MUSCLE BEACH

In 1948, Joseph Strick and co-director Irving Lerner cast a more benign eye on a then-disreputable civic landmark, Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym on the sand with bleachers for spectators, just south of the Santa Monica pier. In those days., weight-lifting and gymnastics were sports for freaks and queers, but Strick and Lerner make them look wholesome, helped along by a buoyant, kitschy talking blues composed and sung by Earl Robinson, with lyrics by Edwin Rolfe. Muscle Beach captures a brief moment of innocence and optimism before the Korean War and the politics of hysteria it engendered.

Thom Andersen

Los Angeles 2008

This film is screened together with <filmlink id=\"2826\">The Savage Eye</filmlink>.

1960, Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, Joseph Strick