Trivia for
Myra Breckinridge (1970) More at IMDbPro »

• Gore Vidal disowned this screen version of his novel.
  
  
• Mae West insisted that her character's name (Leticia) be spelled differently than it was in the book (Letitia) citing "the obvious reasons".
  
  
• Every day while shooting, Mae West would come in to work surrounded by young, muscular men. She would tell the studio security, "They're with me!"
  
  
• In a book about the making of the film, producer David Giler said that he came to the set one day to find out why filming was so far behind schedule and discovered that the entire cast and crew had been kept sitting around most of the day (on full salary) while director Michael Sarne photographed a cake... for eight hours. He was also told by cast and crewmembers that Sarne would go off in a corner and "think" for six to seven hours at a stretch, during which time shooting would come to a standstill. According to Giler, such antics were one of the reasons the film went so far over budget, and he and the other producers demanded that the studio fire him, but it was in Sarne's contract that he could not be fired until he turned in the first cut.
  
  
• This film originally included at least one fast-cut montage, using archival footage from past 20th Century-Fox films and featuring such recognizable Fox stars as Shirley Temple, Betty Grable and Loretta Young. The montage was intended to depict images going through a character's head while being raped. Young and some of the other stars, whose faces were used without their permission, successfully sued the studio to have footage of themselves cut from release prints of this film.
  
  
• Rex Reed originally refused to say the line, "Where are my tits? Where are my tits?". However, the producers informed him that if he didn't say the line, they would use an establishing shot with a voice impressionist yelling "WHERE ARE MY TITS? WHERE ARE MY TITS?". He reluctantly agreed to say the line.
  
  
• Trailers include many alternate takes, and one additional snippet of dialogue; In the hospital at the end, Myron asks the doctor if he's a boy or a girl, and the doctor says that he can't tell from where he's standing.
  
  
• Director Michael Sarne originally wanted Mickey Rooney to play the part of Buck Loner, but John Huston was cast.
  
  
• The director intended the final scene in the hospital to be shot in black & white. This version is shown on the Director's Cut.
  
  
• The director used footage from another film Raquel Welch starred in, One Million Years B.C. (1966).
  
  
• The statue of the twirling Las Vegas showgirl outside of Chateau Marmont hotel where Myra Breckinridge stayed (and was the model for Raquel Welch's publicity shots) was pulled out of storage for the movie; the actual statue during its heyday can be seen in the early Sixties films The Stripper (1963) and The Savage Eye (1960).
  
  
• At the time of the film's release, Gore Vidal called the film version of his novel the second worst film he'd ever seen.
  
  
• Rex Reed was a well known film critic at the time.
  
  
• According to the 1978 book "Flesh and Fantasy", Mae West had stipulated in her contract that only she would be allowed to dress in black and white in the film. Costar Raquel Welch showed up to shoot their first scene together in a black dress with an enormous white ruffle, and West threw a fit. When the film's producers sided with West, Welch had the ruffle on the dress dyed a very, very pale blue... which ultimately photographed as white.
  
  
• Some of the stars that appear in the old clips include: Carmen Miranda, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel, Claudette Colbert, Shirley Temple, Richard Widmark, Oliver Hardy, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Vincent Price, Clark Gable, Basil Rathbone, Glenn Miller, Gregory Ratoff, Judy Garland, George Sanders, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, Celeste Holm, Ginger Rogers, Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy, and Rita Hayworth.
  
  
• The fake pig seen outside the academy acting classroom was also prominently seen on the Meat Packers' float in same studio's Hello, Dolly! (1969).
  
  
• Upon its release, the film was met not merely with atrocious reviews, but critical condemnation that crossed the line into moral indignation. The review in the July 6, 1970 edition of "Time Magazine" was entitled "Some Sort of Nadir" (referring to the scene where Myra anally rapes Rusty with a strap-on dildo). The review became famous for its opening line: "Myra Breckinridge is about as funny as a child molester."
  
  
• It was not so much the box office failure as the complete and utter critical failure of the movie - a reception that could only be termed as "disastrous" - that wrecked the careers of director Michael Sarne and actor Roger Herren. The critical and financial flop also seriously hurt Raquel Welch, who never achieved the true star status that had been predicted for her.
  
  
• Rex Reed wrote a piece for the August 1970 edition of "Playboy Magazine" trashing the film and predicting it was so bad, it would never be released.
  
  
• This was Mae West's first film in 27 years.
  
  
• Bette Davis emphatically turned down the Mae West role expressing her contempt for the book.
  
  
• One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.
  
  
• Bud Yorkin was originally hired as director, but he quit and was replaced by Michael Sarne.
  
  
• In the 1970s, Gore Vidal wrote in Esquire Magazine that when he found out Myra Breckinridge's director Michael Sarne was now working as a waiter in a pizza restaurant, he said it "proves that God exists and there is such a thing as Divine Symmetry."
  
  
• Although they share a scene, Mae West and Raquel Welch (who famously did not get along) never actually appear in the same frame together in the entire movie.
  
  

• SPOILER: In the famous Rape Scene, if you look closely Raquel Welch is not putting on a strap-on, but a gun belt with a six shooter in the holster.
  
  

Related Links