sixties

My friend former actress Gail Gerber passed away on March 1, 2014 and I write this with a heavy heart, but wanted to share some of my fondest memories of her. Gail used to get the biggest kick when I would introduce her endearingly to friends and family as “my starlet.” She would tell me, “Oh, Tom, I was a starlet for less than two years after being a dancer for over ten years and a ballet teacher for 25 years.” True, but to me she would always be the shapely blonde twitching on the sands of Malibu or with Elvis in a handful of mid-Sixties teenage movies that I would watch as a kid on the 4:30 Movie.

I met Gail in 2002 at a Greenwich Village coffee shop when I interviewed her for my book Drive-in Dream Girls, a title she knew Terry Southern would have just loved. We stayed in touch and then she relocated to Chicago. I saw her on her infrequent trips back here, but it wasn’t until she moved back to the city permanently in 2006 that we started seeing more of each other. Gail had such a vitality and grand sense of humor. I so enjoyed being around her. But I couldn’t believe I was hanging out with an almost 70 year old. Egad, she was a year older than my mother! But Gail was not like any woman I ever met at that age. Free-spirited, she smoked pot; loved New York City; bashed all Republicans; told stories of her life in Hollywood (my favorite is how she “accidentally” dropped a dog in a mailbox to get some publicity and got her face splashed across newspapers throughout the country) and her life with Terry Southern getting high with the Rolling Stones or hanging with the likes of Rip Torn, David Amram, William Burroughs, Larry Rivers, Lenny Bruce, George Segal, Geraldine Page, Roger Vadim, and, I quote, “those fuckers” Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.

Gail had been putting her memories down on paper and I helped her write her memoir Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember. Ernie was now living nearby Gail in Upstate Manhattan. Almost every Saturday for over a year, Gail would come by and we would work on her book. I would send her off with a homework assignment for the next time. Trooper that she was, Gail would take a yellow legal pad, just like Terry would do, and hightail it every Wednesday to the New Leaf, a quaint restaurant situated in the middle of FortTryonPark. With a glass of wine accompanying her meal, she would crank out anything she could remember about a point in her life. When the book was finally published, Gail told me laughing, “My brain is empty of all my memories.. I’m going to have to read my own book to remember.”

Gail just loved the New Leaf. We would go with her or meet her there on Friday nights for the live jazz. Petite Gail did not like to eat dinner at the bar not so much because of her size but as she’d say, “Nice girls from her time did not sit alone at a bar,” so she would get a table for herself always in the section of her favorite server Holly, a fellow dancer. It was always so reassuring to turn and see Gail at the table grooving to the different jazz groups. Eventually, she would join us at the bar for dessert. In Gail’s case it was a glass of Limoncello. Ernie would yell at our friend David the bartender to cut Gail or me off if we had too much to drink. He yelled often. All three of us would then stumble down the hill and walk Gail home. She so enjoyed her Friday nights there and would say to us “What fun!” as we said our goodbyes.

Sometimes at my house I would surprise Gail with one of her movies or a TV show she never saw. She would moan, “Oh, Tom!” Ernie would scold me for torturing poor Gail. But she never saw her screen work and I wanted to prove that she was a much better actress than she ever gave herself credit for. She had such a vivacious personality and comedic timing. Hell, she made 6 movies in 2 years! She stole The Girls on the Beach from the other bikini-clad gals and she was the only one brought back by producers Roger & Gene Corman for their second beach movie, Beach Ball. Once I made her watch her lead guest spot on a Peyton Place wannabe soap The Long Hot Summer with Roy Thinnes. She was amazed how good she was. She was not as shocked on how good she looked, especially when she climbed through a window in one scene, because she remembered the lighting guy and cameraman took a shine to her. “That what happens if you are friendly to the crew,” she said.

I think deep down Gail liked that she was a Hollywood actress and I am proud that I helped her appreciate that part of her life even to the point of answering her fan mail. One Friday night at the New Leaf, a young guy from Australia sat down next to me at the bar and began chatting. He had just moved to Upstate Manhattan and it was his first time at there. He only had been to another bar/restaurant nearby called Next Door. “The one with the TVs,” he said. I told him I have been there a number of times and they always have on Turner Classic Movies. He said he sat there watching Elvis dancing with some Arab gypsy girls. I laughed and said, “that is Harum Scarum—meet Sapphire” and motioned to Gail. She smiled, nonchanlantly picked up her drink and raised her glass to him. He couldn’t believe it and almost fell off his bar stool. It was such a crazy only-in-New-York moment.

Gail really became family to Ernie and me. If we were having dinner home on a Saturday, Gail was always invited. It didn’t matter how much food we had because, as we would joke, “she eats like a bird and drinks like a fish.” Gail was infamous for always being early. The door would buzz at say 2:15 and Ernie would yell at me. I’d say, “I swear I told her to come at 3!.” She and I sould sit at our kitchen bar sipping Prosecco while watching Ernie cook. They would share recipes or talk about Mark Bittman the food guy’s latest column in the New York Times. Gail and I would chat about her friends—what play she saw with her best gal pal Katie Meister this week; or what director Amy Wright was up to: or what city actress Angelica Page was in on tour; or how longtime friends Priscilla and David Bowen were coming along with their Berkshires house renovations; or how she chatted recently with John Kim, Terry’s former student. She loved meeting new people and recently made a special friend in Lucas Natali who she told me about for months until we finally met. It is these simple moments that I will miss and treasure most.

Here’s to you Gail Gerber! It was one helleva trip!

 

Actress/dancer Gail Gerber passed away on Saturday, March 1, 2014 due to complications from lung cancer. A petite, blonde beauty with a shapely figure, she is best remembered by movie fans as a starlet with a vivacious personality that brightened up several beach cult films as well as two Elvis features during the mid-Sixties.

Gerber was born on October 4, 1937 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and began studying ballet at age seven. Her talent was evident even as a young girl and at fifteen she became the youngest member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. She grew up touring with the ballet troupe and eventually married a jazz musician. But in the late 1950s, she abandoned the unsuccessful marriage and moved to Toronto to work as an actress. She appeared on stage and in many live CBC television dramas. Gerber also had a flair for comedy, and was one of the last to perform in TV sketches with the legendary vaudeville duo Smith and Dale (who inspired the film The Sunshine Boys) on both The Wayne and Schuster Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.

Moving to Hollywood in 1963, the talented blonde quickly snagged the lead role in the play Under the Yum Yum Tree and made guest appearances on such popular TV series as My Three Sons, Perry Mason, and Wagon Train.  In 1965, she made her film debut in The Girls on the Beach, co-starring The Beach Boys, before her agent suggested she change her name and, as Gail Gilmore, she went on to have principle roles opposite Elvis Presley in Girl Happy (1965) and 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 and Tisha Sterling), who terrorize a town in Village of the Giants (1965).

httpv://youtu.be/Oa2dTcxwOMI

Gerber had a minor role as a cosmetician in The Loved One (1965), directed by Academy Award winner Tony Richardson. It was on the set of that movie where she met its screenwriter Terry Southern, who was riding high due to the success of his satirical novels Candy and The Magic Christian, as well as the smash movie Dr. Strangelove, which he co-wrote. The two hit it off immediately and, despite their marriages to others, became inseparable. Gerber even abandoned her acting career in 1966 to live with Southern in New York, then in Connecticut, where she taught ballet for over twenty-five years and tended to their 200-year-old farmhouse, the chickens and pigs. Gerber remained Southern’s steadfast companion and muse until his death thirty years later in 1995.

After Southern’s death, Gerber spent most of her time living in New   York City. During the last twenty years of her life, she was the secretary of the Terry Southern Trust. She also returned to acting – playing a dotty old woman in Lucky Days (2008) an independent film written/directed by and starring her friend Angelica Page. Next she played a Wake Guest in avant-garde filmmaker Matthew Barney’s just completed film River of Fundament (2014).

httpv://youtu.be/0wvbBK9Nlsc

She also wrote her colorful memoir (with Tom Lisanti) Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember (published in 2010 by McFarland and Company, Inc.)  The book details what life was like with “the hippest guy on the planet” as Gerber and Southern traveled from LA to New York to Europe and back again. Gerber reveals what went on behind the scenes of her movies as well as Southern’s, including The Cincinnati Kid, End of the Road, and, most infamously, Easy Rider.  The book recounts the “highs” with Terry—hanging out with The Rolling Stones, Peter Sellers, Lenny Bruce, Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, William Burroughs, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page, David Amram, George Segal, and Ringo Starr—as well as the “lows” in the 1970s & 1980s, when they were barely scraping by on their Berkshires farm. The book received an Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal for Best Autobiography/Memoir of 2011.

Gail Gerber is survived by her stepfather Karl Dudda and will be remembered by her many fans and loving friends.

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Today is actress Carol Lynley’s 72^nd birthday and I realized it has been 40 years since I became obsessed with this gorgeous angelic-looking blonde actress with the bluest eyes and porcelain doll skin. Most people think it was due to The Poseidon Adventure that made me flip my lid but in actuality it was a Glen Campbell/Joe Namath comedy called Norwood.

Every pubescent boy in 1973 wanted to see The Poseidon Adventure and I was no different. I was mesmerized by the TV commercials and desperately wanted to see the movie. My family rarely took us to indoor movies but we frequented the drive-in during the Spring and Summer months often. My birthday rolled around on May 11 and The Poseidon Adventure was still playing in theaters across the country five months after it premiered. Needless to say, guess what I wanted for a present? So on a warm Saturday night, off to the drive-in we went.

I was too excited for words and got to sit in the front seat between my mom and dad while my three siblings settled down in back. The sun went down and the movie began. I was fascinated as it began to unspool introducing the passengers and crew hours before the New Year’s Eve countdown. Of course, I knew what was in store for all and sat there waiting anxiously for the big moment. Then it came. As the ocean liner began to roll over after being hit by a 90-foot tidal wave, I was mesmerized. I had never seen anything like it. My heart was racing as the people in the ballroom began to reach out desperately for anything to grab on to, as the ship began to tilt. “Hold on Linda,” Mike Rogo yelled to his wife. It was to no avail as they, Belle, Nonnie, Manny, Reverend Scott, Susan, Robin, and the rest all began tumbling down as the ocean liner began to capsize. It is the best piece of trick photography, stunt work, and special effects for me to this day.

httpv://youtu.be/dd03qev59Jo

After that capsizing scene, I sat there mouth agape for the rest of the movie as the passengers and crew made their way up to the bottom of the boat–climbing, swimming, crawling their way to try to escape. The movie was tense, exciting, shocking (they killed off major characters in horrific ways!), tender, and funny. I loved all the characters but the one that fascinated me the most was the hippie singer Nonnie clad in hot pants and go-go boots. She was the lone character who expressed sheer terror regarding their predicament. I could relate, as I was petrified just watching in a parked car.

When the movie ended, it was like I just awoke from a dream. First thing I asked my mother was “who was the pretty blond playing Nonnie?” She said, “Carol Lynley. She was in that vampire movie [The Night Stalker] that I told you not to watch last year.”

I put this “Carol Lynley” out of my mind. Then one Saturday night the following year NBC-TV was broadcasting a Glen Campbell comedy called Norwood from 1970. He played a returning G.I. who wanted to get out of his sleepy hometown and make it as a vocalist on some hayseed radio show. At a local roller rink he meets up with shady Grady (Pat Hingle) who tells the naïve boy that he has connections to the show and all Norwood needs to do is drive one of his cars to New   York City unaware they are hot. When Norwood shows up the next day, he finds there are actually two cars and a passenger sitting in it named, “Yvonne Phillips and she is a dandy.” Grady tells Norwood that Yvonne has her own spending money, but whatever arrangements they make between them is Norwood and Yvonne’s business. Norwood says he doesn’t think she wants to. Funny, she hasn’t said a word so why we would he automatically assume that I thought. Years later I discovered that censors cut the prior scene when Yvonne gets out of the car and cusses out Grady and Norwood.

(Carol is featured in below video at the 8:13 mark)

httpv://youtu.be/xXGtP4eRUuw

Calling Yvonne Philips a dandy was an under statement. A pretty sun-drenched blond with short hair in an orange mini-dress Yvonne was a ball of energy eating her can of peaches as the duo began arguing their way across the country. Norwood keeps calling his passenger Laverne  and she exclaims, “My name is not Laverne it’s Yvonne! But I don’t want you calling me nuthin’” Unfortunately, after Norwood runs a stop sign and the duo are chased by an inept deputy and his sheriff, he gives the stolen car to Yvonne who drives off to find her “cannonball” Sammy Ortega in Illinois and disappears from the movie. I watched until the end to see who the actress was and I was stunned to see it was Carol Lynley! The same Carol Lynley who has long hair and a hippieish look in The Night Stalker and The Poseidon Adventure? It couldn’t be. She had a totally different look and played such an animated role. But it was.

From that moment on I tried to catch every movie and TV show she appeared in. I would buy the TV Guide a week early to plan my watching. If Carol turned up during the daytime on The Hollywood Squares or Dinah’s Place I would plan to be sick that day to stay home from school. It only worked a few times as my mom began to catch on. If one of Carol’s movies appeared on the Late Late Show (as Harlow often did) I would try to keep myself awake or set my alarm to get up (remember this was pre-VCR days). Luckily, a number of her films (particularly The Pleasure Seekers and The Shuttered Room) were regular features on the ABC-TV 4:30 Movie and that Carol was a frequent guest on The Mike Douglas Show. Both programs aired after school was out.

httpv://youtu.be/b3TetDSN09I

I began a scrapbook of clippings on Carol tearing out her picture or magazine/newspaper articles on her wherever I saw them including a few library books I am sorry to admit. Hell, I was desperate. Due to her romances with David Frost, Jack Haley, Jr. (later whom Carol confessed was just a friendship since he was gay) and others she popped up in the Enquirer, the Star, and Rona Barrett’s Gossip and Hollywood magazines frequently. I wrote in to Newsday’s TV column with questions I already knew the answers to such as “Was there a movie sequel to Peyton Place and, if so, who played Alison?” and “Did Carol Lynley sing ‘The Morning After’ in The Poseidon Adventure?” only to get her picture in the paper. It worked both times. My fascination became so acute and my family so aware that I overheard my mom tell her friend, “Tom stays up to all hours to watch Carol Lynley movies and pro wrestling.” The latter is for another discussion.

Some Carol experiences stand out for me. In 1975, our junior high school English class went to see the musical Raisin in NYC. It was my first Broadway show. But I was more interested in seeing the marquee for Absurd Person Singular “the longest running comedy on Broadway starring Geraldine Page, Carol Lynley and Fritz Weaver” as the TV commercial would blare. My nose was pressed to our bus’ window as we rode by since the theaters for the two shows were near each other. At this time Carol was the very fit spokeswoman for New York Health & Raquet Club and I always would run to the TV when her commercial aired. But I was most excited when I read that Carol was going to be a presenter on the 1979 Academy Awards most likely due to Jack Haley, Jr. who was directing. Carol looked simply stunning in a aqua blue evening gown that brought her eyes out even more and a blown back hairdo. She and co-presenter Robby Benson made a nice pairing and thankfully did not make fools of themselves as celebrities often do at these things.

I am the first to admit that Carol Lynley is not the greatest actress. There are no Oscars or Emmys on her mantle. And in her later years she could be guilty of delivering a bland and lazy performance. But for me she had that certain something that makes you stand up and take notice. Perhaps it is the cool elegance that she exudes. She had the guts to take on varied roles and fought typecasting.  As she once said, “I’ve played murderesses, nuns, whores and neurotics.” 40 years later I am still taking notice.

Happy Birthday Carol Lynley!

Below are 2 of my books Carol is featured in and hopefully one more to come in the near future.

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In 1967, former model and Miss Rheingold Celeste Yarnall risked her life savings to travel to the Cannes Film Festival in hopes of being “discovered” even though she was acting in television and films (The Nutty Professor, Around the World Under the Sea, among others) since 1963.  Discouraged that her career hadn’t taken off, she and her husband Sheldon Silverstein headed to that international city hoping Celeste would wow some producers. And wow them she did!  Producer Harry Alan Towers, who was looking for a girl to play a female Tarzan in Eve, spotted her strolling down the street. According to Yarnall, he yelled and pointed, ‘Stop that girl!  That’s my Eve!’ Yarnall made a breathtaking jungle goddess in Eve, but the film wasn’t a success though a cult favorite today.

The jungle adventure Eve (1968) starring Celeste Yarnall was reminiscent of One Million Years B.C. with Raquel Welch and She with Ursula Andress. It was the story of an alluring half-savage jungle woman named Eve living in the wilds of Brazil where the natives worship her as a goddess. Trouble begins for Eve when she rescues a downed pilot (Robert Walker Jr.) who brings back news of this female Tarzan. A smalltime showman (Fred Clark) wants to capture her to put her on display while villainous Diego (Herbert Lom) wants her dead because he has been passing of his mistress (Rosenda Monteros) as the long-lost Eve, heir to her grandfather’s (Christopher Lee) fortune. To make matters worse, the natives want to kill Eve for helping a white man and there is Incan treasure wanted by all. In the end the villains get their due and Eve is reunited with her grandfather on his deathbed. However, she rejects the noise and confusion of the civilized world only to return to the jungle, despite her love for the pilot who vows to find her. The ending left it open for an intended sequel, which was never made to the relief of Yarnall who called Eve “one of the worst movies of all time.”

When Harry Alan Towers discovered Yarnall walking down the promenade in Cannes he offered her the lead in Eve on the spot. “I don’t know why Towers thought I was right for this part,” speculated Celeste. “I was never a tomboy and hadn’t climbed a tree in my life. I was more the sedate type. I even had to take some Judo classes to train for the role.”  When the start date of the film was postponed, Celeste returned to Los Angeles and was signed by Columbia to play one of the glamorous showgirls in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. She had to back out because “the start date for Eve was at the same time.” Threatened by Towers with a lawsuit, Yarnall had no choice but to turn down the acclaimed musical.

This was only the first of many problems Celeste encountered with her producer. “If you notice there is a whole section in the middle of Eve that has to do with Rosenda Monteros pretending to be me,” said Yarnall. “I am missing from the film for a long stretch because Towers stopped paying me. My husband wouldn’t let me show up on the set until I was paid. They re-wrote the whole middle of the script so that they could keep shooting. The movie’s called Eve and you’re wondering, ‘Where in God’s earth is Eve?’ My husband showed up at Towers’ office with a water pistol pretending it was a gun and said, ‘If you don’t pay Celeste, she’s not going to show up.’ Towers was a notorious schemer. I ran into him years later and he was like a normal person, but back then he was absolutely wild! He had a little German girlfriend named Schnitzel and he worked in a small part for her.”

Despite his shadiness, producer/screenwriter Harry Alan Towers had a knack for getting high caliber actors to appear in his foreign productions. Here was no exception, as he assembled such stalwarts as Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, and Fred Clark to support Celeste and her leading man Robert Walker, Jr. “Herbert Lom was an amazing gentlemen—just a very elegant, intelligent man,” said Celeste fondly. “Christopher Lee was totally bent out of shape that he was playing my grandfather because he felt he would have been a much better leading man for me than Robert Walker was! And he just hated being made up to look old.”

As for her leading man, per Celeste he was truly an actor of the Sixties. “Robert was very far out.  He was into psychedelia and meditation. I know for awhile that he and his family lived off of nature somewhere in the canyons of Malibu. They bathed in a creek!  He is a very interesting man, but at that time he was too way out there for me. In retrospect, I liked him and I still like him.”

httpv://youtu.be/sLkJTYQ_BrA

One of the film’s pluses was that it was filmed on location in Spain and Brazil. However, shooting amongst the gorgeous scenery came with a price. “I got very sick in Spain,” recalled Celeste. “They put rancid oil all over their vegetables and I got food poisoning. Then I got injured while filming in Brazil.  A stuntman had taught me some moves for my fight scene with Rosenda Monteros. It was carefully choreographed because we were high up on a bluff. Rosenda was supposed to put the sole of her right boot into my stomach and I would fall into the stuntman’s arms. But she used her left foot and pushed me the wrong way and I almost went over the cliff. The stuntman did one of those flying leaps and caught the back of my head in the palm of his hand. We both fell into this bush—I was all cut up—but he saved me from a two hundred foot drop.”

Once the film was completed, Celeste saw a preview and was horrified. “I was incensed because I think I’m dubbed in this —it doesn’t sound like my voice,” she exclaimed. “I remember that they didn’t want to fly me back to do the looping.” Despite that fact, the actress agreed to help promote the movie in the U.S. “I remember climbing up on a drive-in movie theater marquee and having my picture taken. I did a small tour promoting the film because I was voted one of the Most Promising New Stars of 1968 by the National Association of Theatre Owners [for this and her performance in Live a Little, Love a Little opposite Elvis Presley].”

Any film that has Christopher Lee and the stunning Celeste Yarnall in a loin cloth is worth seeing and here you will not be disappointed. The story keeps your interest; the scenery is picturesque; and the actors, though not at their best, all play their roles competently.

You can read more about Celeste Yarnall in my books Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema and Film Fatales (co-written with Louis Paul).

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