Sunday, October 27, 2024

Movie review - "The Great American Beauty Contest" (1973) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Classic Spelling-Goldberg television movie - high concept, lots of starlets, some old time-y stars. It focuses on a beauty contest, run by Robert Cummings and Eleanor Parker (a former beauty queen and actress with a Secret). 

There's a heap of plots: Louis Jourdan blackmails Parker into getting help for Susan Darnonte to sleep with him; Darnonte has a neglectful dad; one of the contestants is black, Tracy Reed; Farrah Fawcett has a boyfriend (Larry Wilcox) who doesn't want to be ignored; Joanna Cameron plans to make a feminist protest. I'm surprised there wasn't a killer out to get them.

The film is silly but it moves along at a fast clip (75 minutes!) and does tackle some issues, such as racism, feminism and soon. But the film loses a lot of points by having Parker scold Tracy Reed about racism and have Cameron win and not be feminist at the end.

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