New Movies: That Was Burlesque

The Night They Raided Minsky’s is a valedictory valentine to oldtime burlesque. In legend, the girls were glamorous, and every baggy-pants buffoon was a second W. C. Fields. In truth, the institution was as coarse as its audiences. Minsky’s mixes both fact and fancy in a surprisingly successful musical.

The barefaced comedy is matched by the pratfall plot. Rachel, a chaste Amish girl (Britt Ekland) decides that since dancing is mentioned in the Bible and Minsky’s Manhattan burlesque house is not, joining the chorus line must be all right with God. When her Fundamentalist father comes roaring after her for “uncovering thy protuberances,” she defies him by jettisoning her clothes onstage, thereby creating the striptease.

Along the way, Rachel falls in with a crooked straight man (Jason Robards) and a doleful comic (Norman Wisdom). The casting could not be bettered., Robards’ crumpled countenance and larcenous glint make him the quintessential backstage villain. Wisdom, long a British stage star, recalls Keaton in his split-second spills and deadpan pantomime.

Minsky’s was 58 days in the shooting and ten months in the editing—and shows it. Marred by grainy film and fleshed out with documentary and pseudo-newsreel footage of the ’20s, the film spends too much time on pickles, pushcarts and passersby. But it compensates with a fond, nostalgic score, a bumping, grinding chorus line and a series of closeups of the late Bert Lahr, who plays a retired burlesque comedian. Like Lahr, the film offers an engaging blend of mockery and melancholy.