Click here to read a very good insightful review about my book, Dueling Harlows: Race to the Silver Screen.
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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.
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.
Below is a link to see the Robert Aldrich-directed western The Last Sunset (1961) starring Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, and Carol Lynley. I’ve always had a hatred for this very strange slow moving western soap opera (a sort of Peyton Place meets Cattle Drive) beautifully filmed in Mexico and Texas. It is a very offbeat western I should like for its strangeness and for co-starring Carol, but I don’t. Teenage Carol Lynley was never my cup of tea. I like the adult version.
Kirk Douglas produced the movie through his production company and it was released by Universal Pictures. Fresh-off-the-blacklist Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay. Douglas plays a cliched black-clad outlaw clad in way-too-tight pants on the run for killing a man in a barroom brawl trailed by likable lawman Rock Hudson (best in show). Douglas turns up at the Mexican ranch of drunken cattleman Joseph Cotten and his wife, wind-blown Dorothy Malone playing as if she was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof‘s Maggie on the Prairie. Their tomboyish daughter is Carol Lynley (Universal pushed for Sandra Dee in the role but Douglas nixed it) with a most unflattering short haircut and giving one of her worst performances right up there, or down there, with her wooden turn as Alison MacKenzie in Return to Peyton Place the same year.
Douglas agrees to lead Cotten’s cattle drive from Mexico to Texas, so the lush can sell his herd for more booze money no doubt. Hudson shows up and decides to join the drive when he catches the batting eyes of Malone. He calls an uneasy truce with Douglas until the cattle are delivered. During the course of the cattle drive (hampered by a dust storm; stampeding cattle; an Indian attack, etc.) secrets are revealed: Douglas and Hudson were former lovers, oops meant Malone; Cotten deserted his army brigade during the war explaining his heavy drinking to forget his cowardice; hot-to-trot Malone’s attraction to Hudson becomes evident to all while Douglas likes Lolita-ish Lynley much to Malone’s dismay, as she holds in her bosom a terrible truth about her daughter. The Douglas/Lynley romantic scenes are really icky but can you imagine how ickier they would have been with the even younger Sandra Dee in the role? Plecch! Once the cows are grazing safely in Texas, Douglas has his gunfight at the OK Coral with Hudson with only one gunfighter left standing. I wonder who? Sounds over-the-top and campy. Too bad it is played dead serious.
The Last Sunset grossed a respectable $3 million at the box office, but under performed considering the all-star cast. Critics gave the movie mixed reviews and the Harvard Lampoon bestowed on it the award for “Worst Performance by a Cast in Toto.” Click here for an entertaining more detailed behind-the-scenes look at the movie.
Not too many celebrity deaths bring a tear to my eye (only Lucille Ball and Jill Haworth come quickly to mind), but the passing of Annette Funicello has and more. I spent many an afternoon as a pre-teen and teen glued to the TV set watching Annette, Frankie Avalon and the zany beach party gang on the ABC-TV 4:30 Movie. Annette was just so pretty and likable and had such wonderful chemistry with Frankie. Her films like Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, Pajama Party, Muscle Beach Party always brought joy to a sometimes lonely kid in the suburbs.
Annette Joanne Funicello was born on October 22, 1942. Her family relocated to Los Angeles from Utica when Annette was just a child and her mother enrolled her timid daughter into dance classes to help her overcome her shyness. Producer Walt Disney happened to see her dance the lead role in Swan Lake at her school’s year-end recital in the spring of 1955 and had an associate contact her to audition to become a Mouseketeer. The Mickey Mouse Club debuted in October 1955 and Annette quickly became one of the show’s most popular cast members. Part of this had to do with her talent and the sweetness that she just radiated but the fact that the twelve-year-old was maturing into womanhood far faster than her peers certainly played a big factor. Due to her growing bosom she quickly became the fantasy girl of pubescent boys around the country and the butt of many jokes.
The Mickey Mouse Club was excellent training for the newcomer as she sang and danced, and acted in a number of its serials including her own entitled “Annette.” When the series came to an end in 1959, Funicello was the only Mouseketeer who remained under contract at Disney. Though her singing voice was thin, it was perfect for the undiscriminating teenage rock ‘n’ roll fan. Annette cut a few singles—the most popular being “Tall Paul,” which climbed to No. 7 on the Billboard charts in 1959. She had another Top 10 hit the following year with “O Dio Mio.”
Walt Disney, who took the amiable girl under his wing, knew she had acting talent and cast her in the hit comedy The Shaggy Dog (1959) starring Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk. Annette went on to star in The Horsemasters (1960) one of three films that she starred in that were broadcast in two parts on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color but released theatrically in Europe and other parts of the world. Annette could be seen on the big screens in the U.S. as Mary Contrary in the disappointing musical Babes in Toyland (1961).
In 1962, Annette turned twenty years old and Disney was having trouble finding parts for the well-developed actress to play. When AIP offered her a lead role in the swinging new surfing epic Beach Party (1963), Disney strongly advised Annette to take the role but not to wear a bikini so she would stick out from the other beach beauties like Valora Noland, Delores Wells, Salli Sachse, and Meredith MacRae. Paired with Frankie Avalon as teenage lovers Frankie and Dolores, Beach Party was the sleeper of the year and AIP immediately commissioned a sequel. After starring with Tommy Kirk in Disney’s The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), Annette reprised her Beach Party character renamed Dee Dee in Muscle Beach Party (1964) where the surfers battle the musclemen and Bikini Beach (1964) where drag racing and British Potato Bug (Avalon in a dual role parodying the Beatles) take center stage. Pajama Party (1964) was an offshoot as Annette co-starred with Disney alumni Tommy Kirk playing a Martian who crashes the beach party.
All four of Annette’s movies were box office hits and she delivered charming performances especially in Muscle Beach Party as she vied for Frankie with Luciana Paluzzi as a spoiled Italian contessa. She was voted a Star of Tomorrow placing second in the Motion Pictures Exhibitor’s poll and was named a Star of the Future by Boxoffice magazine. That same year she was also nominated for the Photoplay Gold Medal Award for Favorite Actress.
Though Annette became synonymous with surfing and beach movies, she rarely ventured into the ocean with her surfboard or even got her hair wet. She explained in Interview, “Well, 24 years ago the surfboards were so big and heavy. A couple of times we tried to get a shot of me grabbing a board, running down to the water and diving in. But every time we’d rehearse it I’d grab this huge board and say something like, ‘Hey kids! Surf’s up!’ and then I’d have to drag this heavy, ungainly board down to the water. By the time I got to the ocean I’d be totally out of breath.” Needless to say, director William Asher (a real surfer himself) gave up and used the old reliable blue screen to show Annette “surfing” the waves.
Annette had a very busy year in 1965. She married her agent Jack Gilardi and then re-teamed with Tommy Kirk in the Disney comedy, The Monkey’s Uncle, whose title tune was sung by Annette and the Beach Boys on screen. After co-starring with Frankie Avalon in arguably the best of the sand-and-surf epics Beach Blanket Bingo and making a very funny cameo appearance as an amorous college professor in Ski Party, Annette became pregnant with her first child. She was a few months along when she had to head back to the beach for How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.
Though How to Stuff a Wild Bikini was the end of the beach-party for Frankie and Annette, AIP would team the popular duo one last time. Fireball 500 (1966) featured Avalon and Fabian as rival stock car racers who battled over the charms of Annette while becoming embroiled in a moonshine smuggling operation. Funicello would co-star again with Fabian in Thunder Alley (1967) playing the good girl vying with Diane McBain as a golddigging vixen for stunt driver Fabian. It was her final movie for AIP.
After leaving the studio in 1967, Annette Funicello did a cameo as Davy Jones’ girlfriend in The Monkees’ madcap musical Head (1968) before limiting her acting career to spend more time with her children. She made sporadic TV guest appearances during the seventies and co-hosted with Frankie Avalon the variety series, Easy Does It in 1976. But she is best remembered as the spokeswoman for Skippy Peanut Butter in a string of commercials that ran into the eighties. Annette was more active during the Reagan years and donned a swimsuit for her return with Frankie Avalon to the sandy shores of Malibu in Back to the Beach (1987). They were wonderful and didn’t disappoint, however the producers did by not bringing back any of the old beach party gang like Mike Nader, Aron Kincaid, Salli Sachse, Patti Chandler, Bobbi Shaw, etc. Instead they surrounded the duo with former sitcom stars of the sixties and an annoying Connie Stevens. Annette though as one last wonderful on screen musical number.
Annette was diagnosed with Multiple Scierosis in 1988. At first the devastating nerve disorder just affected her balance but got progressively worse and due to her illness disappeared from public life.
Goodbye Annette. The beach won’t be the same without you in your one-piece.
With the pasing of Roger Ebert, the world lost one of its most noted film critics. But what a lot of people do not know is that Ebert wrote the screenplay to the cult camp classic, an done of my favorite movies, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and gave filmdom the immortal character of Ashley St. Ives wonderfully played by Edy Williams.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the quasi-sequel in name only to Valley of the Dolls, was to be “the first rock, horror, exploitation film musical.” The screenplay was penned by Roger Ebert from a story by he and Russ Meyer, previous known for his exploitation movies full of big bosomed women such as Vixen, Mudhoney, and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Meyer expertly directed his cast of Playboy Playmates and actors to treat the story as a serious drama and not a comedy knowing full well he was aiming for camp, which he achieved. And none of the female characters was campier then Ashley St. Ives as portrayed by Edy Williams who undoubtedly got some of the films’ best and most memorable lines. Standing 5-foot-7 with dark brown hair and brown-green eyes, Williams had a curvaceous body measuring 39-26-37, breathy voice, and captivating personality that made men drool over. Loving the camera, Edy posed bikini-clad for numerous cheesecake and pin-up photos leading up to her most infamous role.
In the in-name only sequel to Valley of the Dolls, an All-American girl rock trio travel across country to Hollywood where they are re-named the Carrie Nations by music industry impresario Ronnie ‘Z-Man’ Barzell (John Lazar) and experience fame, fortune, and heartache. British Dolly Reade, Miss May 1966, played Kelly MacNamara the lead singer and long-lost niece of her dead mother’s sister SusanLake (Phyllis Davis). Success goes straight to Kelly’s pretty head as she dumps naive Harris Alsworth (David Gurian) her loyal high school sweetheart and the band’s unofficial manager, falls in with the pot-smoking Hollywood in-crowd, and begins a romance with actor/gigolo Lance Rocke (Michael Blodgett) who cajoles her to go after a bigger share of her grandfather’s inheritance held by rich Aunt Susan.
Cynthia Myers, Miss December 1968, clinched the role of Casey the guitar-playing lost soul of the group due to her 39DD cup, which bosom master Russ Meyer flipped over. A powerful senator’s daughter who has been used and abused by men, Casey falls in love with Lesbian clothes designer Roxanne (Erica Gavin). However, when her jealous lover learns that she is pregnant by Harris after a drunken one night stand, she demands that Casey have an abortion. She goes through with it but pays for her wanton ways when at the film’s climax as she and Roxanne have their pretty little heads blown off by the crazed Z-Man who reveals a set of knockers to rival any Playboy Playmate as he goes off the deep end as Super Woman also beheading a bound Lance clad only in leopard bikini briefs.
The third member of the group is African-American actress and former high fashion model Marcia McBroom who played drummer Petronella Danforth. Her adventures in Hollywood were less tawdry as she marries struggling law student Emerson (Harrison Page) but cheats on him with stud boxing champ Randy Black (James Inglehart).
Riding head-and-shoulders over all three of them was Edy Williams. Roger Ebert claimed the he introduced Edy to Russ Meyer at the Fox commissary though others contend that Fox studio head Richard Zanuck insisted that his contract player be given a role in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It was first announced in the trades that Williams, now with chestnut brown hair with blonde highlights, would be playing Ashley Famous a writer of pornography, but when the original script was jettisoned the character morphed into the voracious porn star Ashley St. Ives. Edy felt that Meyer wanted her all along to play Ashley and promised that she would be the star of the movie. Williams remarked in Interview, “Russ is really a schemer. He was telling me, “Oh—you’re going to be the star. You’ve got the greatest role in the whole film. Well, he was telling the same story to all the other girls too.” Be that as it may, Edy does have the most memorable role and makes it even better with her excellent performance.
We meet wild-haired Ashley St. Ives dancing furiously with an African-American dude to “Incense and Peppermints” sung by the Strawberry Alarm Clock at a wild happening at producer Ronnie Barzell’s. He points out a gyrating Ashley to his new friend Kelly and says, “Look there—the infamous Ashley St. Ives famous indeed for her portrayals in pornographic pictures. See how she gives her body to the ritual—delicious.” When the innocent goofy-looking Harris Allsworth shows up, the amorous vixen, clad in what looks like a crocheted brown micro mini-dress with matching bikini bottoms, immediately sets her sights on him and is a like a Black Widow spider honing in on her defenseless prey. As he makes his way through the throng looking for his girlfriend Kelly, Ashley puts her arm out blocking his way and seductively asks, “You don’t drink?” He responds, “Later” as he pushes her arm down and moves on his way. Ashley watches and says assuredly, “Yeah, later.”
Soon after as Ashley is describing the plot of her new porno movie (or as she later describes them, “my controversial box office block busters”) to two party guests, Harris sits next to her putting his drink down on a coffee table. Ashley slides it over with her foot while he is looking the other way. When he goes to retrieve it, he grabs her ankle instead and she says, “Well now Harris we meet again. Come into my den said the spider etcetera.” After exchanging some barbs back and forth, Ashley finally gets to the point and says, “You’re a groovy boy—I’d like to strap you on sometime.” Edy Williams is so deliciously over-the-top in this scene as she sticks her tongue in the guy’s ear and lasciviously licks her lips as he walks away.
Ronnie Barzall decides to manage Kelly’s group and after changing their name to The Carrie Nations they soon become superstars. After a successful live concert performance, Kelly rejects Harris’ plea to be with him and goes off to Ronnie’s with matinee idol Lance Rock for another wild party. Waiting in her Rolls Royce, “the princess of carnality” pulls up to the dejected boy and offers him a ride. It’s a ride he’ll never forget. After parking in his driveway, Ashley climbs into the backseat and removes her panties while seductively licking her forefinger. She says, “Now it’s your move” as the horny youngster joins her and remarks, “It’s my first time in a Rolls.” The sex is wild and Harris has the porn star squealing in delight, “There’s nothing like a Rolls…nothing…not even a Bentley!” as the song “In the Long Run” plays in the background.
The more famous Kelly and her band become, the more Harris turns to booze and pills to ease his misery. Ashley takes him to the beach where she does her best to arouse him, but he is not interested in having sex on the sand. After Harris won’t get it up, a frustrated bikini-clad Ashley standing above him (Russ Meyer filmed with the camera at a low angle facing up giving her an Amazonian look like he did with the gals from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) mocks him and declares, “Harris you’re drunk and you’re stoned. And the worst of it is you’re a lousy lay. You’re never get into one of my films sweetheart—unless as a hairdresser.” She tells him to find “a nice tender boy” and salutes in farewell before finding another boy-toy right there on the sand to take his place and disappointingly disappears from the rest of the movie. It is surprising that Ashley doesn’t turn up at the ill-fated party at Z-Man’s since all the “sinning” characters get their comeuppance.
Actually, Russ Meyer wasn’t lying when he told Edy Williams that Ashley St. Ives is the standout female role. She goes all out stealing the film with a truly entertaining performance and gets most of the big laughs. While all the other actors followed the instructions of Russ Meyer to play it straight as if it was a serious drama, you can tell Edy knew it was high camp and went over-the-top but not to the point of ridiculousness (i.e. John Lazar as Z-Man).
Coming right on my heels about the 1977 Kojak episode with guest stars Carol Lynley and Christopher Walken, my friend Jeremy did a great Blog on pre-1977 Christopher Walken’s stage work. Click here to access and enjoy another photo below of a very young and sexy Walken by photographer Kenn Duncan (copyright held by The New York Public Library). He resembles the actor who plays Nolan on TV’s Revenge.
