sixties

GERBER ON THE BEACH

Click below to see the wild trailer for The Girls on the Beach (1965) starring Gail Gerber with the Beach Boys, Lesley Gore, Martin West, Noreen Corcoran, Aron Kincaid, Lana Wood, Linda Marshall, and the dreamy Steve Rogers (that is him on the left with West and Kincaid).

Gail talks in length about the making of this movie in her memoir Trippin’ with Terry Southern. These girls on the beach did not play nice with each other when the cameras stopped rolling and Gail reveals her disdain for having to shake her bod to the Beach Boys’ music, which she thought was Godawful.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

One of the most popular movies of 1960 was the John Wayne directed The Alamo starring the Duke as Davy Crockett, Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie, plus Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon, Chill Wills, Patrick Wayne and Linda Cristal.

Click here to see rare behind the scenes footage of The Alamo from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. The clips are in b&w and are silent, but show some interesting scenes. The blonde actress featured is Sixties Starlet Joan O’Brien. I interviewed her for my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, and below are excerpts from it:

O’Brien’s agents next wrangled her an interview for a role in John Wayne’s epic film The Alamo (1960). The small part of Sue Dickinson interested Joan because “I thought it would be a nice thing to play a historic character and this role had the big dramatic ending as she and two children are the sole survivors of the massacre. I could envision that whoever portrayed Sue would get a big play on the screen.” Meeting John Wayne, whose image was bigger than life itself, terrified Joan who was summoned to his office alone without her agents. “John Wayne was a huge guy—a giant,” comments Joan. “But he made me feel very much at home. I remember he put his feet up on his desk and looked down at me from his big leather chair. He just talked to me like a regular person. I thought, ‘Gee, he’s not hard to take.’ Then he told me that Loretta Young had offered to do the part for free. Right away he had me because I thought ‘If Loretta Young offered to do it for nothing I should be so happy to do this and get paid.’ He was very flattering and said to me, ‘You remind me of a younger Lana Turner.’ He thought I was right for the part and I knew I had nothing to lose by taking it.”

The Alamo finally began shooting on September 9, 1959 in Brackettville, Texas. Describing the location, Joan says, “This dusty little town had one gas pump, one little café where they only spoke Spanish, and one movie house that only showed Spanish films. There was nothing to do in that town and I went stir crazy. This shoot was long, laborious, and exhausting.”

As for her opinion of John Wayne, O’Brien muses, “John Wayne was just getting his feet wet as a director with The Alamo. He knew how to stage scenes and what to do with the camera, the lighting, and positioning his actors. But he wasn’t very good getting an emotional draw from an actor. Which is unusual because when an actor directs they usually handle other actors extremely well. I didn’t feel any frustration with him because I felt that my character was truly defined. He also seemed at times somewhat abrupt and impatient with some individuals. I think one of the reasons for that was The Alamo was a project of enormous magnitude. He not only starred in it but also produced and directed it. He had a lot riding on this film. And when you also have money invested in it sometimes it is very difficult to be charming. However, Wayne was never rude with me.”

WISH I WAS GOING TO GRACELAND

This weekend, Graceland will premiere 3 major new Elvis Presley exhibitions including one called Elvis in Hollywood that salutes his career as a film star. It will include Elvis’ personal scripts with hand-written notes, as well as his own copies of his films. For more information, click here.

For this weekend only March 6-8, Sixties starlet Darlene Tompkins will be at Graceland sharing her stories about co-starring with the King in one of his biggest hits, Blue Hawaii (1961). Below are excerpts from my interview with her in my book Drive-in Dream Girls:

While on the Paramount lot, Tompkins tested for a new Elvis Presley musical to be shot on location in Hawaii. Appropriately titled Blue Hawaii (1961), producer Hal Wallis was looking for four actresses to play students on vacation with their attractive chaperone who hire Elvis as a tour guide to show them the islands. “I went on a number of interviews for this,” recalls Darlene. “There were so many girls trying out. It was probably the biggest audition I ever went on. I really hadn’t heard that much rock and roll because I was really into Johnny Mathis so I didn’t know much about Elvis as the other girls had. I treated this interview like any other interview. As I was auditioning everybody was telling me about what Elvis Presley was like. I started to listen to his records and found them to be very exciting. I just got lucky and was cast in a part.”

Darlene Tompkins did not get to meet Elvis until shooting began in Hawaii. Recalling their relationship, Darlene says, “My first reaction was that I thought he was just so handsome. Elvis was also extraordinarily polite with me because I think I was the only girl there that he didn’t date. I felt so sad about that actually. But we just hit it off as friends. We just liked to sit and talk—to my forever regrets!” One of their conversations revolved around potatoes as Elvis confessed that though they were his favorites he didn’t eat them anymore because per Darlene “he didn’t want to gain weight.”

Recalling some of her other co-stars, Tompkins states, “Joan Blackman and Elvis were very close. She was one of his girlfriends and Pamela Austin was the other one. Joan was very quiet and the only one I really didn’t talk to. But she did one thing that interested me. She didn’t want to blink into the camera so she would look—she has the most beautiful pale eyes you ever saw—into the sunlight so she could practice not blinking when looking at the production lights. I tried to copy her but my eyes just watered. Joan was very dedicated and worked hard.

“I didn’t realize how fascinating and wonderful Angela Lansbury was until about two years after finishing this movie,” continues Darlene. “If I had known that then, I would have been sitting there watching her every move because she became my favorite actress. Nancy Walters was great fun to work with and Jenny Maxwell was very flamboyant. She was gunned down on the streets of Los Angeles years later. We all got along greatly. All the actresses were there to do our jobs and that is what we did. We’d have one day off a week and some of us would just go out and tour Hawaii.”