives as they prepare for the opening of their show, with the eponymous Warren's character deservedly garnering the most screen time. As a Broadway dancer recruited for the engagement, Warren plays high-stepping Jillian Brooks, whose need for success upon the stage is altered by her affairs of the heart, while Moreno portrays a veteran hoofer whose husband (Tony Curtis) is a sucker for entrepreneurial scam artists, and Kay is an inexperienced beauty queen from the Midwest. The film could easily have been much less engaging, as clichéd situations abound, but the episodic script is effectively utilized and includes a good deal of skillful dialogue, there is splendid editing by John Woodcock, and a strongly appropriate thematic underscore is provided by Jimmie Haskell, while the performance of the talented and generally underprized Warren goes beyond the expected implications stemming from her comeliness.

PORTRAIT OF A SHOWGIRL is the made-for-TV movie genre at it's trashy-best. Musical theatre veterans Lesley Ann Warren and Rita Moreno shine as two hard-boiled hoofers looking to make the 'Big Time' in Las Vegas.

If you're a fan of Lesley Ann and Rita, you'll adore this film. The picture quality is quite lousy, but just having this campy gem on DVD is a miracle in itself.

Not the girls' finest hour, but worth a look nontheless.

Didn't bother to watch it to the end. Not at all on the same level as the choices that led Amazon to recommend it to me: "Choose Me" (a wonderful movie that everyone should see) and "Round Midnight" which was also quite nice. Sometimes the recommendation system works, sometimes it doesn't!

The picture quality on this DVD was terrible. I wish it had been better because it had a great cast.