Leslie Felperin 

The Last Impresario review – the playboy producer next door

Producer Michael White launched Rocky Horror, Oh! Calcutta! and invented art happenings, among other diversions. His celebrity admirers look fondly back at his career, writes Leslie Felperin
  
  

The Last Impresario documentary
An affectionate tribute … The Last Impresario, with Michael White (left) and Jack Nicholson. Photograph: Dogwoof Photograph: Dogwoof

Handily described at one point here by Greta Scacchi as “the most famous person you’ve never heard of”, Michael White is a Scots-born, Sorbonne-educated theatre and film producer and self-described playboy who’s had a most extraordinary, chequered career. He launched the first stage productions of Oh! Calcutta! and The Rocky Horror Show; his film producing credits include Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Polyester, and White Mischief; and he sort of invented “happenings” in the 1960s. He is, or at least was before a stroke slowed him down, friends with a vast number of celebrities, from Jack Nicholson to Kate Moss, many of whom speak lovingly of him on camera here. Undoubtedly, he’s a worthy documentary subject, but one gets the feeling in director Gracie Otto’s affectionate, only occasionally probing tribute that we’re not getting anywhere near the whole story. Still, White makes for a glittering prism through which to view a certain generation of bohemian excess and creativity.

 

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