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Girl 27 - Home Media Magazine Review
Oct 15, 2007 at 10:54 am
Girl 27
Street 10/16
Westlake, Documentary, $19.98 DVD, NR.
In 1937, when lucky Hollywood hopefuls worked as contract players on studio lots, Metro Goldwyn Mayer threw a big party for its sales executives at the Hal Roach ranch and tricked 120 girls, some of them underage, into attending.
Although most of the girls thought they were being summoned to perform as bit players in a studio movie, they were really being used as entertainment at a stag party to reward studio sales personnel for a record year.
One young woman, Patricia Douglas, was raped at that party and, when she tried to bring charges against the studio, MGM initiated a huge and brutal cover-up, insinuating that Douglas was a drunken tramp.
While researching a book on Jean Harlow, biographer David Stenn came across references to the case, complete with tabloid headlines, and decided to find out more. The result is a documentary of Stenn’s search for more information about Douglas and, ultimately, the relationship he develops with the elderly woman.
Girl 27 is really two documentaries. The first is about Stenn’s growing obsession with what he sees as the terrible injustice done to a woman that he imagines is long dead. The second is the story of how Stenn insinuates himself into the life of the initially reluctant Douglas, and how she slowly opens up about the terrible events that, she says, ruined her life.
Although it seems as if Stenn occasionally finds his own reactions to his story more interesting than the story itself, this is, nevertheless, a compelling film that details a disturbing miscarriage of justice. — Anne Sherber
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/index.cfm?search=Girl+27§ion=2-3&sec_id=search&image.x=0&image.y=0
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