Like so many things bearing the Aaron Spelling
brand name, this brisk TV movie about backstage intrigue at a fictional beauty
contest is the equivalent of junk food—it tastes good at first, but regret
kicks in almost immediately. The Great
American Beauty Contest is very much a product of the producer who later
subjected the world to Charlie’s Angels,
because the movie comprises one scene after another showcasing vapidly
attractive young women. On the plus side, the picture isn’t as sleazy as one
might think, since there’s only one fleeting sequence of the contest’s
swimsuit competition, and the lovelies in the cast represent an appealing
collection of ’70s actresses. Spelling regular Farrah Fawcett is present
and accounted for, as are Kathy Baumann (a buxom starlet in various B-movies),
Susan Damante (of the Wilderness Family
pictures), and Joanna Cameron (of the Saturday-morning superhero show Isis), among others. (Watch for a brief,
wordless appearance by glamazon actress/singer Susan Anton in the final scene.)
Although each of the aforementioned startlets gets plenty of screen time, the
actual star of The Great American Beauty
Contest is the elegant Eleanor Parker, best known as the Baroness in the
classic family film The Sound of Music
(1965). She plays Peggy, a onetime pageant winner who now runs the contest.
When the picture begins, Peggy and her handlers greet various contestants,
including Angelique (Damante), an innocent who believes in the fairy-tale myth
of pageants; Gloria (Cameron), a quasi-militant feminist hoping to win so she
can deliver an anti-pageant speech during her coronation; Pamela (Tracy Reed),
an African-American upset about being treated as a “token”; and T.L.
(Fawcett), a wild girl who enters the contest on a lark. Also in the mix
are movie producer Ralph (Louis Jourdan), who serves as a judge and expects
sexual favors from wannabes, and Joe (Larry Wilcox, later of C.H.i.P.S.), T.L.’s rambunctious
boyfriend.
Considering that The Great
American Beauty Contest runs only 74 minutes (the standard length for
early-’70s TV movies), Spelling and his collaborators include an abundance of
“plot,” making up for in quantity what the project lacks in quality. Rest
assured, however, that not a single frame of The Great American Beauty Contest will amuse, delight, or surprise.
Instead, the picture functions like the broadcast of a real beauty contest—it invites
the male gaze with a steady procession of bright teeth, lustrous hair, sexy
curves, and twinkly eyes. And it’s hard to get too strident about a movie that
not only features Fawcett doing an atrocious harem-girl dance, but also
features characters commenting on the awfulness of said dance. In other words, The Great American Beauty Contest may
not be an experience in truly guilt-free ogling, but it’s close.
The
Great American Beauty Contest: FUNKY
It's Louis JOURDAN.
ReplyDeleteI always get this one mixed up with SMILE...same theme and era
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe incredible beauty of Farrah caught my attention long before it became famous. It was in 1973, when the movie "The Great American Beauty Contest" was broadcast on TV, which suggested a feminist speech against beauty contests. Her role was small, but since it was about choosing the most beautiful, then I thought: this blonde deserved to win this contest. Three years later, when Farrah became a sex symbol, the press sought to understand why. She had a pretty face, but she was very thin, she did not have Marilyn's curves, and she wore loose, unattractive clothes in order to reject such a label, perhaps not to be criticized by the feminists of the day, who opposed the use of woman as object sexual. Today, reviewing scenes of the blonde, one realizes that the standard of beauty of Farrah remains current. She was not too thin as they said. Besides the hair, imitated by the girls of the time, Farrah had perfect curves, beautiful face and legs. This was the last film Myrna Fahey (Miss Utah Chaperone), who died of cancer in May 1973.
She was a beautiful actress, girlfriend Joe DiMaggio.