Remembering ‘Jubilee’ through ‘The Last Showgirl’

One late night in December 2015, I was having a late-night dinner while working at Bootlegger Bistro. These were the days when the restaurant ran 24/7, and you could catch up with work at 2 a.m. over a Maria’s Salad. As I noodled in the quiet bar section, my phone vibrated with a call, “Robin Leach” on the ID.

It was common to take a call from Robin in those days. We were associates in the same company, in another lifetime. But the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” host usually reserved his off-hours calls for something major.

Snowstorms on the Strip, for instance.

This was major.

“You’re going to want to see ‘Jubilee’ tomorrow night,” he said.

“I want to see ‘Jubilee’ every night,” I said. I could not figure out why Mr. Leach was so hot about “Jubilee,” other than its legendary associate producer and stage manager, Fluff LeCoque, had died just two days earlier.

“The show is closing,” Robin intoned dramatically. “‘Jubilee’ shall be no more.” The finale was to be the following February.

I stared ahead, stunned. “Jubilee” had been on unsteady spindles for years. But I couldn’t imagine the show closing. This would end showgirl productions forever in Las Vegas. It felt like watching a dove die.

Theatric adaptation

Those emotions resurfaced in the stunning new indie film “The Last Showgirl,” in which Pamela Anderson plays the showgirl Shelly who has spent three decades in “Le Razzle Dazzle.” This fine, feathered topless revue is based on “Jubilee,” and its closing.

Anderson is that last showgirl, age 57, seasoned yet naively believing “Le Razzle Dazzle” has a future in Vegas if only the show’s marketing were more current (that piece of dialogue rang true). Anderson’s performance is astonishing, stark and disquieting.

Suffice to say, we are a long way from “Baywatch.” Anderson is nominated for a Golden Globe (the film’s theme, “Beautiful That Way,” by Miley Cyrus, has the other nom). Win or lose, Anderson is riding a career renaissance.

Jaime Lee Curtis plays an all-too-convincing cocktail server/Bevertainer named Annette, who left the show years earlier. Annette is weathered emotionally and physically, with her over-tanned face creviced by second- and first-hand smoke.

A muscular character

Former WWE champ-turned-action star Dave Bautista is the show’s stout overlord, billed as the producer but more a company manager. Dark, long-maned with ink covering his massive arms, Eddie is an amalgamation of many Las Vegas backstage characters.

Eddie is never seen by the audience, but makes sure the checks are on time and clear. Eddie is a familiar and formidable figure, his presence so strong you can practically smell his breath.

Bautista has forged a complicated relationship with Shelly (not to spoil a plot point, but this is a familial consequence also common in VegasVille shows). Annette, a close friend and confidant of Shelly’s, can’t stand Eddie.

Written intelligently by Kate Gersten, from her original play “Body of Work,” the film embraces Las Vegas as a real city, resisting sexy overhead nighttime shots of the Strip. “Le Razzle Dazzle” depicted almost entirely backstage, in Shelly’s home, or outside with the sometimes-hazy desert in the distance. Shelly argues with a fellow cast member on the top level the Rio’s Flamingo Road parking garage, the Strip incidentally in the background.

“The Last Showgirl” was shot with a tight indie budget and a similarly snug, 18-day window in January 2024. That work was executed primarily at the Rio, and the Las Vegas home of Spiegelworld artist Gypsy Wood. Gia Coppola directed. Robert Schwartzman co-produced, knowing this stark Las Vegas atmosphere couldn’t be replicated on Hollywood sound stage.

“This movie had to be shot in Las Vegas,” Schwartzman said alongside Anderson at a panel discussion following the film’s Las Vegas premiere at Beverly Theater in downtown Las Vegas. They picked the right spot, suggested by Vegas broadcast journalist and moderator Rachel Smith, who suggested the spot in a previous interview with the creative team.

Several former “Jubilee” showgirls were in the room, as was Holly Madison, a fan of the show and onetime star of the campy adult revue “Peepshow” at Planet Hollywood.

‘Different generations’ of showgirls

Subtle but key details run throughout “The Last Showgirl,” many reminiscent of “Jubilee.” Anderson had tea with several former showgirls during filming, gleaning their stories and getting a feel for the “Jubilee” culture.

“The different generations of women who are hitting the crossroads resonated with me,” Anderson said in a post-event chat in the Beverly Theater green room. “‘Jubilee’ closed, and there were all sorts of ages that suddenly had to say, ‘Oh, now I need to go to another show, or I’m going to go into real estate or I’m going to teach dance classes.”

Not surprisingly, the production team sought input from show’s final stage manager, Diane Palm, herself a former showgirl dating to the opening at the show at the old MGM Grand (today’s Horseshoe). Palm says her advice to Anderson was “basic-level physicality, to try to say that there is a certain way to stand, so let’s fix your foot, basic stuff that is so natural to us, but they would not know how to do.”

There are references to “Dirty Circus,” a show moving into the “Le Razzle Dazzle” theater and taking up showtimes. This is a clear reference to “Absinthe” cutting into the “Jubilee” adult audiences. To drive the point home, Wood is shown in the film performing her zany plate-spinning act from “Opium. And, mention of the Hindenburg scene is definitely a nod to the Titanic number in “Jubilee.”

The Bevertainer sequence

But the movie hits subtle specifics that only an acute eye will detect. Curtis reportedly had discovered small performance platforms at the Rio and wondered what they were for. She learned they were stages built for the hotel’s Bevertainers, the beverage servers who once doubled as entertainers.

Curtis learned a dance number, and in the scene wears a bellhop costume (including a sequined G-string), climbing to the stage and performing a flawless routine.

In the casino background, a handful of casino customers blithely walk past, ignoring the performance. I have seen this happen in that very spot. The inattention and lack of appreciation for that program led to its eventual demise, same as how showgirls have been dismissed in Las Vegas.

I watched that scene and remembered “Jubilee,” near the end.

No ‘smattering’ here

I took Robin’s advice and saw the show the night after the end was announced I noted that the 65-member cast was killing it.

But the theater was so sparsely populated that even the grandeur of the Samson & Delilah number was met with the same smattering of applause a golfer receives after making a 5-foot putt. It seemed everyone who wanted to see “Jubilee” over its 30-year history had seen it, and were flooding to “The Dirty Circus.”

The movie conveys this grim reality, too, as “feather shows” are part of our history. Yet, the showgirl, as an icon, lives on. At the end of the screening at the Beverly Theater, after the credits rolled, the crowd rose and gave “The Last Showgirl” the response she deserves. A standing ovation.

Cool Hang Alert

The fine Vegas blues-rock band Stanley Avenue, headed up by Philena Carter, hits OG Sand Dollar Lounge at 10 p.m. Monday. No cover. And always, try the pizza.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.