Robin Johnson

“Words cannot express the sheer unbelievability of this performer and her material.”

Here we have Robin on set at the Cleo Club, in the full Aggie Doon getup. Her hair is now slicked back, and the cheap Kent has been replaced with an expensive Rickenbacker 360 (funny how both guitars she uses in the film have the nameplates removed from their headstocks — was that to imply they were stolen, or… or what?) . The screenplay features a scene in which she obtains the guitar from a member of the Times Square underground community; I don’t think it was ever shot.
 

(Incidentally, I’ve been thinking about the screenplay, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not the shooting script: it’s dated May 1979, Robin was cast in August, and principal photography happened in October and November. I think this may have been the version that sold the property to Robert Stigwood, but I don’t know how reliable it is as a guide to what was intended to end up on screen when the cameras started rolling. It is, however, all we’ve got at the moment.)

When I see a Rickenbacker, I think The Jam, but that’s just me… Paul Weller chose to play a Rick because it’s so firmly identified with the British Invasion of the 1960s. Pete Townshend, John Lennon, George Harrison, Gerry Marsden… all played Rickenbackers, although generally they played the 330 model (or 325 in Lennon’s case); when they played 360s it was usually the 12-string version. You know who else played a 12-string Rickenbacker 360? Brian Jones. Yeah, the filmmakers gave Nicky a Rickenbacker for a very specific reason: as a callback to all the dinosaurs they were trying to celebrate even as Stigwood was trying to drag the film into the then-present. The tension between these two creative impulses is one of the film’s great strengths… and, it duplicated what was going on in the real world too (see: The Jam).

I probably don’t need to mention at this point that the image in the slide doesn’t actually appear in the film. There is no point at which both Robin’s hands are off the guitar while she’s still wearing it. This is the closest frame I can find in the film, and they’re not alike at all. First of all, the slide is portrait-style and the movie is landscape, as movies generally were before smartphones.
 

 
The scene where the girls trade their stuff to Andy for the guitar is entirely missing from the film, but we do see someone who fits Andy’s description and delivers his line “Where you been?” in a bit of business not in the screenplay. Could that be Andy? It’s not like there’s a character named Andy in the cast list —

Oh… Tiger Haynes, huh? What do you suppose he looked —

Hm. Well, the guy in the film is only in two shots, we never really get a good look at —

Yeah… that’s him all right.

According to Wikipedia, George “Tiger” Haynes was an actor and jazz musician most famous for originating the role of the Tin Man in the Broadway production of The Wiz. He died in 1994. His big scene, such as it was, was cut from Times Square, but by god at least Andy is in the movie, unlike Nicky’s deadbeat dad.