The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) on Netflix
Rachel Schpitendavel comes to New York to dance. Her Bible routines do not suit Minsky's Burlesque, but Raymond Paine and Billy Minsky see a way to use her against a moral crusader.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.1/102,044 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1925 Rachel Schpitendavel, an Amish girl from rural Pennsylvania, reaches New York's Lower East Side with hopes of dancing onstage. Her routines draw on Bible stories, and they prove too tame for Minsky's Burlesque when she auditions. Billy Minsky and the straight man Raymond Paine devise a scheme to use her against Vance Fowler, a moral crusader set on closing the theater. They advertise Rachel as a notorious Paris performer, expecting Fowler and the police to raid the midnight show. Rachel would then perform her harmless Bible dances and embarrass Fowler instead. In the days before that performance, Raymond and the comedian Chick Williams teach her burlesque routines, and both men fall for her. Her stern father, Jacob Schpitendavel, who objects even to her Bible dances, arrives in the city searching for her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bert Lahr died of cancer in the early morning of December 4, 1967, two weeks after returning home at 2 a.m., chilled and feverish, from the damp studio where the film was shooting; he had waived his contract's limit on late-night work out of trust in the producer.
- Britt Ekland divorced Peter Sellers four days before the film was released, and columnist Walter Winchell reported that the split came from Sellers' displeasure that she had appeared nude in it.
- In 1975, Mary Dawson, then 85, refuted the legend behind the film: she said she was never a stripteaser, that novelist Rowland Barber put it all in the book to make it better, and that she was not even at the theater that night.
- The real Minsky's theater, the National Winter Garden on Houston Street, was first raided in 1917 when Mae Dix absentmindedly began removing her costume before reaching the wings; the crowd cheered, and Billy Minsky ordered the "accident" repeated every night.
- Tony Curtis was cast as Raymond Paine in June 1967, a part named for a real straight man who was in the show that night and was killed in a 1934 hit-and-run, but Curtis dropped out a month later, reportedly over creative differences.
- Most of Bert Lahr's scenes had already been shot when he died, so the producers finished his role using test footage of him, an uncredited voice double and a body double, burlesque legend Joey Faye; Norman Lear said editing would keep the performance intact.
- The Night They Raided Minsky's was the first musical shot entirely on location in New York City, and its budget of more than $3 million made it the most expensive film shot in the city up to that time.
- A block of East 26th Street between First and Second Avenues was dressed as the Lower East Side of 1925, with parking meters disguised by garbage cans and barrels; the vacant tenements there were slated for demolition, but the city postponed it for the filmmakers.
