Lovely Rita

Over on Fabulon, darling Thom has highlighted a work by a talent hitherto unknown to me, one who sounds all the more fascinating by the fact that she rejoiced in the remarkably euphonious name Rita Cadillac.

A little digging has revealed that it was probably even more euphonious than I thought, as the lady in question, seen above, was French, and therefore likely pronounced her surname something like "Cadeeyaq." The work in question was a 1961 film called, in English, The Unsatisfied, an epic which announced its ambitions to its stateside audience with the tagline "Violence - Liquor - Sex", which really ought to be enough to satisfy most filmgoers.

In Spain, where it was made, it turns out, the picture was known as Juventud a la Intemperie, which is more or less Flaming Youth. Some sense of its mise-en-scène can be gathered from the title of the Italian release, La regina dello strep tease.

In addition to dancing, as we can see from the album above, Rita was also a vocalist; I don't know about you, but I would love to hear her croon the title tune, which translates into English as "Don't Count on Me (to Get Naked)." Somehow, I think, that's a wager, despite the warning, I'd be willing to make.

I do need to warn anyone who wants to find out more: in recent years, the lady's alluring moniker has been picked up by a Brazilian performer who has taken the overall tone of her namesake's career a long way further, which makes Googling Miss Cadillac a distinctly NSFW experience.