Jeffrey Schwarz's documentary about 1970s porn star Jack Wrangler situates his brilliant and hugely unlikely life and career – which include gay and straight adult-film stardom, work in the legitimate theater and a midlife marriage to a woman 20 years his senior -- within a larger cultural context, from his Beverly Hill brat upbringing to his sexual coming of age during the early days of the gay liberation movement.
The skinny, unathletic youngest child and only son of producer Robert Stillman and his wife, Ruth Clark, a former model and Busby Berkeley girl, Jack Stillman was born on November 11, 1946, and raised amid wealth and celebrity. From the time he was a child, he wanted to be in show business; Stillman wanted his son to do anything but. As headstrong as he was runty, Jack won out: His father may have forced him to swim laps in hopes of molding a jock, but young Jack did vaudeville-style acts under the supervision of family friend and future Beverly Hillbillies star Buddy Ebsen; was a regular on TV's Faith of Our Children, top-lined by his Sunday school teacher, former musical starlet Eleanor Powell; and attended Northwestern University for its theater program. After discovering the limits of his acting ability, he found a steady gig directing dinner theater productions built around aging former stars. Having dated women since he was a teenager, Stillman finally admitted to himself that he was gay and promptly lost his job – in the theater! – after being outed by a homophobic actor Stillman returned to California, hit the gym and immersed himself in the rapidly growing gay community, picking up extra cash doing pictorials for gay magazines, working as a go-go boy and stripping. As he began to develop a following, he renamed himself "Jack Wrangler," inspired by the work shirt that was an integral part of his macho-man persona. Wrangler conquered gay porno films, then transitioned into more the more lucrative market -- the first time he ever had sex with a woman was on film. And at the peak of his stardom, Wrangler fell in love with Margaret Whiting, a matronly cabaret singer in her 50s; their relationship occasioned a blizzard of cynical gossip and eventually led to an enduring, if unorthodox, marriage.
And there's more, but it's worth hearing from Schwarz, who tells Wrangler's story via dozens of interviews, extensive archival footage and a the genial, thoroughly charming man himself – if Wrangler were half as good an actor as he is a raconteur, he'd have been a star many times over before ever dropping his drawers. And that may be the film's most surprising twist of all. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
