MEET 1960S GLAMOUR GIRL JANE WALD

Pity Jane Wald. The beautiful buxom brunette was saddled with a curvaceous figure measuring 38-22-35 that most women would kill for. But, as with most sexy actresses, she wanted to stand out due to her acting talent rather than her bra size. During the early to mid-sixties, Wald graced a number of glossy sex comedies that gave her little to do but glide across the big screen wearing nothing but a bikini, a towel, or harem wear.

Jane Wald was born Jane Wolberg in Mount Vernon, New York. Her father was an international businessman and her mother an artist. As a young adult, she attended at few semesters at NYU before enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began learning her acting craft while doing summer stock and supported herself by working as a model appearing on billboards and in newspaper ads for Parliament cigarettes and Rheingold beer. Noticing her print ads, Playboy came a-calling three times but the modest Wald declined the offers to be a Playmate. Her first foray to Hollywood ended when the studio dropped her option and a dejected Wald flew to Europe to be with her parents.

Refusing to give up, Wald decided to give acting one more try and returned to Hollywood in 1959. To gain notoriety, she went the typical starlet route posing for lots of cheesecake photos, attending many openings, and entering promotional beauty contests. Wald was voted queen of the 1960 National Truck, Trailer and Equipment Show. She also gained a lot of publicity in 1962 when she accompanied Johnny Grant on a tour of Hawaiian military bases. She joined a troupe that included Ruta Lee, Ann B. Davis, and Cynthia Pepper.

Jane Wald began finding acting work due to her next door neighbor Barbara Steele. Invited by the actress to lunch at the 20^th Century-Fox commissary, Wald was spotted by actor Paul von Schreiber who was putting together a small independent avant-garde drama called Weekend Pass (1962). She played a dance hall girl opposite von Schreiber’s naïve sailor on leave. After spending time with him, the sailor is shocked when she asks to be paid for her services. Jane Wald recalls, “This was a non-union production and it was filmed in downtown Los Angeles. We walked around the streets at night shooting it and a lot of the homeless people became part of the crew helping out carrying lights and things. I believe it was an entry at some film festivals [Coronado International Film Festival, for one] but it never was released nationally.”

The film, clocking in at less than an hour, played the Los Feliz Theater in Los Angeles for one week in late December 1961 to be eligible for Academy Award nominations. Alas, none were earned. The featurette did pop up in LA again in September. Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called it, “less savage then The Savage Eye and praiseworthy as straight-forward cinematic storytelling.”

When it rains, it pours as the old adage go and soon Jane Wald would not lack for work. Television kept the pretty brunette busy and she turned up in episodes of Surfside 6; The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis; Shannon; and The Tab Hunter Show as a gold digger after millionaire Richard Erdman’s money. Wald’s movie career officially started with a splash literally as she is seen soaking in a bath tub in The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962). She covered up, albeit with a towel, for her role as one of lecherous landlord Hogan’s (Jack Lemmon) va-va-voom tenants who likes to shower with her basement bathroom window open in the hit comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963). She apologizes for not paying her rent for the last two months, but the voyeuristic playboy doesn’t mind a bit and presents her with a flower he just picked. Hogan is preoccupied with virginal coed Robin (Carol Lynley) who has just moved in with her boyfriend (Dean Jones) in an experiment to live platonically to see if they are marriage compatible. Despite her small role, Jane Wald’s image was used to promote the movie in many print promotions throughout the world.

“This was such a fun picture to work on,” exclaims Wald. “Jack Lemmon, Carol Lynley, Paul Lynde and the whole cast was just so nice. After Yum Yum Tree was released my dad who was on business in Japan called me. He was in a taxi and looked out the window and saw this huge block-long billboard of Jack Lemmon handing me a flower through my open bathroom window.”

Jane Wald continue getting small parts opposite some of Hollywood’s most popular leading men. In the comedy Take Her, She’s Mine (1963) she was one of coed Sandra Dee’s Parisian roommates. When her daddy (James Stewart) comes looking for his wayward daughter, Wald emerges from the bathroom brandishing her tooth brush. In the Shirley MacLaine What a Way To Go! (1964) she gives an energetic performance as artist Paul Newman’s kooky French beatnik friend who creates her artwork by shooting paint balloons onto her canvas.

“Sandra Dee, Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine were all sweet to me,” says Wald. “Actually I never had any problems with the stars I worked with.”

Despite showing promise in her latter role, Jane Wald was still restricted to the decorative role due to her beauty and curvaceous figure. Her first bikini role was playing a bit in the sex farce Honeymoon Hotel (1964) starring Robert Morse and Robert Goulet. Next came the abysmal comedy John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1964) starring Richard Crenna as a former football player coerced to coach the sheik’s football team and Shirley MacLaine as a reporter. Jane was indistinguishable from many of the other scantily-clad starlets (including Barbara Bouchet, Teri Garr, Shelby Grant, and Irene Tsu) who were part of sheik Peter Ustinov’s harem.

Wald was frustrated with being cast due to her looks more so than her talent. She reflected, “I knew I had a nice body, but it was something I sort of took for granted. In Hollywood, it got a lot of attention—it made me self-conscious. I wanted to be known as a serious actress. I should have just gone with the flow but we always want something we don’t have. It was kind of silly of me that I didn’t since I obviously had a great body. I didn’t take advantage of it like the girls do today especially that in those days there was no nudity to worry about.”

Next came Jane Wald’s most memorable role. Dear Brigitte (1965) starred James Stewart Robert Leaf, an absent-minded professor of poetry and lover of all creative arts, who lives on a retired steamboat called the River Belle with his wife Vina (Glynis Johns);money-hungry teenage daughter Pandora (Cindy Carol); and eight-year-old tone-deaf, color-blind son Erasmus (Billy Mumy) who turns out to be a mathematical prodigy to the chagrin of his father. Pandora and her boyfriend Kenny (Fabian) get the idea to make money off Erasmus’ ability and use it to handicap the horse races. They begin winning big, but are eventually busted by the outraged parents. The professor learns that his son has been writing love letters to French movie star Brigitte Bardot and when she finally writes back and invites the boy to meet her. Erasmus begs to go. How can a father say no to Bardot and off they go.

The movie opens with Ed Wynn as the Captain describing all the creative types who live in his waterfront community. He then waves to artist George (Charles Robinson) who is painting his topless wife Terry (Jane Wald) whose back is to the camera. They live on the boat next door to the Leaf family and happily greet the Captain. Terry’s skimpy attire, or lack thereof, is the film’s running gag as the professor is always telling her to put on some clothes. About an hour into the film Wald’s Terry is finally clad, albeit in short shorts and halter top, and has more lines as she and George alert Prof. Leaf that his students are leading a protest outside to persuade him to return to campus. He quit when the dean accused him of knowing that Erasmus was betting the ponies. Later she runs out in a very skimpy green and white checked bikini and joins the Leaf family and the Captain who is launching his new model sail boat. The vessel disappeared into the sea and alas Jane did too from the movie.

“I adored working with Jimmy Stewart on Dear Brigitte,” exclaims Jane. “I used to go over his lines with him. He was very nice and he said to me that I had great comedic timing. We filmed this on location in Sausalito. I asked Ed Wynn to visit this museum one day.  He said, ‘I’m afraid they may keep me there’ so he wouldn’t go with me.” This story was told to the press back in 1965 with Wynn adding, “And I don’t know whether that’s humorous or witty. Just cautious.”

On television Wald turned up on Batman as a curvaceous bad girl who helps Cesare Romero as the Joker fake the kidnapping of a visiting Maharajah in “The Joker Trumps an Ace” and “Batman Sets the Pace.” The Dick Van Dyke Show offered her the female lead in “Stacey Petrie, Part 2” playing Julie Kincaid a love interest for Jerry Van Dyke as Dick’s bungling brother Stacey who wrote letters to her from the army on behalf of his buddy a drummer named James Garner. When the GI lost interest, Stacey did not and kept corresponding using his buddy’s name. Now in town to open up a coffeehouse, he finally gets up the courage to meet her. Stacey comes to Julie’s upper Eastside abode, complete with a butler, where an elegantly dressed Julie greets him. So excited to hear about the man she loves, Stacey hands her one last letter where he reveals the truth. Thinking she would be happy, Julie instead is furious and slaps Stacey twice and hits him over the head with a pillow before storming off. A dejected Stacey heads to his club where Rob and Laura are decorating for the opening and he wallows in self pity. Arriving home, Rob answers the phone and it is Julie looking for Stacy. In a funny bit, she talks to Rob who relays what she is saying to Laura and it goes back and forth. Julie wants Rob to tell Stacy that she is sorry. Julie arrives at the opening and seeing her Stacey gets tongue-tied again as each tries to apologize and they amusingly keep cutting each other off. Wald is quite charming in this role and does well playing off the frenetic Jerry Van Dyke whose shtick can be grating.

In 1966 Jane Wald was still getting press and columnists speculated that her meetings with producer Arthur Jacobs was because she was being considered for the role of Nova in Planet of the Apes. That part went to Linda Harrison. She says, “I stopped acting around 1966 after I remarried and was expecting my first child. Because I resembled Natalie Wood, I was offered a part as her sister but had to turn it down. However, I did appear in a Buick commercial showing how a pregnant woman could fit behind the steering wheel.” Hubby #2 who was not in show business. They went on to have three children before divorcing in 1974.

Jane Wald’s last two sixties movies, the cult thriller Seconds starring Rock Hudson and the biker flick Hell’s Bloody Devils, only featured her in very minor roles and were a complete waste of her talent. It is surprising since she had graduated to bigger roles on TV and proved she had comedic ability that she would wind up the decade so insignificantly.

Wald made intermittent attempts to revive her acting career. In the mid-seventies she turned up in the episode “Flight to Danger” on Barnaby Jones and in 1993 she co-starred with Deanna Lund and Liz Torres as college chums who look back on their university days while vacationing at a ski resort in Girl Talk, a sort of precursor to Sex in the City.

Asked if she had any regrets giving up her career, Jane Wald firmly states, “I would rather have my children and the life I have now then a woman who doesn’t have children. That’s what is important in life—it’s not having a career. If you have a career and come home to an empty home at night—what’s the point?”