 |
| How similar is The Hostesses to The Cocktail Hostesses? We'll get to the bottom of this. |
Once again, I'm leafing through some pages from Ed Wood's softcore script The Hostesses, which director-producer Stephen C. Apostolof filmed as The Cocktail Hostesses (1973). As you'll recall from yesterday's article, the film revolves around a young woman named Toni Rice (played by Rene Bond), an unhappy secretary who's having an affair with her skinflint married boss, Mr. Henderson (Norman Fields). At the behest of her friend Jackie (Terri Johnson), Toni quits this job and becomes a cocktail hostess and escort.
We now jump forward a little in the story. Toni is working at an Irish-themed bar alongside Jackie and another girl named Lorraine. (This copy of the script belongs to the actress playing Lorraine, by the way, which is why her lines are underlined.)
Howard (Duane Paulsen), the bar's piano player, has $50 in his tip jar and offers it to Lorraine if she'll have sex with him after work. Lorraine begs off, saying she has to drive Jackie home. Howard has another suggestion: they can both have sex with him. Here's how that conversation goes:
.jpg) |
| Page 21 of The Hostesses. |
Comparing this script page to the finished movie, we find that Jackie and Howard's conversation is almost identical to what Ed Wood has written. Howard even does that dumb "double your pleasure" bit, a reference to the ad campaign for Wrigley's Doublemint gum. But, alas, Duane Paulsen skips one exceptionally corny line of Wood's dialogue: "I have enough lovin' for both of you." As before, Ed Wood has left the explicitness of the sex scene "to the discretion of the director." Steve Apostolof was strictly a softcore filmmaker, so he would not include graphic, unsimulated sex scenes in his movies.
Let's move on to page 29, where we find Lorraine consoling another waitress, Millie (Lynn Harris), who has recently been raped in the parking lot of the bar. Keep in mind that they're having this heart-to-heart conversation in the middle of a hotel room orgy, with a nude couple making out right behind them.
.jpg) |
| Page 29 of The Hostesses. |
In The Cocktail Hostesses, the actresses do what's on the page, though they tinker with the wording just a little bit. For instance, Millie's line about the knife, "I should have had a knife like he did," becomes "Listen, I wish I had the knife he had" in the finished movie. Luckily, Ed Wood's speech about men being "bastards" survived intact to the final cut. Also, it should be noted that once the girls go to the bedroom for some privacy, they improvise some inconsequential chit-chat about the party and the drinks before resuming the scripted dialogue.
Another interesting line from Eddie's script: "There is no doubt but what LORRAINE is the aggressor." Revealing choice of words, no? That's how Ed Wood saw lesbian relationships, i.e. predator and prey. In the movie, however, this dynamic is not played up.
The Millie/Lorraine scene continues on page 30:
.jpg) |
| Page 30 of The Hostesses. |
In this scene, Lorraine seduces Millie. Pay close attention to those handwritten notes in the margin, for here we finally get confirmation that Steve Apostolof freely encouraged his actresses to ad lib. The actress playing Lorraine has written in the lower right corner: "Scene to be played with extreme erotic ad-libs. Choice of words & language no barrier." I'd have to guess that this advice came directly from Steve Apostolof to his actresses.
Generally, throughout this sequence, the two actresses read Eddie's lines but improvise some brief dialogue along the way, mostly as a way of filling up time. Other than that, page 30 of Ed's script has survived nicely.
This very same scene continues on page 31:
.jpg) |
| Page 31 of The Hostesses. |
For this page, the main difference between the script and the movie is that, in the latter, there are several lengthy cutaways during Lorraine's two big speeches. (Those are the passages underlined in purple in the picture above.) After Lorraine says the part about "their own selfish pleasures" (ignoring the "little" from Ed's script), she improvises a few extra lines while undressing Millie. At that point, Steve Apostolof cuts to the living room, where all the other characters, including Toni and Jackie, are engaged in an orgy. There's an amusing moment when a character named Larry (played by Apostolof regular Harvey Shain) canoodles on a couch with the profoundly bosomy Candy Samples. Nice work if you can get it.
Steve then cuts back to the bedroom with Millie and Lorraine, and the latter resumes her speech, starting with the part about "their little demands." After she says a couple more sentences, Steve goes back to the living room, then back again to Millie and Lorraine, who picks up with: "And there will always come a time when..." (Ed's script has this as "always be a time when...")
The final page I have from the script is page 41, which is the last page of this draft. What's happening here is that Toni has gone back to work for Henderson—not as his secretary but as his paid mistress. At her old salary, yet! Here's how Ed Wood has it in the script:
.jpg) |
| Page 41 (and the end) of The Hostesses. |
Yet again, the actors (Rene Bond and Norman Fields) kind of dance around Eddie's dialogue. If you want to see exactly what Ed wrote, look at the picture above. As for the dialogue in the finished movie, I've transcribed it below:
TONI: And what did I make?HENDERSON: Uh, it's hard for me to remember.TONI: I remember!HENDERSON: Now what's that got to do with anything?TONI: Plenty. You can visit me every Friday. And you can pay me eighty-six dollars and ninety-one cents for that visit. And that, my dear cocksman, is our permanent arrangement.
Apostolof wisely ends the scene (and the movie) with the "permanent arrangement" line. As you can see in the picture above, Eddie's script had one more line from Toni: "Now start making love... lover..." That's the kind of line Ed would have used in one of his short stories or novels, but it's a little too flowery to say out loud. I never really considered it until now, but I guess this "arrangement" allows Toni to keep her cocktail waitress job. After all, her sex sessions with Henderson generally happen during the afternoon, and the bar doesn't get hopping until nighttime.
All in all, this was an interesting little experiment. It helped me understand how Eddie wrote, how Ed and Steve worked together, how Ed's scripts compare to the films made from them, and even how Steve treated his actors and actresses. Now if someone will only give me the $1,450 for the complete Hostesses screenplay.