2007
Netflix Streaming
USA
English
86 Minutes
Documentary
David Stenn [Hill Street Blues]
Compelling untold story about a chorus girl who was sent to what she thought was a casting call with hundreds of other girls and ends up being raped by an MGM executive in town for the hedonistic convention in 1937. The studio owned the property, the doctor who examined her, the newspapers, and even the one eyewitness who was parking cars that day. She was 16 years old and a virgin. She never recovered. We see her now very old having lost none of her anger towards what happened to her.
Unfortunately, this great 45-minute story is padded with some of the worst documentary filmmaking I’ve ever seen. The filmmaker films himself waiting for a meeting with the woman in question, Patricia Douglas, in a hotel room in Las Vegas. He films her daughter and incredibly gay grandson. He films himself going to the grave of the MGM executive. He interviews a Fox News legal analyst and a Hollywood District attorney about what went wrong with the prosecution.
It could have been a shorter PBS-level film. It shouldn’t have been stretched out to nearly 90 minutes. It was unsuccessful in its attempt to explain the morals of the 1930s in Hollywood.
6.3 IMDB
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