Below is a very rare recently discovered behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie Norwood (1970).

In 1969, producer Hal Wallis was coming to the end of his tenure at Paramount Pictures. During the sixties he was mostly known for producing Elvis Presley movies from G.I. Blues to Girls! Girls! Girls! to Roustabout to Paradise, Hawaiian Style to Easy Come, Easy Go. Elvis had tired of his movie career by 1968 and began mounting his live concert comeback.

Then along comes a script of an easy going country boy just released from the army whose goal is to sing on the Louisiana Hayride and his adventures as he travels to get on the show. It was based on the novel Norwood by Charles Portis that was set in the mid-fifties and geared for adults. Wallis thought this would be the perfect vehicle for new singing sensation Glen Campbell who just co-starred with John Wayne and Kim Darby in the Wallis-produced western True Grit. The plot was reminiscent of the typical Elvis movie with a handsome singing star, pretty scenery and lots of prettier girls. However, Wallis, then sidelined producing the prestigious Anne of the Thousand Days in England, must not have read the script too closely and left the film in the hands of director Jack Haley, Jr. The lead was handsome and a singer alright, but now a Vietnam vet who wanted to lay every gal he met. The girls all beautiful were not your typical Elvis girls: Carol Lynley was a foul-mouthed hooker; Tisha Sterling a free lovin’ hippie: Meredith MacRae a fast-driving sexpot; and Kim Darby a knocked up, unwed chatterbox. Throw in a midget, a dancing chicken, Joe Namath as Campbell’s army buddy who scores a touchdown with MacRae and an Elvis movie it ain’t.

Once the movie was completed and shown to the producer he was aghast! Carol Lynley swears like a sailor! Campbell beds both Lynley and Sterling! Darby rejects her baby daddy! Campbell panicked too thinking his cornpone fans would never accept him in such an adult picture and Wallis agreed demanding Haley cut the film to get a G-rating! This was a few months after the release of the X-rated sensation Midnight Cowboy. Haley objected, as did Lynley who took the role because it was such a change of pace for her and voiced her contempt for Wallis’ decision in the press. Wallis made the cuts anyway. Gone were the lovemaking scenes with Lynley and Sterling. It was too late to cut Lynley’s cussing so the sound was muffled. It would be so cool to see if the excised scenes still exist as there are movie stills of those scenes. This proves they were cut at the last minute and were in Haley’s final cut.

Despite all this, I find Norwood an easy laid-back pleasant diversion with hummable songs nicely sung by the star. Carol Lynley has one of her best roles and looks terrific in her minidress and short hair. Though on the screen for only 10 minutes, she steals the movie with her comedic turn as the hooker who has to drive cross country with “this country son-of-a-bitch.” She and Campbell play quite well opposite each other as do Campbell and affable Joe Namath. Merdith MacRae has never looked lovelier on screen; Dom DeLuise is funny as Norwood’s shiftless brother-in-law; and Kim Darby is quite cute as the girl who may land our Norwood.

I am a big fan of Vietnam war movies. Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite films of all time and I really like Platoon, The Deer Hunter, and Full Metal Jacket. I was a huge fan of TV’s China Beach and caught Tour of Duty when I could. So I decided to watch John Wayne in The Green Berets (1968) one of the first Vietnam War movies and actually filmed in 1967 during the course of the war that recently aired on TCM. I hadn’t seen it probably since it was broadcast on the ABC-TV 4:30 Movie in the seventies.

After watching those other Vietnam War movies made anywhere from 5 to 15 years after the war ended, I was struck on how simplistic a view this movie took though it did keep me entertained even if the Alabama and Georgia locations where it was filmed no way came close to resembling the real Vietnam. I knew going in Wayne made the movie, with full cooperation of the U.S. Marines, to help boost and give credence to Americas’s presence in Vietnam, so not surprising it played like one of those John Ford westerns. Except here the good guys are the U.S. and South Korean soldiers standing in for the U.S. cavalry and the North Vietnamese were the bad guy Indians. Even the raid on the U.S. outpost with the Vietcong rushing the perimeter with ladders to climb up and over the barbed wire reminded me of all those oaters with the Indians attacking the fort as they are picked off one by one.

As for the cast John Wayne is John Wayne as Col. Kirby, but some of the other actors were just poor. Jim Hutton’s character is so out of place providing unnecessary and unfunny comic relief as a soldier who befriends a little orphan boy (Craig Jue who is touching in the role). Stoic David Janssen is the liberal reporter who ventures to Vietnam to do a story on why America should pull out of the war and tags along with Wayne’s platoon. He is probably the world’s worst journalist as we never see him write or interview anyone nor does he even have a camera. He does pick up a gun in one of the fierce battles and by movie’s end not only has he been swayed to agree with the U.S. intervention there but he has enlisted!

The one actor that impressed me the most was George Takei (Sulu of Star Trek fame). The TV show really never challenged his acting skills and here is gives an intense performance as a South Korean Captain determined to get back to his home in Hanoi once it has been liberated. His was one of the most sincere performances in the movie as was the one given by an actor I heard of but knew nothing about, Jason Evers. Handsome and solidly built ala Rod Taylor, he was the likable Captain of a battalion John Wayne came to replace since he was returning home the next day. His men are truly sorry to see him leave but an attack by the Vietcong changes his fate.

Finally the only woman in the cast was 60s starlet Irene Tsu as Lin. After playing small or decorative roles in beach movies (How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), Elvis movies (Paradise, Hawaiian Style), and spy spoofs (Caprice), The Green Berets was one of her really dramatic film substantive film roles. Lin first slinks into view wearing a tight evening gown at a high class supper club in Saigon. We later learn that she is the sister-in-law of Colonel Cai (Jack Soo) and her father was killed by the Vietcong general near where Col. Kirby’s platoon is encased. Lin has agreed to get the general to notice her and take back to his home where she will keep him “entertained” while the soldiers sneak in and take him prisoner. Things go as planned but Lin has to make love to him and Cai now thinks she has brought shame on the family. Lin now has to trek through the jungle with Kirby and his men with the North Vietnamese in hot pursuit. During the escape Kirby tells Cai that Lin is a hero and now only has her family to go back to. He agrees and tells her there is no shame in what she did.

Speaking about the movie Irene Tsu remarked in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema:

“I was the only female in the cast.  Though I had a lot of admiration for John Wayne he didn’t like me.  I heard that he described me to a friend as ‘that little hippie chick.’  We would take jeeps from the hotel out to the location where we were filming.  I always tried to get out there early so I wouldn’t have to ride with Wayne.

Wayne wasn’t very communicative and didn’t have the patience for a director.  I think he knew what he wanted to do in terms of the big picture but he was not very good working with actors.  He was from John Ford’s school of using intimidation and absolutely terrified some of us.  During one scene, he berated poor Luke Askew for not saying his lines the way Wayne wanted.  Instead of taking the guy aside, he humiliated him in front of the cast and crew.  Wayne screamed at him, ‘Walk over here!  Say your line!  Then walk over there!’”

The story left out of the book is how she got labeled by Wayne as “hippie chick.” One day Tsu was running late and got the last jeep out to the location. When she hopped in she saw only John Wayne sitting there reading his newspaper. He ignored her to her relief. During their trek, the jeep hit a bump in the road and Tsu’s pocketbook fell off the seat spilling its contents all over the floor. Wayne reached down to help her pick up her items and picked up a joint. He looked at it, made a disapproving face, handed it to her without a word, and turned back to his paper.

The Green Berets is infamous for its closing scene with John Wayne and little Craig Jue on the beach watching the sun set into the East. For most critics, this was just one more scene that mae the movie odious to them. As one reviewer remarked, “We have dropped so many bombs on Vietnam, what is one more?” The movie was released a few months after the Tet Offensive in January 1968 so its rah-rah optimistic black and white approach made it even worse for a lot of the public though the movie was a box office hit.

I am trying to broaden my cinema horizons and watch classic or popular movies that I have never seen before on Turner Classic Movies. I recently just saw for the first time The Women (1939), with its all-female cast, and Inside Daisy Clover (1965).

Of course I heard of The Women’s top-billed actress Norma Shearer who I know was a huge movie star in the 20s, 30s and 40s but I had never seen a single motion picture of hers. I was very impressed with her in The Women. More so since she had on paper the less interesting role of the headstrong prideful wife who lets her husband go after she is set up by her cruel envious cousin to purposely discover that he has been having an affair with a viper who works behind the perfume counter at a department store. Shearer makes her character just as interesting as the more flamboyant women that surround her. The vixen is played by Joan Crawford who is equally good as Shearer. Less so is my fave Rosalind Russell as the malacious cousin who comes off like a fast-talking buffoon more annoying than humorous. No Auntie Mame is she here.

Another first for me was seeing pretty Paulette Goddard. Toward the end of the movie when Shearer hightails it to Reno for a quickie divorce, Goddard is along for the ride and stands out as a married showgirl who turns out to be the woman who stole Russell’s millionaire husband. Among the lesser roles, the best is the blonde actress who played the wisecracking co-worker of Crawford’s. She sees knows what a rotten she-wolf Crawford is and has a glib comment on everything Crawford says on the phone as she tries to entice Shearer’s husband away from a night out with his way to her apartment instead. This film was a surprising delight.

However much I enjoyed The Women, I despised Inside Daisy Clover starring Natalie Wood as a teenage actress in the thirties. It is surprising to me since this was a 60s movie, my cinema decade of choice. 1965 was not a good year for movies about Hollywood with the dueling Harlow bios but at least those movies were lively and fun. If you think Carroll Baker and Carol Lynley were miscast as Jean Harlow you haven’t seen anything like 26 year old Natalie Wood trying to pass herself off as a fifteen year old beach urchin who becomes Hollywood’s newest Judy Garland. That is bad enough, but the producers let her sing without being dubbed! She has one of the most annoying singing voices I ever heard. It is torture hearing and watching her catawail in the few musical numbers. Where oh where is Marni Nixon when you need her?

Wood is not entirely to blame for the movie being a failure in my eyes. The script really lets her down and didn’t give me an emotional connection to this unpleasant girl who becomes a star even though she shows no sign of talent. Finally realizing her Hollywood dream, Daisy is always brooding and unhappy. We know it is because Hollywood is trying to change her, but the screenwriter never gives her a scene to explain herself or to fight back. Even Daisy’s breakdown scene in a recording booth where she is looping dialog over and over is a bust. Perhaps if Wood just went over the top she would have rivaled Patty Duke’s breakdown-in-the-gutter scene in Valley of the Dolls.

Christopher Plummer is no help either playing a stone cold movie mogul who discovers Daisy. But a handsome young Robert Redford as a closeted matinee idol and the always amusing Ruth Gordon as Daisy’s wacky mother almost, but not quite, make up for Natalie Wood’s miscasting. She and this movie are just painful to watch.

A number of weeks ago I did a Blog about actress Valerie Starrett whom I interviewed about the hit biker movie Run, Angel, Run with William Smith. Near the end of the interview we spoke about her time on General Hospital where she originated the popular role of Diana Maynard Taylor in 1969. Starrett left the role in 1977 at the time when Tom Donovan took over as executive producer, brought in new directors and wanted to take the show in a different direction. This included the Diana Taylor character who would go from the show’s popular heroine to a more grasping desperate woman. Starrett left (Brooke Bundy took over as Diana) and her fans were outraged. Shortly after Donovan was replaced by Gloria Monty. With Luke and Laura now the soap’s main focus, Diana was pushed to the backburner and became more grasping than ever trying to keep her adoptive son from the birth mother. To put the character and the audience out of their misery, Diana was found murdered lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen with the name Ann Logan spelled out in blood.

My Blog was picked up by General Hospital web sites and fans still outraged considering what was were posted on my Blog. Below is Valerie’s response to them:

“Hi!  It’s Valerie Starrett.  I just saw this!  The fans mean’t everything to me!  and you are all right!  I did not like the direction Diana was going and I ‘m happy I got out before it went downhill.  You have no  Idea how much I enjoyed being Diana and will forever thank you for watching me!  As a funny side note, I am still best friends with Rachel Ames, Audrey!  We see movies and plays together often!”

Click here to read a very good insightful review about my book, Dueling Harlows: Race to the Silver Screen.

Trailer for Mother Dolores Hart’s new memoir:

Mother Dolores Hart is getting lots of press due to her long-awaited upcoming autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows. Click here for a very insightful piece by my friend Shaun comparing her real life to her reel life in Where the Boys Are.

One of my favorite web sites is Brian’s Drive-in Theater. He added new pages on four 1960′s starlets and one hunk of burning love, George Maharis. Loved him as a kid and now even more knowing that he is gay.

Diane McBain

Francine York

Connie Stevens

Stella Stevens

George Maharis

After the success of the Oscar-nominated documentary God Is Bigger Than Elvis about her life, it is no surprise that Mother Dolores Hart has written a book about her life called The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows. I love Dolores Hart and already pre-ordered my copy!

Book description from Amazon:

Dolores Hart stunned Hollywood in 1963, when after ten highly successful feature films, she chose to enter a contemplative monastery. Now, fifty years later, Mother Dolores gives this fascinating account of her life, with co-author and life-long friend, Richard DeNeut.

Dolores was a bright and beautiful college student when she made her film debut with Elvis Presley in Paramount’s 1957 Loving You. She acted in nine more movies with other big stars such as Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quinn and Myrna Loy. She also gave a Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway play The Pleasure of His Company and appeared in two television shows, including The Virginian. A new chapter in her life occurred while playing Saint Clare in the movie Francis of Assisi, which was filmed on location in Italy.

Born Dolores Hicks to a complicated and colorful Chicago family, Mother Hart has travelled a charmed yet challenging road in her journey toward God, serenity and, yes, love. She entered the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., at the peak of her career, not in order to leave the glamorous world of acting she had dreamed of since childhood, but in order to answer a mysterious summons she heard with the “ear of the heart”. While contracted for another film and engaged to be married, she gave up everything to become a bride of Christ.

Below is a great clip from the great movie Cool Hand Luke (1967) starring Paul Newman and George Kennedy highlighting Lalo Schifrin’s classic musical score.

The girl who washes the car and gets the chain gang all hot and bothered is Fantasy Femme Joy Harmon in her most memorable role though she doesn’t utter a word.

Joy Harmon began her show business career as a teenage extra in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1956).  Her curvaceous figure, measuring 41-22-36, was her ticket to Broadway in the comedy Make Me Laugh starring Sam Levene in 1958 as the comic foil to the comedian.  On television the popular pin-up (who also posed for numerous men’s magazines except Playboy because she wouldn’t go topless) became a favorite of such talk show hosts as Steve Allen and Gary Moore who spun as many double-entendres as possible at Joy’s expense and, of course, comparisons to Jayne Mansfield were inevitable.  In between variety show appearances, she found time to make her film debut as a tough chain-smoking broad in the juvenile rock-and-roll flick, Let’s Rock (1958) starring, of all people, Julius LaRosa.

Hollywood soon beckoned and Harmon became a regular on the short-lived Tell It to Groucho in 1962.  On the big and small screens, Harmon was so adept at playing the dizzy bugged-eyed blonde with the giggly laugh that she became typecast.  Minor movie roles in Mad Dog Coll (1962), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), Young Dillinger (1965), and The Loved One (1965) led to lead roles as a teenage delinquent in Village of the Giants (1965) opposite Beau Bridges and a beach denizen in Hawaii mixed up in robbery in One Way Wahine (1965).  Even when playing bad girls, audiences could not help but love Joy due to her effervescent personality and the innocence she brought to all her characters.  This quality is undoubtedly why she was hired for her most infamous role in Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Cool Hand Luke examines life for men on a chain gang in a Southern prison camp.  The immensely entertaining social drama stars Paul Newman as a loner who refuses to conform to society’s rules and George Kennedy, who won an Oscar for his performance as one of Newman’s fellow prisoners.  On paper, Joy’s part seemed innocuous enough—a pretty girl washes her car while shackled prisoners of a chain gang peer on.  Recalling the audition Joy says, “I had this agent named Leon Lance who was around forever in Hollywood.  He got me the interview for Cool Hand Luke and told me that I had to wear a bikini for it.  Paul Newman, Stuart Rosenberg [the director], and somebody else were there.  I remember Paul Newman said to me, ‘Gosh, you have the bluest eyes!’  They just talked to me and that was it.  It was a small part with no lines but I wanted to work with Newman so when they offered it to me I accepted.”

Cool Hand Luke was filmed in Stockton, California.  None of the actors were allowed to bring their wives or girlfriends to the set because Stuart Rosenberg wanted his actors to have the feel for what it would be like to work on a chain gang without female contact.  When they finally saw a woman their reactions would be believable and not “acting.”  After arriving on location, Joy was sequestered at the hotel for two days and never saw anyone.  They kept her away from all the actors until filming began.  With Newman, Kennedy, and the rest of the chain gang entranced, Harmon washes her car like she’s making love to a man.  While Kennedy dubs her his innocent “Lucille,” Newman realizes she is just a tease and knows exactly what she is doing by getting the prisoners excited.  “Stuart Rosenberg was so sensitive and took time to work with me,” recalls Joy fondly.  “I didn’t even have a line but he just wanted everything motivated with a thought behind it.  He was an actor’s director—more concerned with the actors than the lighting or anything else.  He kept talking with me and it was like a bonding kind of thing, which is why I was able to release all that energy in that scene.

“Stuart was very specific and knew exactly what he wanted,” continues Joy.  “I guess you can tell that by the way the scene comes off—but I didn’t realize it.  And I don’t think I even realized it right after I did it.  There were a lot of things he made me do a certain way—soaping the windows, holding the hose— that had a two-way meaning.  He would tell me to look different ways and we kept shooting it over and over again.  I just figured I was washing the car.  I’ve always been naïve and innocent.  I was acting and not trying to be sexy.”

All of Rosenberg’s work paid off as the scene is unforgettable and is truly one of the sixties’ most provocative moments.  Joy, clad in a tatty housedress with her cleavage clearly on display, holds the nozzle of the hose suggestively, squeezes the soap from the sponge and drenches her dress, and presses her bounteous bosom on the passenger-side window as she washes the roof putting on quite a tantalizing show for the frustrated prisoners.  “I never had any inclination that this would be such a memorable role,” says Joy.  “Except for being in a movie with Paul Newman, I never expected this part to be so notable and get the reaction it did.  After seeing it at the premiere I was a bit embarrassed.  Of all the things I’ve done people know me most from this film.”

Unfortunately for movie audiences Joy never capitalized on the notoriety that the film brought her.  After the movie was released she met film editor Jeff Gourson and they wed.  American International Pictures wanted to sign Joy to a contract beginning with the lead role in The Young Animals (1968) but she declined as she was happy juggling bit roles (A Guide for the Married Man, Angel in My Pocket) with her new marriage.

Harmon continued acting mostly on television in such series as Love, American Style and The Odd Couple until 1973 when she retired to raise her children.  Her only foray back into show business was doing voiceover work in her husband’s hit TV series Quantum Leap.  Today that girl from Cool Hand Luke has her own business called Aunt Joy’s Cakes.  While she was acting Joy’s bosoms weren’t the only treats she brought to the set as she also shared her delicious homemade cakes and cookies with cast and crew.  In the Nineties, she began supplying her niece’s coffee shop with her desserts and then saw her business quickly expand to include all the major movie studios.  She now has a web site and you can order Joy’s baked goods online at Aunt Joy’s Cakes.

A reader of my Blog brought this film called Beach Boy Rebels to my attention. I had never heard of it or most of the cast. With a title like that, it should have starred Aron Kincaid, Steve Rogers, Mike Nader, and Christopher Riordan. Willie Pastrano, however, was the only familiar name since I remember the tough guy boxer-turned actor from Wild Rebels and The Hooked Generation.

I did some research and click here to find out more about the movie. Some beach boys come upon stolen jewels and hock them to the consternation of the thieves. Look for an interview with the film’s director in the future on that site.