BEVERLY HILLS MADAM
US, 1986, 97 minutes, Colour.
Faye Dunaway, Louis Jourdan, Donna Dixon, Robin Givens, Melody Anderson, Terry Farrell.
Directed by Harvey Hart.
Beverley Hills Madam is a telemovie focusing on high class call-girls in Los Angeles in the 80s. It in allegedly based on true stories and the character portrayed by Faye Dunaway is combination of a number of such Beverly Hills Madams.
The film, in a sense, has its cake and eats it at the same time. The glamour and wealth of the call girl experience is highlighted - but at the end, with a great amount of melodramatic crisis. The overall effect of the film is a
mixture of glamour and warning.
Other files on prostitution and high class call girls include Candice Bergen as the Mayflower Madam, Dyan Cannon as the Lady of the House, Julie Walters offering Personal Services, the ensemble cast in the 1960s Walk on the Wild Side.
Faye Dunaway gives a glamorous performance as the hard-bitten madam. Louis Jordan is her business associate. A number of starlets including Melody Anderson, Donna Dixon and Robyn Givens (introduced in this film) portray the girls.
1. Interesting and entertaining telemovie? Provocative subject for the wide television audience? The adaptation of the reality and the seamier side of prostitution for the television audience?
2. Los Angeles settings, affluent world, glamour, homes, estates? The musical score?
3. The title and the focus on Los Angeles, money, prominent men and their use of the escort agency? The money paid?
4. Faye Dunaway as Lil: the story of her past, 17, brutality, determination, her building up her business, her relationship with the girls, strict and demanding, checking out the clients? Appearing in society as a wealthy divorcee and socially accepted? Her relationship with Doug? the personal level but keeping him at a distance? Friendship with the girls, training them? The appointments and the control, The breaking of her rules, responding to crisis? Wanting to get out? and the final collapse? Offering Claudia the opportunity of taking over? The popular magazine portrayal of the Madam?
5. Douglas Corbin and his suave style, friendship with Lil, checking out the girls, the dangers and covering up? The smooth front for the prostitution?
6. The girls, glamorous women? Their backgrounds? Skill in their work, seeing them at work with their clients? in limousines, hotel rooms, palatial mansions, boats? The glamorous and money-making side of the profession?
7. The seamier side, the demands on the girls, training and breeding, elegance style, being confidants? Pandering to the men? Woman as ultra glamorous objects and paid for in this way? Their study, conversation making? The uglier side brutality, danger? Not able to maintain relationships? The possibility of their marrying and their being found out?
8. Claudia, glamorous, at work? Fully professional? The ambitions to be married, her relationship with the fiance, nervousness about going to the meal, preparations for the wedding, discovered by the fiancé’s uncle, his brutal reaction? Her disillusionment, drinking, selling herself cheaply? Lil angry with her? Drinking at the dinner? opting out of the appointment and thus escaping the death? The final confrontation with Lil? Her future?
9. April, aerobics background, glamorous? Black woman and her prostitution? her clients? Taking Claudia's appointment and her death?
10. Wendy, with politicians, studying? Pregnancy, the rejection by the politician? Her collapse?
11. Julie, the young girl coming from Nebraska, her friend, being bashed in the arrest; Lil taking her under her wing, the decision about coming one of Lil's girls, knowing the facts, the training and the study, going to the boat to initiate the young man, his declaration of love, her not wanting the money and the bonus, going to the house the father rejecting her, the young man and his friends staring at her from the tennis court? Her wanting to opt out?
12. The world of prostitution? exploitation? Glamour and money? Uglier realities?
