The Greatest Mother of ‘em All

From Viennale

This short film is an unusual experiment that Aldrich was able to make thanks to his studio. THE GREATEST MOTHER OF ’EM ALL was a feature-length project of Aldrich’s, but the financiers were reluctant to back it because it was too reminiscent of box-office flop THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968). A failed actress (Ann Sothern) wants to launch her teenage daughter Tricia (Alexandra Hay) into the film business by getting her a job as a stripper. Tricia is seduced by a TV producer and passed on to a washed-up director (Peter Finch), who falls in love with the underage girl and is blackmailed by her mother. In the end, Tricia commits suicide because she cannot bear being exploited by the industry and her mother. Aldrich believed he was pulling off a “brilliant coup” by staging a few key scenes as a promotional short film, but the producers were unconvinced by the result. Aldrich later called this film a “thirty-minute monument to my misjudgement of who can act and who can’t” because he was unhappy with Hay’s performance. (Christoph Huber)