sixties

LAND OF THE GIANTS

My prayers have been answered! On July 24, Fox will be releasing the entire two seasons of the Irwin Allen sci-fi series Land of the Giants, my favorite show as a kid, in a deluxe package including cast interviews, booklets, and trading cards. I always liked this show more than Lost in Space because even though I was only seven when I first started to watch I liked that it was more adult and less of a “kiddie show” than Space. Plus it had fiery redhead Deanna Lund in the coolest miniskirts and minidresses (she’s featured of course in my upcoming book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood), and muscular Gary Conway as the pilot of the ill-fated Spindrift, which crash landed on a planet where everything is ten times the size of our small group of intergalatic castaways.

For more information about the DVD set, check out this link.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To Sivi Aberg. This Swedish bombshell was voted the “Star of Tomorrow” at the 1968 Hollywood Deb Star Ball but during the Sixties her best roles were not on film but on TV’s Batman playing one of the trio of bag-pipe playing vixens who aid Liberace’s evil Chandal and later the bikini-clad surfer moll to the Joker. But she is best remembered as Chuck Barris beautiful assistant on The Gong Show during the Seventies.

You can read more about Sivi Aberg in my upcoming book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

DV-R ALERT!

Carol Lynley is a beautiful manic depressive sex kitten who recoils in fright at the the touch of a man who falls for virile Stuart Whitman as an actor hired to pretend to be bonkers so he can discover where homicidal gardner Roddy McDowall hid the loot he stole from his rich murdered victim in the campy, unintentional laugh-fest Shock Treatment (1964). They are all inmates of a looney bin run by Dr. Lauren Bacall who turns out to be crazier than a shithouse rat. Catch it on the Fox Movie Channel on May 9 at 4PM.

SOCK IT TO ME!

Happy Belated Birthday to Judy Carne of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. This petite auburn-haired Brit became famous for her Sock-It-To-Me bit where usually bikini-clad with her body painted with far-out slogans she would get dowsed by a bucket of water. I also loved her on the one season sitcom Love on a Rooftop with Peter Duell. Judy had a rough time of it in the Eighties and Nineties due to a drug addiction and let’s hope she is still clean and sober. Check out this mod clip of Judy with Arte Johnson in a takeoff on Laugh-In for Sears.

Busty, bug-eyed blonde Joy Harmon also celebrated a recent birthday. You can read about her infamous car scene from the classic Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke in my upcoming article for Cinema Retro magazine. Joy will also be featured in my new book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.