Sundance. Girl 27.

"Content is everything in a matter-of-fact documentary like Girl 27," writes Steve Ramos at indieWIRE, "and what [director David] Stenn lacks in technical prowess he compensates with a strong understanding of how to start one's tale, articulate the themes, move the storytelling at a quick pace and finish well."

"Momentous things happened the first week of June 1937," begins Robin Abcarian's backgrounder on the self-financed doc in the Los Angeles Times:

Jean Harlow, one of Hollywood's biggest stars, died suddenly and mysteriously at 26. The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated his kingdom, married the woman he loved. And, though nobody would remember it, a 20-year-old dancer and extra named Patricia Douglas who'd been raped by an MGM salesman at a studio party futilely pressed for justice.

David Stenn, a 45-year-old Los Angeles biographer and TV writer, stumbled across her story when he was researching his 1993 book, Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow.

"In a larger sense, Girl 27 is about the moral hypocrisy of Hollywood as well as a testament to the lingering damage inflicted by rape: the attack and what followed ruined Douglas's life," writes Sura Wood in the Hollywood Reporter. "Stenn, an accomplished TV writer-producer with an ebullient personality that doesn't wear well, undercuts his material by putting himself front and center - he has more screen time than Douglas."

IndieWIRE interviews Stenn. So does the Reeler.

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 31, 2007 1:57 PM