Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Blaze

By 1989, the year Touchstone Pictures released Blaze, a biopic (fictionalized, as biopics almost always are) of striptease artist/burlesque dancer Blaze Starr, the studio had released so many R-rated movies that the idea of Disney making a movie about a stripper barely raised an eyebrow. Such was not always the case. Back in 1959, the year Blaze met and embarked on a scandalous affair with Louisiana Governor Earl K. Long, Walt surely would have had a few choice words for such a thing. As it turns out, Disney wasn’t the only studio to have trepidations about a Blaze Starr movie.

Blaze and Long’s relationship began in 1959 and lasted until Long’s death in September 1960, shortly before the now ex-Governor would have been elected to Congress (he was running unopposed in his district, contrary to what the movie would have you believe). Blaze continued to work as a dancer after Long’s death. In 1962, she starred in the nudie classic Blaze Starr Goes Nudist, directed by cult film icon Doris Wishman (“classic” is a term with a fairly liberal definition in the nudie picture genre).

Starr had been a fixture of gossip columns during her relationship with Long. She finally told her side of the story in the 1974 memoir Blaze Starr: My Life As Told To Huey Perry, cowritten with (who else?) Huey Perry. Some years later, Ron Shelton, a former minor league baseball player and aspiring filmmaker, read the book and immediately saw its movie potential. He acquired the rights in 1983, tracking down Blaze Starr and doing his own interviews with her to enhance what was already in the book.

Shelton had had some success as a screenwriter, cowriting the Nick Nolte thriller Under Fire and penning the football comedy The Best Of Times starring once-and-future Disney stars Robin Williams and Kurt Russell. But he made a much bigger splash writing and directing the terrific Bull Durham, inspired by his own experiences as a ballplayer. The Kevin Costner movie became an iconic hit and won Shelton an Oscar nomination for his screenplay.