Word: wax
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Friday: A Night in Casablanca, 1:30, 4:35, 7:40, Love Happy, 3, 6:05, 9:10; Saturday and Sunday: Julia, 3:45, 7:45, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, 2, 5:50, 9:45; Friday and Saturday midnight show, American Hot Wax...
Ticket Agent: You speak French! (he salutes): What joys! Vive the States United! May I wax your elbow...
Then there are her shoes. All dancers are meticulous about their slippers, so Gelsey is fanatic. A toe shoe is a rigid object. To get one of her 50 pairs in shape, she brushes Fabulon floor wax into the shoe to make it even harder. Since hard shoes make noise, she next pounds the stiffness out with a tinsmith's hammer. Then she sews on ribbons and bits of elastic. Done? Almost. Just before a performance she pulls the shoes on over socks, brushes them with fast-drying alcohol and removes the socks. Putting the shoes back on, she says...
...short, Alan Freed was not the angel with a damaged wing that American Hot Wax shows us. The payola affair is mentioned briefly in one scene, but Freed's relationship to it is fudged. The movie ends with an ominous subtitle epilogue which informs us that Freed was indicted and died "penniless" shortly thereafter. This is a truth which is distorted by its context. The real Freed was indeed a Messiah of rock and roll, but not for its own sake alone. He had lots to gain. The treatment of Freed points up the main feature of this movie...
American Hot Wax is a B-movie masquerading as an A-movie. The amount of hype which has swelled up around this basically insignificant flick far outdistances the film's actual merit. Because it fictionalizes and defuses the larger social issues of the Golden Age of Rock and Roll, it loses all pretense of commenting upon them. It is in the end a flawed bit of light entertainment...