Lovely Inga Neilsen was dubbed on the Internet as “A Nordic Goddess Supreme, the World’s Greatest Glamazon” and the statuesque beauty clearly deserves the title. Standing 6-foot-3 in heels, this striking blue-eyed blonde had curves galore and was built to be ogled on the big screen in ’60s spy spoofs (including In Like Flint as the Head Amazonian guard who leads her compatriots in Operation Smooch) and musical extravaganzas (including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as slave Zero Mostel’s love interest the mute Gymnasia and Funny Girl as the scintillating Winter Bride, the most dazzling of Ziegfeld Girls). Her body was not all Inga offered as she was an accomplished singer and had comedic talent to hold her own opposite some of the decades top comedians in numerous TV variety shows.
I interviewed Inga for my book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood. Below are clips from a local Southern California talk show called Jodie in Malibu that Inga appeared on. I was taken aback in clip two where Inga pushed my book and said kind words about me. What a nice classy woman.
is the lovely Quinn O’Hara. You lucky Southlanders can meet Quinn at the upcoming Hollywood Collectors Show on July 18 and 19. After years of prodding, Quinn will be there signing autographs along with other 60s celebrities including Tommy Kirk, Francine York, Martine Beswicke, Edd Byrnes, Luciana Paluzzi, and Lana Wood. Quinn has a wonderful collection of publicity photos and movie stills of her so stop by and say hello. She is one of the nicest people you will ever meet.
From my book, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies:
A “red-headed gasser,” Quinn O’Hara certainly lived up to that description and became very popular with teenage audiences during the sixties. A former Miss Scotland, this titan-haired beauty began on television before appearing in minor film roles with major stars such as Jerry Lewis and Jack Lemmon. Younger audiences remembered her best for her two back-to-back starring roles in two beach-party movies. O’Hara exuded a natural sex appeal that had every boy’s heart racing either playing the good girl as in A Swingin’ Summer (1965) or the vixen as in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). She should have become a major star however, disenchanted with the roles being offered her, Quinn fled to England in the late sixties where she worked on stage, TV and an occasional film.
Quinn O’Hara was dramatically born in a hospital’s elevator going up in Edinburgh, Scotland on Jan. 3, 1941 to a Welsh father and a Scottish-Irish mother who named the impatient newborn Alice Jones. Most of her childhood was spent in a convent boarding school in Wales. When she turned fourteen, she and her mother moved to Quebec, Canada where the blossoming teenager learned to speak French. After three years, they upped and moved to Long Beach, California where the red haired beauty stood out from the myriad of California blondes. Her European origins prevented her from competing in the Miss California contest but she was dubbed Miss Scotland by the Royal Order of her home country.
With all the newfound attention she was receiving and with the acting offers coming in, Alice Jones morphed into the more appropriate name for a titan-hair Scottish lass, Quinn O’Hara. Her big screen debut was in a bit part in The Errand Boy (1961) starring Jerry Lewis. O’Hara would go on to work with Lewis again in The Patsy (1964) playing the minor role of a cigarette girl and in Who’s Minding the Store? (1963), though her scenes were cut.
O’Hara’s first taste of fame came when she was selected to appear with Vic Damone in his 1962 Emmy-nominated summer series The Lively Ones. The popular show brought O’Hara notoriety and she became very much in demand on TV but she wasn’t having much luck with films. Only her hand was on display in The Caretakers (1963) where she played a nurse. Good Neighbor, Sam (1964) featured all of Quinn in the small role of a curvy secretary to recently promoted ad man Jack Lemmon. O’Hara kept persevering. She began getting press in all the movie rags of the time and she was chosen by Photoplay to be photographed on a pre-arranged “date” with teen idol Fabian. But surprisingly, the duo hit it off and it developed into a relationship that lasted a year.
In 1965 Quinn O’Hara co-starred in one of the better Beach Party knockoffs A Swingin’ Summer with William Wellman, Jr. James Stacy, and Mary Mitchel. Though it was not her first color movie it was her first lead role. She looked terrific in her mod swimsuits and more than held her own with rising superstar, Raquel Welch.
Quinn next auditioned at AIP for the role of the sexy though bumbling Sinistra in what was then titled Bikini Party in a Haunted House. It was not her first encounter with the studio. The producers and director Don Weis originally wanted her for a role in Pajama Party (1964) but she declined because “I didn’t want to be just one of the beach girls so I turned it down.” AIP decided they needed to pump new life into their beach-party genre so they came up with an idea of combining it with a horror angle, which had worked so well for them with the series of Edgar Allan Poe films. Bikini Party in a Haunted House featured Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley and Patsy Kelly as heirs to a fortune who gather at the creepy mansion of dead millionaire, Hiram Stokely, to hear the reading of his will. O’Hara played the bumbling daughter of crooked attorney Basil Rathbone who instructs the vixen to off Kelly’s interfering nephew Aron Kincaid. But her nearsightedness keeps getting in her way. That’s her reallysinging in the clip below.
The head honchos at AIP decreed that Bikini Party in a Haunted House was not releasable. To salvage the film, scenes with Boris Karloff as the recently departed Hiram Stokely and Susan Hart as his long-dead wife, Cecily, were added and the film was re-titled The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. Though the film was not a big moneymaker, AIP was so impressed with O’Hara that they offered her another film. However, it was the laughable low-budget sci-fi flick In the Year 2889 (1967), co-starring Paul Petersen of The Donna Reed Show and directed by self-described “schlockmeister” Larry Buchanan. Much better was the Academy Award-nominated short film, Prelude (1968) starring O’Hara as the bitchy wife of meek John Astin who meets his fantasy girl Karen Jensen in a supermarket.
It was shortly thereafter that Quinn O’Hara departed Hollywood for London to do theatre. One of the films Quinn O’Hara did while in Europe was a small role as a “witch wench” in the AIP horror film Cry of the Banshee (1970) starring Vincent Price and she made a guest appearance on TV’s The Saint with Roger Moore. O’Hara’s last movie was Rubia’s Jungle (1971), which was shot in the Netherlands.
During her time in England, O’Hara made periodical trips back to Hollywood to maintain her working status. She could be seen on TV in To Rome with Love, The Smith Family and Ironside, and on the big screen in the cult sex comedy The Teacher (1974). Then Quinn disappeared from show business. On a trip to Africa to visit her father who was working there she met an Italian guy there. She accompanied him back to Italy where they were suppose to marry but didn’t. When she returned to Hollywood in the late seventies she found it surprisingly difficult to get work. Her friend, director Don Weis, gave her a part in an episode of CHiPs and she landed two small roles on One Day at a Time. Unfortunately, that was all she could muster.
Like a number of her contemporaries, O’Hara took up real estate to make ends meet. After a short-lived marriage Quinn met Bill Kirk who is twenty years her junior in 1981. They married, divorced, and have since reconciled. Today, Quinn O’Hara works as a nurse and has reactivated her acting career. She still has her va-va-voom looks and wants another chance at the big time. “I wanted then and still might get an Academy Award,” says Quinn defiantly. “I haven’t given up and will put my face out there and let people know that I am alive. I have set up a web site and have started attending acting workshops and Tai Chi.”
Looking back at her beach party days, Quinn says, “Beach movies reflected the times. I think that is important that people look back on these films and remember them for what they were. It was good clean fun not like the smut you see today on the Internet. I am proud to have been a part of it.”
Sixties starlet Gail Gerber’s memoir, co-written by moi, Trippin’ with Terry Southern; What I Think I Remember is now available. Click here to purchase your copy through Amazon.com.
If I do say so myself, the book is very entertaining. The chapter that stands out for me is Gail’s remembrance of what went on behind-the-scenes in creating Easy Rider. For years and years, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper have given Terry Southern short shrift in regards to the film’s success and never shared any of the millions of dollars they earned with him. Today is even worse as “the Lads,” as Terry called them, now say he didn’t even write the screenplay but only gave them the title. Balderdash says Gail and she is backed up by Terry’s original script now housed at The New York Public Library.
On Turner Classic Movies that is. Set the DVRs for Thursday July 9 beginning at 12:45PM as it is a 4 picture marathon of beach and ski parties. Click here for the schedule.
First up is For Those Who Think Young (1964) where rich college boy James Darren pursues studious coed Pamela Tiffin in and out of the surf. Wonderful supporting cast including Bob Denver and Tina Louise before they were stranded together on Gilligan’s Island, Nancy Sinatra, and Paul Lynde and Woody Woodbury as two bickering old queens oops I mean swinging playboys.
Get Yourself a College Girl (1964) sends coeds Mary Ann Mobley, Nancy Sinatra, Chris Noel, and their swinging teacher Joan O’Brien to the ski slopes where pompous Chad Everett wants to make more than beautiful music with budding songwriter Mobley while Latin lover Fabrizio Mioni only has eyes for the naive Noel.
It’s a Bikini World (1967) when Deborah Walley and Suzie Kaye decorate the shores of Southern California where chauvinist beach boy Tommy Kirk tries to woo feminist Walley by pretending to be his nerdy twin brother who coaches her in a series of sport challenges.
And finally Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello have a Beach Party (1963) in the movie that started the Hollywood surf movie craze. All your beach movie faves are here including Dick Dale & His Del-Tones, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Candy Johnson, Valora Noland, Mike Nader, Ed Garner, Johnny Fain, and Delores Wells.
