July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Also known as The Godfather and the Lady and Six Champions Go Wild, this starts with a girl — I should say dame, in the parlance of this movie — named Caress Softly (Sharynne Dale, The Runaways) learns that some hitmen want to rub out Johnny Stiletto. She quickly warns Stiletto’s gang, who box the hitmen with wacky sound design.

Oh yeah. So I should tell you who is in this.

Johnny is Peter Savage. A self-taught writer, actor and filmmaker, Savage wrote the book that Raging Bull is based on. He’d been friends with Jake La Motta since they were kids and the two boxed together. He directed, wrote, produced and stars in this. Johnny is the godfather to the Cauliflower Cupids gang, who are made up of six world boxing champions: Gentle Jim (Jake LaMotta), The Rocker (Rocky Graziano), Willie the Eye (Willie Pep), Bennie the Bug (Paddy DeMarco), Tony the Bomber (Tony Zale) and Dinty the Dope (Petey Scalzo).

Johnny wants to retire so that his daughter Paulette (Carol Walker) can have a better life than he did, especially because she’s pregnant with rich young man Armand’s (Joe Bennet) child. He demands that they get married, but his guardian, Aunt Nira (Jane Russell), is standing in the way of their enforced bliss.

She’s getting all of her money from Uncle Bruno (Bud Truland), who hates the rest of the family, who all use him for money. So Johnny gets made up like Bruno, they change the will, fake the old man’s death and Johnny and his boys — who keep refusing to allow him to retire — can go out in style.

That is, if John Bradley (Alan Dale) doesn’t arrest them first.

This ends with Johnny serving as Nira’s love slave, a role he expected from her, and is even forced to kiss her feet. That’s a pretty BDSM close for an early 70s mob movie.

Jane Russell is 45 in this (it was shot in 1966 and didn’t come out until 1970) and looks better than women twenty years younger. She’s way better than this movie deserves, and yet I love that she’s in it.

As for Savage, he comes off a lot like Duke Mitchell, which is a compliment. He’d already made The Runaways, but would go on to direct and write Hypnorotica (Jamie Gillis is in it!), the American version of The New Life Style (Just to Be Loved), Sylvia (an X-rated version of Sybil that has Sonny Landham in its cast) and They Shall Overcome. He’s in all of those films and also shows up as a john in Taxi Driver, as DeMarco in Crazy Joe, as a boss in Double Agent 73, as an assistant in New York, New York, as a lawyer in Firepower, as Jackie Curtie in Raging Bull and as Thomas “Mr. T” Stokely in Vigilante, a movie that William Lustig dedicated to him.

As for the boxers in this, several of them show up in other films:

Jake LeMotta was also in Firepower, Hangmen, Maniac Cop, The Runaways, Who Killed Mary Whats’ername?, The Hustler, Rebellion In Cuba, La Violenza dei Dannati, The Doctor and the Playgirl and, of course, Confessions of a Psycho Cat.

Rocky Graziano appeared in several films, including Tony Rome, The Doctor and the Playgirl, Teenage Millionaire, and Country Music Holiday, where he played himself alongside June Carter, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ferlin Husky, and numerous country musicians.

Willie Pep was only in one other film, Requiem for a Heavyweight, just like Tony Gale, who was also in The Golden Gloves Story. This is the only movie that Paddy DeMarco and Petey Scalzo were in.

I’ve been looking for this movie for years and am so excited that I finally found it. It’s by no means excellent or even good, but to me, it’s everything that I wanted it to be.

You can watch this on YouTube.