PENNEBAKER HEGEDUS FILMS

A couple of friends, Pat Jaffee and Paul Leaf wanted  to make a film  about  a stripper dance show  that was looking for a place to  rehearse and ended up in the  studio of  another friend, painter Alfred Leslie.  So we went  with them  to the rehearsal which consisted of: a string of cat-suited dancers sporting long black tails, a band with Larry Rivers on Sax, once-actress now dancer Louise Lassiter,  and hoofer Mara Lynn whom we had filmed a few  years earlier with Norman Mailer in Beyond the Law, and all this happening in Leslie’s immense studio surrounded by his larger-than-life portraits painted in black and white staring down at us from the walls.

The featured performer of that afternoon however was bubbly seventeen-year-old Cindy Fink, whom Leacock had followed to the rehearsal, filming her every move as they came and who turned out to be what the film was all about.  A few years later the studio burned down in a spectacular fire that cleaned out that whole  corner of  23rd Street and Broadway and burned up Al’s incredible paintings which can be seen now only in our film. We ended up running it for Al to identify his pictures so he could claim the insurance, which I don’t think he got anyway.

D A Pennebaker