Book Review: Jimmy McDonough’s Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film

by j.d. lafrance

Russ Meyer was one of the few exploitation filmmakers of the ‘60s to enjoy a modicum of mainstream success. His low-budget pulpy, backwater masterpieces featured dumb men punishing and, in turn, being punished by large-breasted women not of this Earth. As Jimmy McDonough’s book, Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, illustrates quite amply, Meyer’s life was as colorful and outrageous as his movies.

McDonough’s book traces Meyer’s messed up childhood complete with a domineering mother (who hated women and loved men) and crazy sister (who lived her life in and out of institutions) to his stint in World War II as a fearless combat photographer. As Richard Brumner, one of his Army buddies, once said, “Russ believed once he was looking through the lens that nothing could hurt him.” McDonough’s prose is evocative of Meyer’s own style of writing, keeping in tone with the purple, pulpy prose of his movies. For example, here is McDonough’s description of the filmmaker:

“A tall, imposing beefsteak of a man with a buzz cut and black, bushy brows knit together over an apelike face, to say nothing of the knockout blonde on his arm who was not only his wife but an income—generating nude model, this commie-hating former combat photographer could’ve easily passed for one of the testosterone cartoons that burst off the cover of For Men Only or one of the other pulpy rags in which his pictures sometimes appeared.”

The book maintains a balance of sometimes bizarre, often fascinating anecdotes, like how Ernest Hemingway helped Meyer lose his virginity during WWII, and entertaining analysis of his movies. Here is McDonough’s take on Mudhoney (1965): “Highly regarded by Meyerites, Mudhoney develops Lorna’s fever dream into a deranged Wal-Mart family portrait.” However, his book is hardly a fawning love letter to the man and his movies. For example, his critique of Motor Psycho (1965) is quite scathing as he writes, “Motor Psycho benefits from ever-greater camera work, and RM’s pacing is beginning to speed up, but this is another dud script with unremarkable dialogue...there’s just not enough flesh on display and RM without dames means tedium.” These comments demonstrate McDonough’s understanding and familiarity with his subject.

Arguably the most interesting and entertaining part of the book is Meyer in his prime during the ‘60s when he made one of his most memorable movies, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). McDonough profiles that film’s star, the iconic Tura Santana, a voluptuous, no-B.S. woman who had a troubled child but survived through her own unwavering tenacity and instinct to survive. She even credits her career as a stripper as he salvation. “Stripping wasn’t the last step on the way down for me,” she is quoted as saying in the book, “it was the first step on the way up.” McDonough goes on to document the making of Faster, Pussycat! in loving detail with recollections by the three lead women – Tura, Lori Williams and Haji – and the typical low budget woes: no frills, extreme weather conditions and so on.

McDonough presents a fascinating portrait of a walking contradiction. Meyer was the ultimate Alpha Male, a guy’s guy yet a big softie at heart prone to bouts of nostalgia often accompanied by crying. The author culls a multi-faceted portrait of the man from countless sources, including childhood friends, war buddies, ex-wives and, of course, the memorable women who appeared in his movies. Meyer often bedded, belittled and bullied the women who starred in his films. Some of them, like Tura survived. Others, like Vixen (1968) star Erica Gavin were not so lucky. McDonough tells of her downward spiral into drug addiction and casting couch follies, unable to get out from under the shadow that Meyer’s larger than life movies had cast.

Meyer’s last years of his life are depressingly depicted as McDonough documents, in great detail, the mental and physical deterioration of the man and how the people who worked for him had systematically alienated his friends and mismanaged his business. Yet, Meyer’s legacy has endured with retrospectives of his work at Yale University and even being mentioned, by name, on Seinfeld. Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is an entertaining, well-written and very well-researched book that is a must-read for any Meyerite and yet accessible to the uninitiated as well.