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The Bellboy and the Playgirls

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The Bellboy and the Playgirls
Directed byFrancis Ford Coppola
Fritz Umgelter
Written byDieter Hildebrandt
Margh Malina
Produced byWolfgang Hartwig
Harry Ross
StarringJune Wilkinson
CinematographyPaul Grupp
Edited byJack Hill
Music byClaus Ogermann
Release date
February 12, 1962
Running time
94 min. (US)
85 min. (Germany)
CountryU.S. / West Germany
LanguageEnglish & German

The Bellboy and the Playgirls is an American 1962 film by Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Hill. The film is a re-edited version of a German film of 1958 originally titled Mit Eva fing die Sünde an [Sins Begin with Eva], directed by Fritz Umgelter with Coppola and Hill shooting nudity inserted into the film for an American release.[1][2]

Plot summary

Dinah, an actress, refuses to be a part of seduction scene in front of a live audience. The director, Gregor, tries to convince her to complete the scene by telling her stories of sexual relations over the centuries. In the end, Dinah decides to complete the filming.

Coppola inserted scenes to the original German plot, adding the bellboy George who tries to spend some time with a room full of women.

Production

The German production was in black and white, but Coppola said that he filmed around 15 minutes of footage that were in 3D and in color to add to the American release. The new footage featured nude women and took Coppola a few days to complete. Coppola said that the project was "adding five three-minute nudie sketches in color to a stupid German movie that had been shot in black-and-white".[2] Al Locatelli designed the sets for the new segments while Jack Hill was the cinematographer.[2] June Wilkinson, a Playboy Bunny, is featured in the segments.[3] The 3-D footage was shot in Optavision and supervised by Richard Kay.[4]

During the production, one of the girls stated to Coppola that she was only 17 and that her father was going to kill her. Coppola responded with, "Well, you can keep your bra on" which resulted in him being reprimanded by the producer after he saw the completed film. Hill received $25 for his work on the film and Coppola received $250.[2][3] Coppola was a student at the UCLA film school and his classmates did not agree with his choice of going into exploitation films. Coppola said, "I was called a cop-out because I was willing to compromise".[2]

The film print was believed to be lost after the film's initial release in 1962 and subsequent release on videotape, but a collector of Coppola memorabilia had a print of the film. The book Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola states that "Coppola's color footage is easily identifiable in the finished film" and that "the five Coppola sequences add up to nearly fifty minutes of screen time". A short time after the film's release, Coppola started working under Roger Corman.[2]

Release

The film's 3-D footage was released on Blu-ray in a compilation set titled "3-D Rarities" that was released by Flicker Alley. The version included on the Blu-ray contains no nudity.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Clive Davies (June 2015). Spinegrinder: The Movies Most Critics Won't Write about. SCB Distributors. p. 111. ISBN 978-1-909394-06-3.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Gene D. Phillips (December 6, 2013). Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 14–17. ISBN 978-0-8131-4671-3.
  3. ^ a b c Lumenick, Lou (June 24, 2015). "Francis Ford Coppola's career started with a porno". New York Post. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  4. ^ Ray Zone (July 6, 2012). 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema. University Press of Kentucky. p. 100. ISBN 0-8131-3611-3.
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