“'Misty Beethoven' is one of the best examples of what was created during the Golden Age of adult cinema,” veteran classic performer Bill Margold told XBIZ. “Movies that you could remove the adult content and still have a film that entertained you. These were the movies that put us on the map. ‘Deep Throat’ and 'Behind the Green Door’ kicked open the door, ‘Misty Beethoven’ made us immortal.," Margold said.
The special screening is being coordinated by Margold and Hollywood Book and Poster and is the first of a potential Midnight Grind series, which will feature monthly screenings of XXX-rated films.
“It’s called Midnight Grind, and we’re going to try and get the classics. It’s revival cinema from when X ruled the world. It’s for those people that can fondly remember and it’s for people that never knew there were theaters that showed X-rated films,” Margold said.
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” the movie stars Constance Money in the lead role of Misty Beethoven and legendary performer Jamie Gillis, who plays Dr. Love. After meeting Misty, the doctor sets about making her a Goldenrod Girl by training her to become a sexual artist and transforming her into a high-class woman of the world.
The film was helmed by legendary director Radley Metzger, aka Henry Paris, in 1975 and was shot on location in New York and Italy. The screenplay was written by Jake Barnes, and other cast members include Gloria Leonard, Jacqueline Beudant, Marlene Willoughby and Terri Hall, among others.
In 1976, “The Opening of Misty Beethoven” won four Adult Film Association of America Awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for Gillis.
“The experience of going to a theater transcends any other experience of seeing adult cinema because you’re going where you first saw it,” Margold said. “The people that are going to come to this are basically who got off in theaters before, either one way or another — mentally or physically. Now, everything [in adult content] has been made for the small screen. We used to have Eiffel Towers and Grand Canyons. Now it’s basically toothpicks and ditches.”
The New Beverly Cinema is located at 7165 Beverly Blvd., in Los Angeles, Calif. For theater information, call (323) 938-4038.