Released 55 years ago today (24 June 1970): the infamous film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s 1968 best-seller Myra Breckinridge, memorably described by Vanity Fair as a “celluloid disasterpiece” and derided by Time magazine as “about as funny as a child molester … so tasteless, it represents some sort of nadir in the history of American cinema". Quick thoughts on this “what-were-they-thinking?” mega-flop! Leading lady Raquel Welch’s stilted, wooden acting is actually ideal in this context (as director Mike Sarne put it, “She has a marvelously artificial way of acting”). She looks sensational in Myra’s glamorous 1940s wardrobe (designed by Theadora Van Runkle, who’d costumed Faye Dunaway in Bonnie & Clyde and The Thomas Crown Affair). In the close-ups, you can see the extreme, almost drag queen-like contouring on Welch’s face. Majestic 76-year-old Mae West - in her first film appearance since 1943 - gets lead billing but in fact has a supporting role. West’s sequences as Letitia Van Allen (virtually nothing like the character in Vidal’s book) make no sense: she just periodically and inexplicably crashes the action, suggestively purring her lines and stealing her scenes (and does two musical number out of nowhere) but who cares when she’s such fun? Myra hit the cinemas at the same time as Russ Meyer’s magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Both were rated X and were often linked in the media as representative of the new borderline-pornographic permissiveness in films – but Beyond is beautifully executed and genuinely anarchic whereas Myra is mostly just inept! 29-year-old neophyte director Sarne was reportedly a homophobe and queasy about the film’s subject matter – which couldn’t have helped! The failure of Myra killed his initially promising filmmaking career. It’s trippy seeing TV icons Farah Fawcett and Tom Selleck (pre-moustache) in small roles when they were still young unknowns. John Huston here is a benign version of the corrupt old lecher he plays in Chinatown. Transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling campaigned hard to portray Myra – what would that have been like? Finally, in 2001 Vanity Fair ran an epic account of Myra Breckinridge’s fraught, jinxed production. It’s essential reading!
