Smile (1975 film)

Big Bob Freelander is a used car dealer, and the head judge of the Young American Miss Pageant held in Santa Rosa, California. Brenda DiCarlo is the pageant's executive director, and her husband Andy is a resentful alcoholic. Andy is unhappy as he is about to become an exhausted rooster aging out of the local Jaycee chapter, which requires the humiliating ritual of kissing the anus of a dead chicken.

Thirty-three teenage girls, all local pageant winners from throughout the state, arrive in Santa Rosa where they are instructed by Brenda and assigned with local host families. Meanwhile, Little Bob, Big Bob's son, pores through the contestant applications analyzing the girls' breast sizes, and conspires with his friends to photograph the contestants in various states of undress.

The girls are introduced to Los Angeles choreographer Tommy French who teaches them dance routines. Wilson Shears, the pageant producer, clashes with Tommy, who is cynical and blunt with the contestants. The girls subsequently give interviews to the judges. While the girls shower in the auditorium locker rooms, Little Bob snaps Polaroid photographs of them through a window, but is caught by Wilson, who forces Little Bob to confiscate the photographs to a police officer.

At the Thursday preliminary show, novice contestant Robin Gibson is one of three winners. She later gives her roommate, pageant veteran Doria, tips to excel, such as putting Vaseline on her teeth to improve her smile. The following morning, Big Bob takes Little Bob to a psychiatrist over the previous night's incident, but the doctor assures Big Bob that Little Bob is simply a sexually curious boy.

That night during a pageant performance, several contestants sabotage the gushing Mexican-American Maria's patriotic routine, damaging the stage sets. Meanwhile, Andy visits the Jaycee chapter meeting, but fails to go through with the initiation ritual. When he returns home, he gets into an argument with Brenda, and shoots her with a pistol, grazing her shoulder. Big Bob visits Andy in jail the next morning to provide moral support and espouse American values, but Andy insults him, accusing him of speaking like a Young American Miss. Meanwhile, the show becomes more expensive than was anticipated, and Wilson pressures Tommy to remove a ramp because it is taking up seating. This results in an injury to a contestant, and Tommy agrees to reinstate the ramp and to make up the difference out of his fee.

Big Bob arrives at the final night of the pageant, which Brenda also attends despite her shoulder injury. After final judging is concluded, Miss Fountain Valley, Shawn Christianson—an outsider to the other contestants—unexpectedly wins the state title. The following morning, contestant Robin Gibson passes by Big Bob's RV lot, where he is attempting to sell an RV to prospective customers. In a patrol car nearby, the policeman who confiscated Little Bob's photographs, stares at a full-frontal nude photograph of Karen Love, Miss Simi Valley.

Film scholar Jonathan Kirshner notes that, while Smile "takes some easy shots at the superficial culture of teen beauty pageants," it is more concerned with the character of Big Bob, who functions as "a metaphor for America, whose boyish optimism and can-do spirit are beginning to fray as he stalls in middle age... It is a film about the emerging dissatisfactions of its characters."[4] Film historian Ken Dancyger notes that, in Smile, "no target goes untouched...  In the final scene, the real victims, the contestants who are being sexually exploited, become, in the next scene, the target of Ritchie's commentary on these beauty contests."[5]

The film premiered at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, Texas on March 20, 1975.[1] Its Los Angeles premiere followed on July 9, 1975,[2] and it was entered into the New York Film Festival in October 1975.[8]

• List of American films of 1975
• Drop Dead Gorgeous, another satirical film about a beauty pageant.

• Dancyger, Ken (2013). Global Scriptwriting. Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. ISBN 978-1-136-04810-4.
• Kellow, Brian (2012). Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark. New York City, New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-143-12220-3.
• Kirshner, Jonathan (2012). Hollywood's Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-801-46540-6.
• Simon, John (1982). Reverse Angle: A Decade of American Film. New York City, New York: Crown Publishers Inc. ISBN 978-0-517-54471-6.

• Smile at IMDb
• Smile at the TCM Movie Database
• Smile at AllMovie
• Smile at the American Film Institute Catalog