Mondo Hollywood
A flippy, trippy psychedelic guide to Hollywood.
Mondo Hollywood is a 1967 documentary 'mondo movie' directed by Robert Carl Cohen, filmed over the preceding two years. It presents a series of vignettes of extreme aspects of life in Hollywood and Los Angeles, focusing on 'the Hollywood the public does not know,' and was described by Variety as a 'flippy, trippy psychedelic guide to Hollywood.'
Quick Facts
- Director
- Robert Carl Cohen
- Music
- Mike Curb (music director) & Robert Carl Cohen
- Studio
- Omega-Cyrano Productions
- Distributor
- Hollywood International Pictures
- Released
- 1967
- Runtime
- 120 minutes (director's cut)
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
The film opens with a legend stating that all persons and events depicted are real, and any similarity to fictitious persons or events is purely coincidental. It features a range of personalities including proto-hippie Gypsy Boots, stripper Jennie Lee, S&H Green Stamps heir Lewis Beach Marvin III, celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring, psychedelic pioneer Richard Alpert, singer Bobby Jameson, and others, each providing narrative for their own scenes. The film also captures social and political gatherings such as an anti-communist crusade, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, a visit to Universal Studios by Princess Margaret, the aftermath of the Watts riots, a UCLA peace rally, and a children's fashion show, with brief appearances by Frank Zappa, Sonny and Cher, Bobby Beausoleil, Alfred Hitchcock, Brigitte Bardot, Jayne Mansfield, Ronald Reagan, and several transsexuals.
Reader's Guide
Mondo Hollywood was first shown at the Mannheim Film Festival in 1967 and scheduled for the Avignon Festival, but the French government banned it, claiming it presented 'an apology for a certain number of perversities, including drugs and homosexuality' and constituted 'a danger to the mental health of the public.' The ban was later lifted. In 1978, during Mike Curb's campaign for lieutenant governor of California, opponent Mervyn M. Dymally claimed the film was 'pornographic' and that Curb 'sang falsetto in a bath tub scene with two lesbians'; Curb denied participating but acknowledged providing music after filming. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner editor stated nothing in the film could be described as pornographic, and Curb won the election. The film was later described as a 'cult classic' that captures the underside of Hollywood, documenting a time when 'an inquisitive trust in the unknown was paramount.' A re-edited director's cut premiered at the Moondance Film Festival on 10 June 2006.
More in Mondo films 1-24
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