The Legend of Lylah Clare

“Overnight, she became a star...Over many nights, she became a legend.”

In Hollywood in 1968, the director Lewis Zarken (Peter Finch) plans a movie about Lylah Clare, a tempestuous star who died mysteriously twenty years before. He casts an unknown actress, Elsa Campbell (Kim Novak), to play her. Robert Aldrich makes a satire of the studio system, where the part is bigger than the woman hired for it, and a legend can be kept going only by someone willing to be used up in its place.