Muscle Beach (1948)
9m
Running Time
December 1, 1948Release Date
Plot.
Muscle Beach was shown in competition at Cannes in 1949 and won a prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1951. The short became a cult favorite, screening at film clubs around the world. Strick used an army surplus movie camera to shoot the film during weekends in the fall of 1948. The songs in “Muscle Beach,” composed and sung by political folk singer Earl Robinson, with lyrics by screenwriter and poet Edwin Rolfe, accent the film’s three-movement structure as it transitions between soaring gymnastics shows, flirty beachgoers and children playing near the now-demolished pier at Ocean Park.
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Cast & Crew.
Details.
Wiki.
Muscle Beach is a 1948 short documentary film directed by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner, showing amateur athletes and bodybuilders at the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California. The soundtrack consists of songs sung by Earl Robinson.
Muscle Beach and The Savage Eye (1959) were restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2009 and 2008, respectively. The films premiered in February 2009 at San Francisco Cinematheque.