The Man who loved Cat Dancing Premiere

The Man who loved Cat Dancing Premiere

Here’s a nice selection of photos from the premiere of the Burt Reynolds western film, The Man who loved Cat Dancing. The premiere took place on Tuesday June 26th, 1973 at the Regency Village Theatre, Los Angeles. 

Clint and Maggie Eastwood as long-time friends of Reynolds and his partner Dinah Shore both attended the Premiere. Clint at this time was in the middle of shooting Magnum Force (1973) which began shooting in the April in and around California and which no doubt made it easier to fit into his schedule.

Some of these photos of Clint will probably be familiar to most fans, the standard tux and bow tie attire often leaves little room for identifying one event from another, whilst the ladies do tend to mix their dress - and therefore helps in pinpointing what they were wearing where and when…

So a good bit of hard research went into this piece in order to check and double check, and as a result we feel pretty confident that these all originate from the Burt Reynolds premiere. I would also like to thank one of our administrators, Steve Saragossi who again helped to gather this information.

The Man who loved Cat Dancing opened to mixed reviews, New York critics were not too taken by it, while West coast critics appeared to praise it more. Roger Greenspun of The New York Times said, “The film's poetry is as numbing as its violence. The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing is, indeed, a kind of festival of incompetence. Each shot is held slightly too long or too short, and is somehow off-centre. Each performance is uncertain, like something seen in an early rehearsal.”  In contrast, Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times liked the movie. He noted the complications in making the picture. He concluded "In spite of the difficulties faced by the actors and filmmakers, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing boasts gorgeous widescreen location photography and an interesting feminist spin on traditional western formulas”

And indeed there were some difficulties during the shoot. While filming in Arizona, Sarah Miles' personal assistant, David Whiting, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in her hotel room at Gila Bend, Arizona, on February 11th. An inquest into the death was heard. MGM objected to Miles and Reynolds appearing on the grounds that it would hold up production. A doctor gave evidence that the death was due to a drug overdose, and the head injury came from Whiting falling against a table. Filming of the unit shifted to Rio Rico, Arizona.

Reynolds spoke very little about the film, simply saying "it's not as good as the book." Speaking in 1976, Reynolds said, "There's nothing to talk about in Cat Dancing except that it brings me pain, so I'd rather not talk about it."