After 25 years of intense philosophical speculation, the matter has been put to rest. Bellboy And The Playgirls (originally titled Playgirls And The Bellboy, if you want to get picky) was the one adult film of the "nudie" genre that I never saw during its original theater release in the early 1960's. The advertising was simple. British model and actress June "The Body" Wilkinson was billed at 43-22-36. The rest was left to the broadest strokes of your imagination.

Unfortunately, the rest is still left to your imagination. Wilkinson shows zero, zilch, squat, zippola, nothing. This, is a violation of the premise of all good "nudie" films, not to mention a quarter century of daydreaming put to flush.

If anything else, the film has an interesting history. It was originally released in 1958 — a German B&W film, explaining the presence of director Fritz Umgelter in the credits. To make it palatable for American markets, Francis Ford Coppola, of all people, added color girlie footage. He might as well have added footage on the mating habits of the dik dik for all the excitement it generates. Yet one has to keep in mind the censure of the times.

Don Kenney, who also appeared in another Coppola girlie film, Tonight For Sure, plays George the bellboy in the Happy Holiday Hotel. The German sequences are totally irrelevant. George takes a correspondence course to be the hotel's "house dick." With his mail order expertise, he spies on Wilkinson and an alleged ring of hookers, by using various disguises which allow him to see the girls take it off. And here lies the rip. Very little gets taken off. Even when we get to the highly acclaimed strip poker scene. My advice to all lovers of the female form is not to get your hopes up. The girls (other than Wilkinson) run around topless or pose a la the centerfolds of the Fifties (a lot of strategic elbows and leg wrapping).

Nevertheless, from an historical standpoint it remains important that films like Bellboy be released on video. And I'm gratified to see a company like Sony take that step.