Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Hollywood‘s cover girl Celeste Yarnall, a former model and Miss Rheingold, risked her life savings to travel to the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 in hopes of being “discovered” even though she had begun acting in 1963 on television and in films such as The Nutty Professor and Around the World Under the Sea. Discouraged that her career hadn’t taken off, she headed to that international city hoping to wow some producers. And wow them she did! Producer Harry Alan Towers, who was looking for a girl to play a female Tarzan in Eve, spotted her strolling down the street. According to Yarnall, “He yelled and pointed, ‘Stop that girl! That’s my Eve!’” Celeste made a breathtaking jungle goddess in Eve opposite Christopher Lee and Robert Walker, now on BluRay. She went on to act in such drive-in fare as Live a Little, Love a Little where Elvis Presley’s photographer sings the memorable “A Little Less Conversation” to her sophisticated model at a party; the Philippines-lensed horror movie Beast of Blood with John Ashley, and her most notorious film The Velvet Vampire as a female bloodsucker lusting for hippie couple Michael Blodgett and Sherry Miles.
Birthday wishes are also extended to the British blonde beauty Suzanna Leigh most remembered as Elvis’ leading lady in Paradise, Hawaiian Style; The Deadly Bees; and the spy movies Deadlier Than the Male and Subterfuge.
https://youtu.be/SMknIFeRpw0
Read my interviews with Celeste Yarnall in Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema and Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973.
Read more about Suzanna Leigh in Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 and my upcoming BearManor Media book Talking Sixties Drive-In Movies where co-star Irene Tsu dishes about making Paradise, Hawaiian Style.