Friday, December 16, 2022

Poseidon Quickies: What a "Racquet!"

Funny how one can stumble upon something utterly unheard of before and discover that it contains the work of people you're fully aware of. Such was the case with the VERY obscure 1979 tennis "comedy" Racquet, which was a labor of love for its star, but which landed out of bounds in theaters. It came up as a suggestion for me on Tubi (you may view it here free with occasional ads should you wish to do so.) Despite its tennis court setting, it was an utter ripoff of the 1975 Warren Beatty hit Shampoo (about a promiscuous hairdresser trying to achieve his own salon), this was instead washed-out and rinsed away! Having gone through strenuous rewrites and changes in conception, it wound up a TV-movie level sex comedy with the novelty of hearing people like Edie Adams and Phil Silvers cuss (even dropping the F-bomb.)

Cast as tennis pro-turned-instructor who wants his own school and who beds down wealthy women as a side hustle we find 46 year-old game show host Bert Convy! True Tattletales could get a little suggestive at times, but this was still a bit of a surprise for his fans.

In a bid for authenticity, Convy's boss was played by Bobby Riggs (!), who was the number one tennis player in the world for much of the 1940s. Get a load of those choppers...! Times have really changed when it comes to celebrities and their dental work.


Riggs is not exactly Laurence Olivier, even in this familiar sort of part. But what got my attention was the blond dude in back with one racquet resting on another...

Soon enough, he's introduced to Convy as an up and comer at the club.

This is Terry Lester, who'd begun with a bit role in Airport 1975 (1974), but soon was starring on the Saturday morning kids' show Ark II. In 1981, he originated the role of Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless and was a sensation for a time.

Clearly able to play tennis in real life (as could the athletic Convy, who had been a minor league baseball player in his youth and ran a charity tennis event later in life), Lester and Convy go at it on the court. At least some of this sweat is surely real!

Riggs was married three times and fathered six children, but Lester was gay and died of a heart attack at only age 53 in 2003.

One of Convy's principal "tricks" is Edie Adams, who insists on fantasy role-playing in bed. She has what would be compared to the Lee Grant role from Shampoo, complete with a younger niece who takes Convy for a ride, too.

This movie brought back memories for me of just how big (in popularity and size) houseplants were in the late-'70s! It seemed like everyone had big ferns and other plants hanging in macrame holders!

Convy is seen here with Adams in a Cleopatra-esque fantasy. Before long, her husband Phill Silvers is home unexpectedly, donning a turkey outfit to chase her around in.

The still in-shape Convy is continually removing his clothes, though we don't ever see a whole lot. Here, he's coming home where he lives with a female roommate and instantly begins to shuck down. Note the plants... Oh, and you'll never guess who plays the roommate! (Unless you already read the poster carefully.)

There's this blink & you'll miss it moment of him in his tighty-whities. 

His roomie is played by Tanya Roberts! She'd been working on TV and in movies for about three years at this point, but would make her biggest splash in 1980 when she became the newest member of Charlie's Angels.

His chief love interest in the movie is Lynda Day George. The two share a variety of dating and love-making montages set to music.

Her husband Christopher George had doffed his duds for Playgirl in 1974, but this is probably the closest thing Lynda ever did to a nude scene. She has a braless embrace under a waterfall and is canoodling with Convy in the de rigueur hot tub.

One other casting notable was the outre Susan Tyrrell as a real estate agent showing Convy a prospective site for his tennis school, but winding up getting balled herself. LOL

It's during this sequence that Convy offers up some revealing blue jeans. He's not generally one who pops up in the many posts here concerning bulges.

The movie isn't good, but it's undemanding and goes by pretty quickly. It also contains a number of interesting L.A. and Malibu locations and shots of the city from a time long gone. (It must be said that the type of humor in it is also long-gone for the most part, with fat jokes, gay jokes, etc...)

Needless to say, since he's almost the whole show here, fans of Convy don't want to miss it! 

As these Australian lobby photos can attest, the movie was intended to be even racier than it was in the end. The shot of Bert in his undies is not in the movie, nor is that angle of him and Day George in the hot tub. The locker room scene at bottom left never happens at all. He does play Bjorn Borg, though, during a tournament near the climax of the film. Three women (who may or may not have landed in the finished movie) were part of a Penthouse tie-in spread, but the film was in-and-out of theaters in a heartbeat. Players (1979), which also had a tennis theme and debuted the same month, was moderately more successful.

The End!

10 comments:

Dan said...

Sorry, Bert. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but whatever “it” may be, you ain’t got it - at least for me.

A said...

Hi Poseidon,

Great post on what sounds like a terrible movie. I'm afraid I'm with Dan about Bert, he has never done a thing for me. And he should totally be my type - tall, dark curly hair olive skin,and he even has dimples, but he just doesn't have any sex appeal. The movie might have worked better with a different lead. Christopher George would have been great in the hot tub.

Thanks again, A.

ps - for what it's worth, I've also never been a huge fan of Warren Beatty's either, with all the same complaints as Convy. He checks all the boxes but in the end, there is just no spark.

hsc said...

When I saw the first shot of Bobby Riggs, I thought it was Arte (LAUGH-IN) Johnson doing a fictional character obviously patterned on Riggs. He could've definitely pulled it off around this time:

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/arte-johnson-e1562178058922.jpg



And I know what Dan means about Bert Convy. I always found him fairly pleasant elsewhere but strangely devoid of sex appeal, despite being conventionally good-looking for that period.

But let's face it-- if you strip down and gay men are taking note of the houseplants in the background of the shot, you haven't got "it."


Another fun one! Thanks for all the great posts, Poseidon! Love to all and be safe and well, everyone!

Gingerguy said...

How did my Father miss this one? We saw every lame sex comedy on Saturday afternoons. I remember "Hot Dog" with Shannon Tweed that might have made this look like Shakespeare. Anything with Susan Tyrell had to be insane. I kind of remember a Jimmy McNichol movie that she was in as well? Anyway Bert seems "game"for anything. He sang in the tv version of "Valley Of The Dolls" right? This looks like a good trash movie for murdering some time off during the holiday week, thanks!

joel65913 said...

Hi Poseidon,

I stumbled across this a few years ago and after reading the cast list decided to give it a try even though I was relatively sure it was going to be bad....and it was! Here's what I wrote on Letterboxd at the time and I think it still holds true.

For any connoisseur of bad cinema this disaster of a movie is unmissable.

Coming out in 1979 it somehow manages to incorporate the worst of both the 70's (with a full disco sequence!) and the upcoming 80's (a slow motion soft focus erstaz romantic montage with horrendous synthesizer score) into its story. To think someone actually bankrolled this gobbler (surely eyeing a tax write off) is almost as funny as the movie wants to be but somehow you just can't look away. Sublime in its total awfulness!

I always liked Bert Convy, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy and his somewhat goofy demeanor was endearing but like the other posters I also found him strangely sexless. In a way that worked for him in the role that he seemed best suited for-game show host. He was bright, shiny, facile and uncomplicated so his personality never got in the way of whatever game he was moderating. Pat Sajak has that same energy (though you'd have to strap me to a chair to watch the idiocy that is Wheel of Fortune!). I remember being really thrown when he died so young, it seemed so sudden though apparently he was ill for some time but it was kept quiet.

Glad to see you back spotlighting these odd cinematic discoveries!!

BryonByronWhatever said...

I guess I'm not surprised that I never heard of this and will now give it another miss but thanks for the reminder that I've never seen "Players" which I believe was directed by Anthony Harvey and who became a favorite of Katharine Hepburn after "The Lion in Winter".

hsc said...

I went back and checked the poster (I hadn't clicked to enlarge it before) to see what company produced and released this, and it turns out to be an obscure little company called "Cal-Am Productions." IMDb says this was the last of six low-budget films they made, following five 1978 productions including the notorious slasher film THE TOOLBOX MURDERS.

But what's really surprising is that this thing was co-written, co-produced and directed by David Winters!

For those who may not be familiar with the name, Winters (who died in 2019) started off as a child actor in '50s TV, shifted to stage work as a teen and originated the role of "Baby John" in WEST SIDE STORY, followed that with playing "A-rab" in the 1961 film, and then became a much sought-after choreographer, working with the likes of Elvis and Ann-Margret in both films and stage productions.

By the late '60s, he was producing (and frequently writing and directing) a series of big TV "special events" that continued into the early '70s, including LUCY IN LONDON, THE ANN-MARGRET SHOW and A-M: FROM HOLLYWOOD WITH LOVE, THE SONNY & CHER NITTY-GRITTY HOUR, the *legendary* RAQUEL!, and the jaw-dropping 1973 TV *musical* (no, REALLY!) adaption of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, with Kirk Douglas in the title roles!

However, though his IMDb bio does not mention this, by 1975 he was-- according to her two autobiographies-- pretty much in a "John and Bo Derek" relationship with none other than Linda Lovelace, who had just "escaped" porn and was trying to parlay what was left of her notoriety into a "legit" career.

The results were a short-lived suggestive stage show and a 1975 "soft X"/R-rated (depending on where it was shown) no-budget "comedy," LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT, which Winters produced and co-wrote but did not direct. Possibly one of the worst films ever released, this unmitigated disaster soon ended their relationship.

However, Winters followed this up with co-producing a couple of softcore films, YOUNG LADY CHATTERLEY (cut to a "hard R" for release) and ONCE UPON A GIRL, an X-rated animated fairy tale-themed feature-- with the actor who played Otis the town drunk on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW in drag as Mother Goose in connecting live action segments!

So wearing three hats on RACQUET was actually a big step *up* for Winter at this point. However, he followed it with triple duty on THE LAST HORROR FILM, a controversial slasher flick starring Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro that cashed in on the Hinckley obsession with Jodie Foster-- and a direct-to-video "sex education" film, LOVE SKILLS, which featured '80s porn stars including early gay porn icon Rick (aka Jim) Cassidy.

And from there, it was a flurry of undistinguished low-budget, usually straight-to-video stuff of various types (with one standout being the 1986 cult skateboarder film THRASHIN' starring a young Josh Brolin), surprisingly going at it in various capacities-- including occasionally acting-- until 2015.


Anyway, sorry to go off on such a *MAJOR* tangent on this, but I've always found David Winters to have been a fascinatingly eclectic showbiz figure, and I hope you will, too.

Thanks for everything you do (especially putting up with my long-winded comments!), Poseidon! Love to all, be safe and well, and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Ptolemy1 said...

I vividly recall the Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King showdown when I was a child, it was a sensation of the women's movement of the time. Bobby was appropriately obnoxious in the role of male chauvinist which I have no doubt was heavily staged. Called "The Battle of the Sexes" King kicked his ass all over the court. Of course at the time the feeling was that Riggs had thrown the match. Funny how things like this, and Watergate stand out so clearly in my mind. I would have been 11.

On a completely different note, I've been watching current tv series and movies, and the overwhelming rage these days is nudity, particularly male. The trend has circled around once more. It's clearly a marketing ploy, in our (somehow still) puritan country it still gets headlines. I'm especially interested in seeing "Babylon" a film that is from all accounts spectacular on many levels and article after article speak not so much about the cinematography, or the acting, or the writing, but...the nudity. No matter how far we progress in our culture, there is something about male nudity that keeps fascinating us, decade after decade, and I for one am all for it.

Poseidon3 said...

Dan, if you read the further comments, you're not alone...!

A, I always think of Bert as sexless, too, even with the innuendo sometimes found on "Tattletales." I think of him as someone who wouldn't muss his hair (!), but startlingly enough, he gets it wet in "Racquet!" But, yeah... he wasn't the right man for this job, no matter how much he wanted to do the movie. (I can't stand listening to Warren stammer and hesitate with every conceivable thought, so he's long been off my list, too! He reminds me - even if it isn't exactly true - of a quote once said about someone else entirely... "A face unclouded by thought." He's a blank to me for the most part.)

hsc, he truly DOES look like an Arte Johnson creation here! In fact, I did the photos a while prior to the post and when I revisited them, I saw Arte first before realizing it was Bobby! LOL about the houseplants.

"Gingerguy," I've seen "Hot Dog" and actually enjoyed it! One of the foreign lobby cards for the movie had Shannon in the tub with the young male lead and the tip of his junk was visible in the suds. (I only always remember KEY elements of a film. Ha ha!) I've been wanting to, but have neglected to do, a post on the Susan Tyrell/Jimmy McNichol collaboration! Some day.

joel, I can't believe you saw this...! I think maybe 4 users have commented on it on imdb.com...! Great recap/review. And, yes, Bert was amiable and engaging and, this might be part of the "sexless" thing, non-threatening. He did sometimes really come off as a dim bulb on "Super Password," though. It was a SHOCK when he died that young.

BryonByron, I rented "Players" about 30+ years ago and didn't like it, but maybe I need to see it again... I only watched it to see Dina Merrill...!!!!! How gay is that?!

hsc, I intended to mention David Winters, then didn't... But I never would have gone into the detail you have, so thanks much for all the added info! I appreciate you going the extra mile with an addendum that ties into the post.

Ptolemy1, I was only six when Bobby and Billie Jean duked it out, but I recall them being featured on TV around that time a lot. I just didn't really "get" what it was all about. I love discovering male nudity and other associated things in classic film & TV and I can appreciate it in contemporary projects, too. But where I draw the line is this new trend of prosthetic and computer-enhanced male nudity... Give me a break. No, thank you. (Not saying that's what "Babylon" has - I don't know. Just remarking in general.) I just watched a neat documentary called "Skin" and it, while quite incomplete of course, claimed to be a history of nudity in the movies. They covered a lot (and showed many quality examples of what was being referred to!) I highly recommend it and informational as well as entertainment purposes.

https://tubitv.com/movies/609425/skin-a-history-of-nudity-in-movies?start=true

Forever1267 said...

I thought it was Arte Johnson, too!

Never heard of this one, but do recall hearing a story of my aunt and uncle, both huge tennis fans, having a movie date, with "Private Lessons", because it featured the characters in tennis duds.

It stars soft porn queen Sylvia Kristal, and is most definitely NOT about tennis.

Have to agree with everyone else. Bert Convy seemed like a nice person, and I love "Password", but not my type either.