"Risky Business" Turns 40 This Month!

You're getting older, dear. Or you are if you saw "Risky Business" during its first run in movie theatres in 1983. Like many things reaching middle-age about now, the movie's turning 40 years-old this month. Have you misplaced your glasses yet? Do you groan when you bend down? Do you, God forbid, know your alcohol limit? Then, yes, don't deny it, you not only saw "Risky Business" in the theatre, you probably saw it again on VHS. And don't even dare pretend you don't know what that is. 

"Risky Business," as we know, was a classic teen movie - hypnotically directed by Paul Brickman - about a beautiful, enigmatic Chicago call girl who comes to the aid of a snotty, pampered, suburban teen boy by turning his home into a brothel, enabling him to impress a visiting Princeton recruiter. 

The prostitute, as we know, was played the young Rebecca De Mornay, whose performances earned praise from critics, including the esteemed "New Yorker" critic, Pauline Kael, who wrote, "She's mysterious, supple - a golden blonde with an inward-directed smile, like Veronica Lake, but with a greater range of expressiveness. This actress has an original way of a playing a prostitute." 

"I wanted to maintain her dignity," said De Mornay in a recent interview celebrating the movie's 40th anniversary (pictured above with writer/director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet), "regardless if she was having sex for money. She maintained some integrity and soul. I wanted to present her as the underdog exploited by the capitalist system, trying to get by as best she could without the cushion of money or family connections." 

De Mornay, of course, has had a stellar career since, with notable highlights including "The Trip To Bountiful," "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle," and my favorite role of hers, as a harried locomotive driver in Andrei Konchalovsky's action-thriller, "Runaway Train." 

As for "Risky Business," it also featured an early performance by Bronson Pinchot, who later noted that De Mornay's male co-star was, "The biggest bore on the face of planet Earth. He was tense and made constant - constant - unrelated homophobic comments. I thought it was very weird. Some people are so nasty and I don't know why." 

Photo Credits: Getty Images, Associated Press, Geffen Pictures/Warner Bros, AMPAS