Be it fact or fiction, Blaze from 1989 stars Paul Newman as Governor Earl Long of Louisiana and Lolita Davidovich as his mistress, Blaze Starr.Earl Long was Huey Long's brother, and his political life -- and his personal life -- were both tempestuous. Long was a supporter of civil rights and met much opposition. He had an affair with a stripper. His wife Blanche at one point had him committed, and after that, the two separated. He ran for office when he was nearly dead.Long was an amazing man, and Paul Newman, as one might expect, does him justice - he's plain speaking, funny, rough around the edges, and likes a good time. When he goes to a strip joint and meets Blaze -- as the other women point out, Earl has met them all - he's smitten. Flaming red hair, a fabulous figure, and an imaginative entertainer -- she becomes part of his life.The problem with the film is that it's too disjointed. It starts out as the story of Blaze, beginning when she leaves home to become a singer and winds up a stripper, and a well-known one at that. Frankly, I found Earl's story more interesting, and his character more dominant. It's Paul Newman after all, a powerful and charismatic actor, one of the best, if not the best, we had in film. Davidovich is sexy and loving as Blaze, but she doesn't have Newman's vivid presence.According to some people, though Blaze and Earl got together in the last months of his life, she did not have the importance shown in the film. Did she love him? I'd say so. He left her $50,000 in his will and she refused to accept it. It seems obvious she made his last months on earth happy ones. As far as pushing him to run for office after his last hurrah, those in the know say it's not true. No way really to know - the film is based on Blaze's book.This film could have been a lot better if it had focused on Earl Long totally and had Blaze in the film. Dividing the story did neither any good and slowed it up.By the way, Blaze is at this writing 81 or so and designs some very nice jewelry. I suspect she's a very interesting woman.

Director Ron Shelton's second romantic wet dream transposes all the heavy breathing of his Minor League debut hit 'Bull Durham' to the shady arena of Southern politics, where the randy and eccentric Earl K. Long (in his own words the "fine governor of the great State of Louisiana") falls in love with Bourbon St. stripper Blaze Starr. With his auteur's eye firmly affixed to the bottom line (pun intended) Shelton turns an unlikely true story into a colorful live-action cartoon, with plenty of all-too clever (at least to its author) dialogue and a not unexpected measure of character whitewashing: Starr is of course no common stripper, but a well-proportioned angel with a heart of gold. In her big screen debut Lolita Davidovich gives the title role an appealing vitality, but the lip-smacking, lecherous governor is an odd role for Paul Newman. His wild (if memorable) performance approaches a pitch-perfect facsimile of Long's actual personality (listen to the governor's recorded voice at the end of the final credits), but watching the actor submit to Shelton's idea of a dirty old man can be as much an embarrassment to viewers as it must have been for Newman himself.

Talk about turnin' lemons into lemonade!I'll be brief. No need to go through the plot, as many others have already done here; if you've made your way down to this review, you've got the gist of it. 2 characters, from very different worlds, established very early on as equals, both as human beings and as masters in the art of manipulation: Blaze Starr, "exotic dancer," & Earl Long, "good ol' boy" US Southern Democratic politician. The story here is in how they each apply the art: first, in their individual lives; and then, as a team, in the process changing the faces of American politics and media.Never learned the actual history; makes me want to look it up to find out how many specific scenes are real. One that I sure hope is:"I have a confession to make... "I can't cook.""We'll work around it."almost exactly, an exchange between me & my wife before we were married.What more can I ask from a movie? P.S. We did. And I haven't gone hungry.

As a transplanted Southerner, I usually hate to see movies about the South, but this one is dead-on. The most amazing thing about the movie is Lolita Davidovich, whose performance is wonderful, as is her "accent". The Southern politics were displayed accurately (unfortunately), and the "boots scene" still has me smiling. Wonderful!