This was a post that I had originally planned to include in this years MEYER MONTH but didn’t get around to posting. Friend of Russ Meyer, and now a friend of mine, Tom Porter, wrote this blog post back in 2012 to celebrate what would have been the directors 90th birthday and I think it’s a nice little anecdote to include on what would have been the year that Russ turned 100. I obviously never met Russ, but absolutely live for these stories from his friends which I love and find so illuminating, and I hope it’ll make you smile too.Many thanks to Tom for letting me re-post his entry here, the original can be found on his site!
One of the true great joys in my life was to know and share laughter with the amazing, brilliant filmmaker Russell Albion Meyer.
I was already a fan dating back to 1975 and Supervixens, and in awe of the Meyer ‘intensely personal and unique vision of the world,’ when we met in Las Vegas in 1989 and became friendly. Over the next several years we saw each other many, many times. Russ was a guest in my home in Washington DC, and I his guest numerous times in the Hollywood Hills and out in Palm Desert.
We enjoyed a great many meals, film screenings, nights on the town, and sundry adventures – including a rendezvous in Paris, and a day shooting cutaways in the Mojave Desert. One of the great nights of all time was our dinner, twenty years ago tomorrow night, celebrating Russ’s 70th birthday.
I was staying at the Bel Air Hotel, and we’d arranged to celebrate in style on the premises. He drove across town, arriving late, and laden with armloads of artwork – Annie Fannie-style illustrations he called “Bust-oons” that he was having prepared for his long-awaited, by then much-unfinished masterpiece A Clean Breast. He laid these out on the table at dinner.
We talked about the book, the production hassles, his can’t-miss film project ideas (a shot-for-shot remake of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! with LaToya Jackson, for instance), the usual recounting of amorous escapades, and life as an iconoclast in the company town.
Then we turned to his third marriage, to Edy Williams. It turned out the 1970 wedding had taken place on the premises, in the Garden of the Bel Air Hotel. Russ’s tardiness arriving for dinner was due to his having rooted around in the garden on the way in, but he’d gotten lost; we agreed that after dinner we’d scout around to see if we couldn’t find the ‘scene of the crime’. Many glasses of wine later, that we did.
To stand under the stars at midnight, stumbling about on the rolling lawns of the Bel Air, while Russ rhapsodised about Edy Williams’ charms even as he brandished the rolled-up Bust-oons in the air, batting wildly at the stars, railing against her “shrewishness!” – “But I have no regrets, Sir – I have None At All !“. Pure heaven.
Over many years’ time, Russ introduced me to a cavalcade of characters, among them Dave Friedman, Stuart Lancaster, James Anthony Ryan & Bert Santos, Charles Napier, John Lazar and others, as well as trusty Janice and his leading ladies Melissa Mounds, Haji and Tura Satana. Here is a beautiful clip that provides a glimpse of the work, the spirit and joie de vivre of old RM (Lydia – sadly this link no longer works but I have found a video of a commercial for the program mentioned which I think is as close as I can get for now!).
I learned so much from this unique man. And our friendship meant and still means very much to me.
Massive thank you to writer and Russ Meyer fan Justine Smith for giving me permission to re-post this piece of hers on this blog as part of MEYER MONTH. The original, and lots of other fantastic writing on film, can be found on the Little White Lies website.
There was no sex in Russ Meyer’s early films. Throughout the 1950s, some filmmakers found a loophole in America’s strict censorship laws: documentary. By shooting films in nudist colonies, filmmakers were able to bring nudity to the big screen. While censor boards attempted to stifle these attempts, legally, they had very little to ground to stand on. With the opportunity of a lifetime, Meyer was about to transform the genre and change the landscape of American film forever.
During World War Two, Meyer worked as a wartime photographer, and after returning to the US he planned on starting up a career in Hollywood. He had little success, and it was only in the late-’50s that his career took a turn as the nudist colony films, often referred to as ‘naturalist’ movies, started to gain prominence. Although Meyer was initially reticent when offered to make one of these films for $24,000, he had a plan.
Combining the adolescent fantasy of x-ray glasses with the basic tenants of the naturalist film, Meyer came up with the concept for his first film, The Immoral Mr. Teas. In the film, the titular Mr. Teas acquires x-ray powers after visiting the dentist and can now see women naked. While shot in full colour, the film is relatively primitive; it features no sync-sound and is little more than a series of vignettes. Working within the scope of what was allowed in naturalist films, the nudity features no sexual touching and, despite the lechery of Mr. Teas, was relatively chaste.
While even the naturalist films were screened in underground cinemas, The Immoral Mr. Teaswas given a wider release. Its meagre budget produced a healthy profit, and independent producers raced to imitate it, spurring a new genre which came to be known as ‘nudie-cuties’. These films would feature female nudity within the scope of light-hearted comic premises and proved relatively successful, if not continually controversial. Mr. Teas would also initiate Meyer to the court system, as he had to defend the film against obscenity charges. In one Philadelphia case, a judge ruled that the film was not pornography but was ‘vulgar, pointless and in bad taste’.
After the success of The Immoral Mr. Teas, Meyer made two more nudie-cutie films, Eve and the Handyman and Wild Gals of the Naked West. With thousands of imitators, it was clear why Meyer’s films rose to the top: he had a cinematic eye, boundless imagination and an ironic sense of humour. Inspired by his fantasies, Meyer felt that what turned him on would translate to a broader audience. But he quickly grew tired of the achingly adorable genre he invented and began taking even greater risks.
Among these new films were Lorna and Mudhoney, gritty black-and-white Southern Gothic noirs that integrated nudity into the storylines. Inspired, improbably by Italian neo-realism, these are among Meyer’s most earnest efforts. Gone were the goofy antics, and the more camp aesthetics he’d refine over the decade were also absent. Both films were big successes and required Meyer to defend his projects against new obscenity charges, paving the way for other filmmakers looking to take risks in terms of nudity and sex on the big screen.
While the immediate benefactors from his success were other sexploitation filmmakers, the reality was that Meyer’s films (and their subsequent obscenity cases) were paving the way for post-Code Hollywood and the New American Wave of the 1970s that integrated sex and nudity into dramatic plots.
Meyer’s work only gained in prominence over the ensuing decade, gradually refining his style with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. While his films are not for all tastes, his travails in pushing the boundaries of sex on screen brought about significant changes, forever altering the look and feel of American film.
Thanks to WorthPoint I found some more gorgeous photographs that Russ Meyer took. They are dated July 1959 and are stamped on the reverse with the magazine name Foto-rama. Meyer was a major contributor to Foto-rama so there’s a chance that these are featured in the July 1959 issue but I don’t have a copy personally and can’t find anything online to verify this. The model is named on the back of each photograph as ‘Beth Davis or Beth Aster’, but sadly I can’t find anything online about either of those names, nor anything in Meyer’s autobiography A Clean Breast, so I’ll call her Beth for now.
Everyone is a collector of something. Human beings seem to find a ‘thing’ that they love, cling on to it for dear life and hoard as much of it as they can to bring them joy, pride and, occasionally, money. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t collect something, or used to house a collection of items in their past. I’ve collected many things during my 33year existence, the most prolific being movie posters and memorabilia. It’s addictive, sometimes expensive, and it quickly grows on you. Eventually I realised that I needed to downsize; there were a lot of things I owned that sparked a joy within me, but ultimately I felt that they no longer had a place in my life. During the pandemic I decided to start selling off a lot of what I had acquired and decided to focus my personal collection on solely collecting and building my own Russ Meyer archive. As I said last November, my plan is to overhaul this blog over time, eventually turning it into a (predominantly) online Meyer archive (with the odd non-Meyer related article), and I will add the various pieces of memorabilia that I have amassed on here too for visual records. Whilst looking for articles for this years MEYER MONTH I stumbled across this short piece on WorthPoint, which as a collector and fan I found quite interesting, so I’m hoping that some of you will too.The original can be found here, but I have transcribed it below.
‘The Immoral Mr. Teas’ US 1-Sheet poster, 1959. Sex and humor were good bed-fellows from very early on in Meyer’s films. (Photo: http://www.emovieposter.com)
Like it or not, sex sells! Unsurprisingly, sex figures prominently in popular culture through history. Early movies were quick to capitalize on sex, although the introduction of the Hays Code in 1930 and the resulting strict censorship kept things fairly buttoned up for nearly four decades.
The more laissez-faire attitudes following the Second World War, however, resulted in a steady move to explore sex on screen in more daring ways. Most often, sex was used purely for commercial exploitation and pretensions of high art did not figure into the mix. One of the earliest—and most successful—directors to mine the oeuvre was Russ Meyer (1922-2004).
Christie’s Rate Russ Meyer In December 2005, Christie’s held an auction of “Exploitation Art” in London. The first 15 lots in the auction were all for Russ Meyer movies. This was an important event, as it brought validation to collectors of the associated genres. The first Christie’s lot featured a poster for ‘The Immoral Mr. Teas‘ (1959), this being Meyer’s debut movie. Being an early such poster, a light-hearted risqué experience was suggested whilst genuine eroticism took a back seat. Nice examples of this poster will cost $300-400.
Time Marches on and Clothes Fall Off Within five to six years, the dawn of the new “permissive age” meant that Meyer was able to document the activities of his buxom starlets with increasing quotients of nudity. By this time, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) abandoned the Production Code in favor of the new MPAA film rating system . Poster advertising was always constrained by virtue of being on public view, but compared to ‘Mr. Teas‘ the poster for ‘Up!‘ (1966) shows how things had progressed. ‘Up!‘ shows that Meyer and artist Tom Chantrell were clearly on the same wavelength. (SIDE NOTE FROM LYDIA – ‘Up!’ was actually released in 1976 and not 1966. The poster referenced is the British quad poster that was made for the 1976 release in the UK. Tom Chantrell was a wonderful British artist who designed and painted some amazing film posters, some of which you will recognise from their now iconic and historical imagery. You can buy posters, promotional materials and original artwork from his estate.)
The quad poster focused on the key ingredient of Meyer’s movies (i.e., large breasts), and his tongue-in-cheek illustration for the poster is eye-popping in its outrageousness. The coincidence of these two collectable names means this poster can command prices of $600-$700. Also from 1966 is ‘Mondo Topless‘. The increasing adventure and ribald nature of Meyer’s films meant that in the UK, this film failed to gain a release until 1984. At this point, a quad poster with a retro feel was commissioned. The poster clearly promised an abundance of female flesh and has become a much sought after Meyer classic (valued at $500-$600).
‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!‘ US 1-Sheet poster, 1965. This is an original from 1965, but be careful as the 1995 re-release looks similar. (Photo: http://www.impawards.com)
Violence & Inter-Racial Sex Spice Things Up Of course, Meyer had company on both sides of the Atlantic as copycat nudie films and copious low-budget sex-comedy movies were being churned out. Unless illustrated by collectable poster artists (Chantrell, Peffer, etc.), most such movie posters are of limited interest. Meyer’s response to the competition was to shift from the tongue-in-cheek humor of his earlier films to embrace more adult themes. ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ (1965), for instance, featured some significant violence. The fact that the violence was being perpetrated by three buxom strippers on hapless males, however, still stamped the film with Meyer’s trademark fascination for all things mammary! Original 1965 US 1-sheet releases will cost you $1,750 to $2,000.
Original Poster Artwork Wets the Appetite Until the 1990s, most movie posters in both Britain and the US were based on painted illustrations and, unfortunately, the bulk of this original artwork was lost. Some artists never got back their work back while others who did sometimes trashed it themselves! As movie poster collecting has gathered force over the past three decades, poster values and appreciation of the artists behind the posters has developed as well. We have already touched upon the “match made in heaven” between Meyer and the British artist Chantrell, whose deliciously over-the-top artwork for the 1981 British re-release of ‘Vixen!‘ (1968) and ‘Cherry, Harry and Raquel!’ (1970) is a good example. Painted on artboard with an acetate overlay for the text, this piece encapsulates Meyer’s idiosyncratic and irreverent contribution to the world of 20th Century cinema. Expect to pay in the region of $3,500-$4,000 for similar pieces of original artwork.
Conclusion For many years, aficionados of sexploitation movie posters were regarded as fringe participants in the world of movie poster collecting. This sector is still relatively under-valued but certain movie-makers stand out. Russ Meyer is one such leading light. Meyer posters vary in price but an entry level for most pockets is available. If you’re broad-minded and have a sense of humor, then this just might be the place for you!
Mike Bloomfield has been collecting cinema & music memorabilia, with a particular focus on UK concert memorabilia & quad cinema posters from the 1960s and 70s, for 30 years. He runs the two MEM Music and Cinema Memorabilia websites — RockPopMemand MoviePosterMem, holds private exhibitions too, provides insurance valuations, a consultancy service to the auction industry, and has contributed to various book publications. You can e-mail him at info@memcollect.co.uk.
Following on from my post where I managed to curate a photo shoot of model Cara Peters, also known as Carol Peters, I also stumbled across this photo of her by Russ on WorthPoint. WorthPoint credits the photo as circa 1960 but it could be anywhere in the early 1960s, as I discussed in the previous post. Not as beautiful as some of his other photographs but a lovely example none the less. Sadly I am not an IT wizard and have no idea how to get rid of the arrow on the right of the picture but if anyone does then let me know!
UPDATE! I have found two more images of Cara taken by Russ in his autobiography A Clean Breast, which are clearly from the same shoot so have included them in this post for shoot completion. In ACB she is credited as Cara Peters and not Carol and there are no dates given.
I really like Jimmy McDonough’s style; his writing is fast-paced, free of fluff and tells you what you need to know. He is completely unprejudiced and lets everyone else do the talking, especially when it comes to the final part of Meyer’s life. He obviously loves Meyer’s stuff as much as he does Andy Milligan’s (he wrote his biography as well), and really likes the women in Meyer’s movies, but then that’s the point, isn’t it? Meyer was all about the boobs!
After an introduction that teases you with a few details, McDonough runs through Meyer’s life and films more or less chronologically, from his early wartime and glamour photographer years, through to his descent into dementia at the very end. There are lots of details from people like David K. Frasier (who was a good friend to Meyer and did his own biography), Tura Satana, Tempest Storm, Charles Napier, Haji, etc., all adding their own flavour into the mix about how Meyer was a generous man, but an absolute bastard when making films; everything had to be just perfect, although there were times when Meyer appeared to relish in stirring it up for the hell of it. His three marriages are covered in detail, his union with Edy Williams being of most interest; McDonough lets Edy have her say and basically gives her all the jewel-studded rope she needs! There is a complete film guide at the back of the book, including the names of film scripts that were never made (Who Killed Bambi?, Blitzen, Vixen & Harry, etc.) and a modest colour picture section at the centre of the book.
It becomes obvious that Meyer was a very private man emotionally and the book touches on his controversial upbringing, hinting at potential incest or abuse issues concerning his dominating mother, Linda, and his unhinged sister, Lucinda (SIDE NOTE FROM LYDIA – Russ’ Mother was called Lydia and not Linda). The book also delves into Meyer’s life from the 1980s onward, when it was obvious that he was succumbing to dementia; this influenced the creation of the Pandora Peaks documentary, which should never really have been made. His violent relationship with Melissa Mounds is covered, as is the entry of the most controversial person in Meyer’s life: Janice Cowart. Janice is the one person who the courts gave power over Meyer to while he was ill. She stopped his friends from coming around and stripped his house of all memorabilia. I have to give power to McDonough here for being completely impartial and letting Cowart have her say about the matter. It is entirely up to the reader to work out if she was only acting in the interests of Meyer or if she was up to something more. Whatever, she now owns RM Films and is the reason why Meyer’s legacy is being treated, in my opinion, with complete disrespect.
If you are a fan of Russ Meyer (or a fan of sexploitation cinema), then you NEED to have this book in your collection. I could not put it down and was really sad once I’d finished it. Absolutely, definitely recommended!
Massive thanks to the author of this piece and fellow Russ Meyer fan Justine Smith, who kindly gave me permission to re-blog her article here as part of this years ‘MEYER MONTH’. The original post can be found here, as well as transcribed below.
The Immoral Mr. Teas not only marks the emergence of one of the most interesting and disputed ‘auteurs’ of the American cinema, but also proved to be a crucial film in the emergence of more risqué adult cinema. Not only in terms of exploitation and pornographic cinema, but in paving the way for more lax rules for Hollywood, which was at this point, still stubbornly holding on to the production code. Over the course of the 1960s, the final blows to the production code would take place creating a more liberated cinema and there is little doubt that The Immoral Mr. Teas played a big role in this fight.
After working as a cameraman during WWII, Russ Meyer had returned to California in hopes of getting a job as a cinematographer. He didn’t find any work and turned mostly to work as a freelance photographer (including work for Playboy), occasionally picking up jobs shooting industrial films, as well as more salacious work doing cinematography for burlesque and naturalist films. The naturalist films of the 1950s were really the precursor of the sexploitation films. They were able to be made due to a loophole in obscenity laws, and filmmakers were able to present nudity under the guise of documentary, making films in nudist colonies. These films had little substance and hold little interest today aside from being an interesting historical footnote.
When Russ Meyer was approached to make another film of this type, he initially refused, since they held little interest to him. It was only later he decided to undertake transforming this style of film into a real film that he begun working on The Immoral Mr. Teas. Made for just $24,000, The Immoral Mr. Teas would be the first non-naturalist film since the pre-code era to be released with female nudity. It is often considered the first ‘skin-flick’ and would spurn over the next three years over 150 films in this style. Meyer was relying heavily on the 1957 ruling by the Supreme Court, Excelsior Pictures v. New York Board of Regents, which ruled in favour of the naturalist film The Garden of Eden, stating that nudity was not implicitly obscene. It is important to note though, that Meyer and the films that would follow in the ‘nudie-cutie’ period, did not contain sexual touching or physical contact.
Much like Hugh Hefner, another important figure in breaking taboos, Meyer firmly believed that his sexual fantasies would translate to his audiences and was he ever right. Though the film bears little resemblance to his later, more famous work, his physical type was very much in line with the favourite physical type of the day. All the women featured in the film were extremely large breasted with tiny waists and pretty faces. This ‘style’ of woman is not only reflected on the pages of Playboy magazine, but in the Hollywood stars of the day.
The Immoral Mr. Teas is an interesting film, and though very much a product of its time, has endurance thanks to Russ Meyer’s playful sense of humour. Though the naturalist films served as great inspiration to Meyer, there is little doubt that Playboy magazine has the biggest influence on the film. Critics have argued over the years that the film is little more than a film version of the magazine and the fact that the film has no synch-sound only adds to that impression. There is no dialogue in the film, only a playful narration describing the day-to-day activities of Mr. Teas and the many women he encounters. This is a play on the documentary excuse of the naturalist film, and a fairly clever one at that.
It can also be argued that the character of Mr. Teas is a surrogate for the Playboy reader. It is important to note that it isn’t until the late 1960s and 70s that pornography becomes ‘chic’ and young couples start to attend screenings of films like Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas. In spite of the film’s success, the impression of the viewers is no different than that of readers of Playboy: dirty old men. Mr. Teas really epitomizes this vision, and Meyer plays with this further by having the nudity exist only within his imagination. This is not a nudist colony where women are prancing around in the grass, doing day to day activities; the women are not actually naked… except in the surrealist fantasies of Mr. Teas.
Despite some legal problems the film would come to face in various states and cities (the MPAA did not exist at this point, and the state censor boards were still around), it managed to gross over $1.5 million dollars. Its success cannot be over-emphasized, and it became a game-changer in the types of films being made. This is also made possible by alternative theatrical venues that crop up during the mid-1950s, from arthouse to grindhouse. Meyer’s film and others of its type were able to find audiences in these counter-culture institutions. The growing popularity of more ‘adult’ foreign films also contributed to the film’s success, and would later force Russ Meyer to remain competitive and add richer scripts and themes to his work as a means of battling the growing popularity of European cinema in particular.
This particular and early stage of the sexploitation genre would only last a few years. Often referred to as the ‘nudie-cuties’, most were in the ilk of Mr. Teas, featuring non-synch sound, no physical contact and thin plots. Some were just glamorized versions of the naturalist films, adopting the same structure, but with models in the place of real nudists. Though many of these films were rather tame and often dull, Meyer was not the only filmmaker to emerge from this trend as a visionary. His contemporaries included Doris Wishman and Herschell Gordon Lewis, who have since become cult favourites known for their clever sense of humour and, in the case of Herschell Gordon Lewis, an enthusiasm for blood-shed.
The Immoral Mr. Teas may not be as exciting as Russ Meyer’s later work, but it is nonetheless a fun ride. Already at this early stage of his career we have a sense of his vision and the film is far more creative than it has any right to be. The film’s magic lies in the details, from Mr. Teas profession as a salesman of weird objects of dentistry, to the almost Vertigo-like graphics that introduce fantasy sequences. Of course, above all – a certain appreciation of female breasts might help your enjoyment of the film, as they unapologetically make up a large amount of the screen time. Whether or not Russ Meyer interests you as a filmmaker, his incredible influence on the film industry cannot be denied, and this film in particular changed the face of cinema forever.
Miss Meyer 