The plot of The Night They Raided Minsky's revolves around Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland), a Pennsylvania Amish girl who escapes her strict father Jacob (Harry Andrews) and goes to New York, where she hopes to perform dances based on Bible stories. She ends up in Minsky's burlesque theater, where straight man Raymond Paine (Jason Robards, replacing Tony Curtis a month before shooting due to disagreements over the script) and comic Chick Williams (British comedian Norman Wisdom), both fall for her innocent charm. Billy Minsky (Elliott Gould, replacing Alan Alda, who was appearing in The Apple Tree on Broadway) and Paine get the bright idea to drum up publicity by deliberately fooling the police into raiding the theater. The plan is to make them think something risqué is happening, but when the police arrive, they'd only see Rachel doing one of her Bible dances. Rachel, angered over being used in this way, decides to turn the tables on Minsky and Paine and give the police a real reason to raid the theater.
Also in the cast were narrator Rudy Vallee, who had become popular in the late 20s and early 30s as a crooner, Denholm Elliott as crusader of public morals Vance Fowler, Joseph Wiseman as Louis Minsky and the legendary Bert Lahr as Professor Spats. This would be Lahr's last film - he died of cancer on December 4, 1967, which necessitated using Lahr's test footage and burlesque comedian Joey Faye as a body double to complete his part.
The film was shot at the Chelsea Studios in New York and on locations around the city in the autumn of 1967. Although the three million dollar budget seems small today, it caused The Night They Raided Minsky's to be the most expensive film shot in New York up to that time. After production wrapped, Lear, Friedkin and Rosenblum screened the first cut. Friedkin had shot forty hours of film, which Rosenblum had trimmed down to two and a half. Norman Lear was horrified. This was not the "old-fashioned musical with a New Look" style that he had promised the investors (although no one really knew what the "New Look" was supposed to be). Rosenblum later wrote, "There was no pace, no suspense, and not a moment of believable dialogue." Lear quietly asked Friedkin and Rosenblum if they could spend the weekend re-cutting, but Friedkin left for London to shoot another film and Rosenblum took the weekend off. The following week, Rosenblum and Lear met up, "hardly knowing what we were going to do to put a New Look or Any Look into two and a half hours of slightly horny kiddie theater." To make matters worse, a second screening for David Picker of United Artists, who was releasing the film, ended with Picker saying, " In all my years in film, this is the worst picture I've ever seen."
Out of desperation, Rosenblum went to the film libraries in New York and got stock footage of the period, which he would intercut with scenes that Friedkin had shot. It became obvious that the film's fate rested in Rosenblum's hands, which he resented, because although he had never wanted the attention given directors, he knew that if he could pull it off, this would be the "greatest filmmaking feat of my career [and yet] someone else's name would be signed to it." That 'someone else' was Friedkin, who, Rosenblum wrote, "at that time was in his late twenties and the stereotype of the arrogant kid prodigy." That feeling of resentment was heightened when two months later, Norman Lear showed Rosenblum a transcript of an interview Friedkin had done in London, in which he'd called The Night They Raided Minsky's "the biggest piece of crap I ever worked on."
Despite Rosenblum's nearly year-long struggle, his gamble paid off, and The Night They Raided Minsky's was favorably received by the critics when it was released on December 22, 1968. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that Friedkin had successfully evoked an era. "His characters live a public, voluble life, inhabiting delicatessens (and eating incredible, hilariously photographed meals). They dream up the sort of persecution of vice detectives that Ben Hecht was recording in Chicago. They regard burlesque not so much as an occupation, more a way of life." Renate Adler in The New York Times praised "its denseness and care in detail: The little ugly cough that comes from one room of a shoddy hotel; the thoughtfully worked out, poorly danced vaudeville routines; the beautifully timed, and genuinely funny, gags."
By Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Adler, Renata "Screen: 'Night They Raided Minsky's': 1920's Film Directed by William Friedkin Starts Run at 86th St. East and at Victoria" The New York Times 23 Dec 68
Brode, Douglas Sinema: Erotic Adventures in Film
Ebert, Roger "The Night They Raided Minsky's" The Chicago Sun-Times 23 Dec 68
The Internet Movie Database
Rosenblum, Ralph When the Shooting Stops ...The Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story
Slide, Anthony The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville
Zemeckis, Leslie Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America
