MY PAMELA TIFFIN BOOK IS NOW PUBLISHED

 

 

 

 

 

Just got word from my publisher McFarland and Company that my new book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 has shipped. What a strange journey it has taken. I started off doing a book about American actresses who went to Italy to work during the sixties. I first wrote about Mimsy Farmer and then tackled Pamela. I just kept writing and writing and realized I had enough for a book just on her. My plans to turn into a biography with hopefully a new interview with Pamela was sadly squashed when I was informed by her husband that she could not participate. I was going to abandon the project, but knowing I was a big fan he suggested I continue.

Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 pays tribute to the stunning beauty that is Pamela Tiffin. Prettier than Raquel Welch. Funnier than Jane Fonda. More appealing than Ann-Margret. Yet they became superstars, but Pamela did not despite adulation from the critics and even James Cagney who hailed her “remarkable flair for comedy.” Contractual obligations and self-imposed exiles in New York and then Rome hampered her, though she remains a cult sixties pop icon to this day.

Dark-haired Pamela Tiffin debuted in the movie version of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke (1961) as the stunning innocent who steals handsome doctor Laurence Harvey from sexually frustrated spinster Geraldine Page and then she was a scene-stealing comedienne giving a Golden Globe nominated performance as an addle-brained Southern teenager who sneaks into East Berlin and marries Communist Horst Buchholz in Billy Wilder’s hilarious political satire One, Two, Three (1961) starring James Cagney.

Next came a succession of popular teenage drive-in movies where Pamela once again delivers highly amusing performances. She’s a bored farm gal itching for more than hanging out with the hogs in the musical State Fair (1962) with Pat Boone and Bobby Darin; a bungling flight attendant in the romantic travelogue Come Fly with Me (1963) with Hugh O’Brian and Dolores Hart; a surfing college student in the beach movie For Those Who Think Young (1964) with James Darren; a race car driver loving coed in The Lively Set (1964) again with Darren; and a naive tourist in the Madrid-set comedy The Pleasure Seekers (1964), a remake of Three Coins in the Fountain, with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley. With her beauty and seductive soft-voice, Pamela Tiffin instilled in her romance seeking characters not only a wide-eyed naïveté and endearing flightiness, but a sexiness that her contemporaries at the time could not match. It was these qualities that made these movies better than expected due to the actress’ comedic abilities and made her rise above the competition of the time. So successful was she that Turner Classic Movies has dubbed her “Hollywood’s favorite air-headed ingénue in the sixties.”

 

Sophisticated and intelligent in real life (she lived in New York to continue working as a model and taking college courses between films), Pamela was not a fan of her teenage movies and strove to get more mature roles. However, she was beholden to the contracts she signed with producer Hal Wallis (who discovered her), 20th Century-Fox; and the Mirisch Brothers. To her delight, Pamela was finally able to shed her ingenue image after landing a sexy adult role as a sharp-tongued, man-hungry heiress in the detective film Harper starring Paul Newman. Her sexy bikini-clad dance on top of a diving board has become one of the sixties iconic film moments.

Instead of taking Hollywood by storm at this point with her new sex kitten persona, she went blonde and headed overseas to become Marcello Mastroianni’s first American leading lady in the Italian three-part comedy Oggi, domani, dopodomani (1966) and then opted for a Broadway play, Dinner at Eight in the role essayed by Jean Harlow in the 1930s movie version. An unhappy marriage caused her to run away to Italy in 1967 putting a halt to her career trajectory in the U.S. leaving her many fans wanting more and wondering where she disappeared to.

Hollywood’s loss though was Italy’s gain. She was paired with some of the country’s most famous leading men including Franco Nero (twice), Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi, and Lando Buzzanca. Though enjoying being a sexy blonde, Pamela wanted to act and went after more character parts during her time there hence her long blonde locks were hidden under dark or red wigs. Quite popular, especially when her notorious pictorial in Playboy was released, her films ranged from comedies such as Straziami ma di baci Saziami/Kill Me with Kisses (1968, one of Italy’s highest grossing movies of the sixties), L’arcangelo/The Archangel (1969), and Il vichingo venuto dal Sud/The Blonde in the Blue Movie (1971); to the underrated giallo Giornata nera per l’Ariete/The Fifth Cord (1971); to the spaghetti western Los Amigos/Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1973) featuring one of her best performances as a whore. In between, Pamela returned to the U.S. for one memorable role as a political activist taken hostage by Mexican General Peter Ustinov and his army when they retake the Alamo in the very funny satire Viva Max (1969).

Not a biography, Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 is a career retrospective of Pamela Tiffin’s movies plus TV and stage appearances. Interviewees (including Franco Nero, Hugh O’Brian, Lada Edmund, Jr., Carole Wells, Tim Zinnemann, Martin West, Niki Flacks, Jed Curtis, Peter Gonzales Falcon, Eldon Quick, John Wilder, and Larry Hankin) provide a behind-the-scenes look at her work. Plus noted film historians Dean Brierly, Roberto Curti, Howard Hughes, and Paolo Mereghetti weigh in on Pamela Tiffin’s place in cinematic history.

 

https://youtu.be/GS14ml1KpyM