The Ritz

A search of the blog claims I haven't blogged about The Ritz before. It's going to be on TCM tonight at 10:00 PM as part of a night of gay-themed movies marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Jack Weston plays Gaetano Proclo, a man from the midwest who married Vivian (Kaye Ballard), who is a daughter in the Proclo crime family in New York. Her dad is now on his deathbead, and for whatever reason he never liked Gaetano, probably because he wasn't really part of the family. So as Dad is dying, he tells his son Carmine (Jerry Stiller) to "get Proclo".

Gaetano knows he's in danger, so he flees the Vespucci house, hails a cab, and tells the driver to take him to the last place anybody would ever think of looking for him. The driver takes him to the Ritz, a place that looks like one of those old speakeasies where you need to know someone and and to know a password to get into. That, and it doesn't look anything like a hotel, not even those cheap places in movies decades older than this. That, and the guy in the front "room" doesn't seem to think Gaetano fits in.

There's a good reason for all this. Once Gaetano is finally admitted, we discover that the Ritz is actually a gay bathhouse that has rooms where people can spend the night. Apparently it has quite a repeat clientele, since all the patrons' rooms seem to be decorated by the people staying in them. If you haven't figured it out, Gaetano is most definitely not gay. And while having a brother-in-law who was told to get him is really bad, dealing with the people at the Ritz is not quite what he was hoping for, since he'd really rather just be left alone.

There's one nice guy trying to help out the newbie, in the form of Chris (F. Murray Abraham), who lets him in on the cultural norms and whatnot. Mildly irritating is that Gaetano has a "chubby chaser" with his eye on him. There's also Googie (Rita Moreno), a singer trying build her career -- and she thinks Gaetano might be able to help her. Gaetano, for his part, thinks she's a man in drag. The threat is Michael (Treat Williams), a private investigator who is trying to find Gaetano so that Carmine can come and get Gaetano to fulfill his Dad's wish.

This is all a comedy, and it's one I found quite funny. I suppose there will be some people out there who complain that this is playing to gay stereotypes and all that, but the screenwriter, Terrence McNally, is gay, so I doubt any offense was meant.

TCM's schedule page doesn't have the link to buy it on DVD, yet there it is at the TCM Shop. Amazon has it on streaming, but otherwise implies it's out of print, which is odd for an Archive Collection release.