THEY SHOOT HORSEFLIES, DON'T THEY?

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? (1969)
dir: Sydney Pollack

THEY SHOOT HORSEFLIES, DON'T THEY?
Sick #77, August 1970
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jack Sparling

This is about desperate people who would enter dance marathons during the Depression with the hopes of winning prize money. The marathons were events where people would dance for days until they collapsed and the last couple standing would be the winners.

Robert Syverson (Michael Sarrazin) had a childhood trauma in which he watched a sick horse get shot by his father. Years later, we see he's commited a crime, and we see the events that led to it. He is walking on the Santa Monica pier and observes this dance contest, and is brought in and made partners with Gloria Beatty (Jane Fonda). The event is hosted by a man named Rocky (Gig Young).

Maggie Smith won that year for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Jack Benny wasn't in the movie, at least the cut I've seen. Contestants did come up on stage to entertain the audience, including Alice (Susannah York), who came up to dance in the hopes of being discovered by talent scouts, and Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia), who came up to sing.

Contestants take a break from dancing for a derby, in which they have to run laps around the track, ostensibly to exhaust themselves for the entertainment of the audience. Rocky has an assistant (Al Lewis), who looks nothing like the person depicted here.

The contestants are allowed to take breaks to eat and given a few minutes. One of them is Harry Kline (Red Buttons), an older sailor.

Red Buttons didn't have a TV series (or a dinner) of his own before this, so I'm not sure what they were referencing here.

Rocky tells Robert and Gloria that this dance marathon is basically a scam, and it's for the benefit of the audience. They'll win money if they finish, but it's all taken out for expenses such as food, clothing, room, and his salary. He wants them to get married for the audience, which they refuse to do.

Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki were married on Tonight Show, which was the highest rating of anything on TV up until then.

Gloria can't finish the event, especially after finding there's actually no money in it. Life is too much to bear and she goes out to the pier to weep. Robert follows and she asks him to shoot her. He blows her brains out and is immediately arrested for the crime he's seen having commited at the beginning. He utters the last line of the movie, which is the title.