With her short cropped flaxen hair, blue eyes, and shapely figure, sexy Karen Jensen was perfectly cast in the late-in-the-cycle beach movie Out of Sight (1966). She actually looked like she grew up on the shores of Malibu unlike Beach Party star Annette Funicello. Though Karen left an indelible impression on fans of the genre, she quickly progressed to more mainstream films (The Ballad of Josie, Sullivan’s Empire, etc.) and TV shows (The Wild Wild West, Run for Your Life, Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre, etc.). In 1970 she was cast as one of a trio of starlets looking for fame in the series Bracken’s World. As the ambitious one, Jensen had the breakout role and for a time captured the public’s attention. “This was an actress’s dream role,” commented Karen. She received numerous invitations to appear on all the popular talk and game shows and graced the covers of such magazines as TV Guide and Show who called her “television’s first real sex symbol.” After Bracken’s World folded in 1971, Karen’s most notable film credit was the espionage thriller The Saltzburg Connection (1972) co-starring Barry Newman. She retired from acting a few years later and is currently wed to actor Brendon Boone.
Read my interview with Karen Jensen in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema.
A curvaceous statuesque baby-face redhead with a button nose and little girl voice, Pamela Rodgers always seemed on the verge of stardom but never made it to the big time. She made her film debut in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) where she pranced around in a gold lame bikini then played a Slaygirl in The Silencers. More small roles followed in Three on a Couch, The Oscar, and Out of Sight as one of Karen Jensen’s bikini-clad friends. She was a regular for a year each on the sitcom Hey, Landlord! and the variety series The Jonathan Winters Show, which led to co-starring role in The Big Cube with George Chakiris and Lana Turner; and a funny bit in The Maltese Bippy with Rowan & Martin who brought her on to Laugh-In. She was able to parlay the new found fame Laugh-In brought her into appearances on many talk and game shows of the early seventies moat notably Match Game and The Hollywood Squares as well as acting in a few episodes of Love, American Style usually cast as the sexy ding-a-ling. However, she never returned to the big screen and was only able to scrounge up supporting roles in TV-movies such as Suddenly Single (1971) and Jigsaw (1972). She disappeared from show business around 1976 after marrying a third time.