sixties

AND NOW A READING FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. GERBER

Former ’60s starlet Gail Gerber has been invited to be the “special guest” at the Darinka Prose & Poetry Reunion at 7pm on May 5 at Dixon Place in New York City’s East Village. She will be reading from her memoir (co-written by yours truly pictured with Gail) Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember. Click here for more details. Unfortunately, the book will not be out by then but Gail will be reading from the first chapter about how she met writer Southern and from the Easy Rider chapter.

About Gail:
She was born in Edmonston, Alberta, Canada and began studying ballet at age seven. Extremely talented, at fifteen she became the youngest member of Les Grandes Ballets Canadiennes in Montreal. She quit the ballet troupe in the late ‘50s and moved to Toronto to work as an actress. She appeared on stage and in many live CBC television dramas, and danced and acted on comedians Wayne and Schuster’s Canadian variety show, which led to two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Moving to Hollywood in 1963, the talented blonde with a flair for comedy quickly snagged the lead role in the play Under the Yum Yum Tree at the Ivar Theatre and appeared on such popular TV series as My Three Sons, Perry Mason, and Wagon Train.

She made her film debut in The Girls on the Beach (1965) co-starring The Beach Boys before her agent suggested she change her name and as Gail Gilmore she went on to appear in two Elvis Presley musicals, playing a vacationing coed in Girl Happy (1965) and a dancing gypsy in Harum Scarum (1965).

She then returned to the sands of Malibu to co-star with Edd “Kookie” Byrnes in Beach Ball (1965) before growing to gigantic proportions along with five other delinquent teenagers, including Beau Bridges, who terrorize a town in Village of the Giants (1965).

Gerber met writer Terry Southern on the set of The Loved One (1965) where she had a minor role as a cosmetician and abandoned her career in 1966 to live with him in New York then Connecticut where she remained his longtime companion until his death thirty years later.

BORN TO BE WILD

Actor Roscoe Born has been my favorite soap actor since his first soap role on Ryan’s Hope as charming mobster Joe Novak who tried to go straight for the love of Siobhan Ryan but his ties to the mob were too hard to break. He (along with Randall Edwards then Ilene Kristen as ditzy, deceitful Delia Reid Ryan Coleridge) kept me glued to the soap from 1981 through 1983 (I arranged my classes around it until we got a VCR in 1982) while all my college friends were watching General Hospital.

Most fans don’t realize that Roscoe has been singing for years between his stints on One Life to Live, Santa Barbara, The Young and the Restless, and others. Check out the clip below for his latest song:

COME HAVE A SURF PARTY WITH ME!

Besides airing The Pleasures Seekers all this month, Fox Movie Channel is also broadcasting the rarely seen Surf Party (1964) a low-budget b/w beach movie starring Bobby Vinton and Jackie DeShannon that was released shortly after Beach Party starring Frankie and Annette. Below is my review from my book, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969:

Surf Party is realistic, albeit melodramatic, look at the surfing craze and Malibu surfers in particular. It is also an obvious rip-off of Beach Party without the zaniness. There is some neat surfing footage featuring pros like Mickey Dora and Johnny Fain but the flat black-and-white photography doesn’t do it justice though it buoys the story. The female leads all do well but Bobby Vinton and Kenny Miller fail miserably trying to pass themselves off as surfers.

Though screenwriter Harry Spalding’s script about three gals who come to Malibu to learn to surf and to the brother of one of the girls is a bit overemotional at times, he gets praise in for injecting surfer slang and tips on how to surf into it. Too bad producer Maury Dexter couldn’t get anybody other than Bobby Vinton to deliver the lines. If AIP had hired him for Beach Party there wouldn’t have been a series of films. Worse than Vinton is the pudgy Kenny Miller who was way too long in the tooth to be playing a twenty-year-old. However, Miller has a pleasant singing voice and does well with his solo. Only Jerry Summers as the leader of the renegade surfing crew makes an impression though we never once see him shoot the curl but just hit the sheets first with his older woman benefactor and then with his sister’s girlfriend.

Dexter had better luck with his female cast. Pat Morrow sports a bitchin’ flip hair-do and makes a nice heroine. Unlike Annette she even gets her bathing suit wet! Jackie DeShannon plays the dippy blonde to good affect while dark-haired Lory Patrick gives a sympathetic performance as the good girl who goes all the way only to regret her actions. Only downside with these gals is that they wear one-piece or very modest two-piece swimsuits. There’s not a bikini wearer in the bunch!

The music in Surf Party is a mixed lot because it throws in different styles (even Gospel!) to try to appease everyone. The best songs are the ones delivered by The Astronauts (see clip below) who aggressively try to obtain a surf reverb sound and The Routers with “Crack Up.” Director Maury Dexter gets kudos for his surfing footage and actually gets shots of the actors out in the ocean on their boards. Rather than use the dreaded blue screen for close-ups, Dexter put Kenny Miller and the others on a speedboat and filmed them as if they were surfing. Though this approach isn’t always convincing it is more creative than putting the actors in a tank with a fake backdrop. Dexter also gets praise for getting Mickey Dora out of the water and giving the surfer the most screen time than in any of his other pictures.

With a bigger budget and more convincing male leads, Surf Party could have been considered one of the best Hollywood surf movies of the period instead of just a Beach Party rip-off.