The Nudeniks

It may have seemed that Hollywood had gone about as far as possible in the direction of prurience (TIME, June 9), but one of Hollywood's laws is that it can always go one step farther. The step: something called Not Tonight Henry, a 66-minute movie which features half a dozen nude girls. Such pictures have always been produced on Hollywood's fringes, but now Fox West Coast Theaters has started handling the West Coast bookings for Henry, which is already in its 21st week in a Hollywood "art" theater, goes citywide this week (eight theaters) and nationwide soon.

Shot in ten days at a cost of $75,000, Henry in more than one sense sets the industry back 33 years--it has negligible dialogue and virtually no plot. A frustrated husband makes dream-sequence love to the great volupines of history, even playing lava boy to a cave woman. From Delilah to Pocahontas, however, they all seem to have been rented from the same dairy. Says Producer Edward E. Paramore III: "It beat Ten Commandments by $500, opening night in San Pedro. You're not going to get our kind of success on nudes alone. Naked girls are a glut on the market. What makes it a hit is that it's really a harmless, funny picture."

Paramore believes that the "big danger" he faces as a cinemogle is "the amateurs in the field who use nudity for nudity's sake." Perhaps in this category is Girlie Photographer Russ Meyers, whose The Immoral Mr. Teas cost $24,000 and has grossed more than $1,000,000 in West Coast theaters in less than three years. It presents the case of a fellow who can disrobe women with his eyes. This faculty frightens Teas, so Teas flees. Eventually he goes to a female psychiatrist. When she, too, loses her clothing under his regard, he finally accepts his fate. One of the weirder facts about these films is that many of the actors use their .own names; Teas, for example, is played by a photographer named W. Ellis Teas. Not Tonight Henry stars Nightclub Performer Hank Henry, who has just been named Las Vegas' Father of the Year.

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