‘The Last Showgirl’ Review: The Casting Is More Interesting Than the Part in Pamela Anderson’s Not-Quite-Comeback
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic In the 2022 HBO docuseries “The Last Movie Stars,” Ethan Hawke floats the possibility that the great Joanne Woodward’s risk-it-all role — the one that could have won the “Three Faces of Eve” star a second Oscar, had it gone differently — was playing a failed starlet who resorts to burlesque to get by.
Adapted from the William Inge play “A Loss of Roses,” it was a part intended for Marilyn Monroe, who died, so Woodward stepped in and gave it her Method-acting all.
Alas, the studio lost faith, recut the film and slapped a tacky new title on it: “The Stripper.” In a different world, “The Last Showgirl” could have been such a vehicle for its leading lady, Pamela Anderson.
Tightrope-walking the gossamer line between objectification and empowerment, the project lands amid a charitable reappraisal of Anderson’s career, during which a memoir, a Netflix doc and countless thinkpieces have caused some to wonder whether they might have underestimated the erstwhile sex symbol.
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