The Immoral Mr. Teas

Russ Meyer (director, screenwriter)
Bill Teas, Ann Peters, Marilyn Wesley, Michele Roberts, Dawn Danielle (starring)

Los Angeles: Pad-Ram Enterprises, 1961. Original pressbooks (two variants) for 1961 re-releases of the 1959 film. Featured are the two most commonly seen layouts used for publicity: the full-color illustrated "hat" variant, and the other with Mr. Teas surrounded by a bevy of well-developed women, the female leads of the film (from left to right: Ann Peters, Michele Roberts, Dawn Danielle, and Marilyn Wesley).

The story finds the shy Mr. Teas, played by William Ellis Teas, a door-to-door dental appliance salesman who has a chemical reaction with an anesthetic that allows him to have X-ray vision, as in "seeing through women's clothes." He also overcomes all of his inhibitions, leading to ribald encounters with his dental nurse, his therapist, his secretary, a girl in a bar, etc.

Russ Meyer's first feature, produced by Pad-Ram Enterprises (a monogram using the initials of director Russell Albion Meyer and producer Peter A. DeCenzie), and the film that basically launched the lighthearted "nudie" pictures of the early 1960s. The film was immediately touted as "ribald" and "Frenchy," with regard to the "genuinely sexy sequences with generous expanses of attractive flesh" that used to be seen strictly in foreign films. At a time when Hollywood moguls were losing audiences to the comfort of in-home cinema through television, Meyer and DeCenzie (who spent years on the burlesque and night club circuits) released an independent, naturally sexy endeavor in the tradition of the great Chaplin films. The bigger productions companies would never have made a film as far overboard on sex.

For his debut, Russ Meyer did even more of the crew work than usual, shooting in four days during the spring of 1958 with a budget of $24,000, ultimately making over $1.5 million worldwide. The film was marketed as a "nudist" film, with a "French" sensibility, but exhibited all the distinctive traits for which Meyer would soon become known, including large bosoms, insane plots, a somewhat feminist perspective, campy dialogue, and guerilla cinematography.

Shot on location in various California destinations, including Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Meyer even shot various scenes at his beach-front home in Los Angeles.

Both pressbooks 11 x 17 inches, folded horizontally. "Hat" variant includes a 9 x 12 ad mat dated "Fri., Aug. 18, 1961." Light rubbing overall, rubber stamps from "Sack Amusement Enterprises" in Dallas, Texas, and a few light creases and tiny closed tears, else Near Fine.


[Book #134255]