sixties

When one thinks of heroines of British horror films of the seventies, actresses Veronica Carlson, Ingrid Pitt, and Caroline Munro quickly come to mind.  But another English lass named Jill Haworth also made her mark in the genre with her appearances in It!; The Haunted House of Horror/Horror House; Tower of Evil/Horror on Snape Island; Home for the Holidays (TV), and The Mutations.  A saucy petite blonde with a wonderfully throaty voice and just a trace of an English accent, Haworth had the qualities to expertly play the damsel in distress.  Though she appeared in the horror genre begrudgingly, you would never guess it from watching her performances.

Jill was discovered in 1959 by producer/director Otto Preminger (or as he was referred to, “Otto the Ogre”) and appeared in his films Exodus as an ill-fated young Jewish girl settling in the new Israel (earning a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer – Female); The Cardinal wasted playing a novitiate nun who spends most of limited time on screen washing the feet of dying priest Burgess Meredith; and In Harm’s Way as an army nurse who survives the bombing of Pearl Harbor only to be raped by Col. Kirk Douglas. “When you make three films with Otto Preminger, you’ve made three films with Otto Preminger and no one dicks around with you after that,” said Jill with a laugh.

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After filming In Harm’s Way, Haworth’s contract with Otto Preminger was terminated since he had no roles in the pipeline suitable for her. She then returned to her native England in 1966 to co-star opposite Roddy McDowall in It!—her first excursion into the realm of horror. She plays the innocent young girl lusted after by disturbed museum curator Roddy McDowall who (ala Norman Bates) keeps his mummified mommy around the house. If that’s not bad enough, he brings to life a Hebrew statue called the Golem and uses it to do away with his enemies. Despite the premise, director Herbert J. Leder did a decent job in creating suspense. “I only did this film because I needed the money,” divulged Jill. “I hated everything about this movie—particularly what they did to my hair. They gave me an atrocious hairstyle for it. But I did like Roddy McDowall. He was very nice to work with. And with Roddy, what you see is what you get. He even brought me the poster for It! on the opening night of Cabaret. I couldn’t believe they were going to release it. He signed it and put an S-h before the It!  This film really was a piece of shit.”

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It! did have an upside. During filming Jill was introduced to director Hal Prince who was on his way to Germany to do research for his new show Cabaret, the musical version of Charles Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin stories. “Hal Prince asked if I could sing,” recalled Jill, “and I responded, ‘louder than Merman.’” She flew to New York to audition and director Hal Prince cast her over Liza Minnelli and countless other actresses in the coveted role of Sally Bowles. The musical was a smash hit. Unfortunately, one terrible mean-spirited review by New York Times critic Walter Kerr dogged Haworth’s time in the show despite overall positive reviews from the other critics and receiving a New York Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance. She stayed with the show for two and a half years “to spite Kerr,” as she joked.

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After leaving Cabaret, Jill returned to England to do her second thriller called The Haunted House of Horror aka Horror House (1970) or as the critics nicknamed it “Haunted House a-Go-Go”. (“My agents at ICM thought this would be a good career move.  It wasn’t!”) Mini-skirted Jill (who unbeknownst to her stepped in after Carol Lynley and Sue Lyon turned it down) and perennial teenager Frankie Avalon are part of a bunch of young swingers who hold a séance in a supposedly haunted house. One of them turns up murdered and the survivors begin suspecting each other. When Scotland Yard begins snooping, the teens return to the scene of the crime to flush out the killer. “Frankie didn’t want to do this film either but he was under contract to the studio [AIP]. But we just made the best of the situation and had a fabulous time working together. He has a great sense of humor. And you needed one doing this film. They housed us with the crew in this old, supposedly haunted hotel in Southport, England. The conditions were horrible. There weren’t any private bathrooms and you even had to take your own toilet paper to use the john! Frankie and I just kept laughing. Sometimes you need to laugh to get through unpleasant things.”

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Speaking of unpleasant things, Jill’s characters faced a number of disturbing situations in her horror films to come.  She is terrorized by a maniac in Tower of Evil (1972); pitch forked to death in the ABC Movie of the Week, Home for the Holidays (1972); and after being accosted by her mutated boyfriend goes into a catatonic state of shock in The Mutations (1973), directed by Jack Cardiff. “I never wanted to do horror movies,” admitted Jill. “But when acting is your livelihood you sometimes have to accept unwanted roles just to survive. The only film I really like and remember much about is Home for the Holidays.”

Home for the Holidays was directed John Llewllyn Moxey who achieves suspense with this made-for-TV film, but not as much as he did with The Night Stalker. The film (from a script by Joseph Stefano) doesn’t hold up too well. It stars Walter Brennan as a cantankerous dying old man who summons his four estranged daughters back home for the Christmas holidays after he begins to suspect that his second wife (Julie Harris) is poisoning him and wants them to off her first before she does him in. The reunited siblings—the oft married party girl (Haworth); the innocent college coed (doe-eyed Sally Field); the stalwart eldest sister (Eleanor Parker); and the pill popping mess (Jessica Walter)—are doubtful but then two are brutally butchered. “We were the most disparate group of sisters ever to hit the screen,” laughed Jill. “None of us looked anything alike. Sally Field and I had star billing and we got along famously. She is a serious actress and was taking classes at the Actor’s Studio. She also had a great sense of humor and a mouth worse than mine. Julie Harris is a great actress and it was an honor to work with her. Eleanor Parker always had to make a grand entrance onto the set.” Jill adored Jessica Walter too, but Parker ranked right up there with John Wayne on In Harm’s Way as her two most disliked co-stars.

The entertaining Tower of Evil was directed by Jim O’Connelly and produced by prolific horror movie producer Richard Gordon. It was released in the United States as Horror on Snape Island and re-released to theaters here in 1981 as Beyond the Fog to trick young naïve moviegoers to think it was a sequel to John Carpenter’s hit movie The Fog. The movie was an ahead of its time slasher film with a madman running around an island killing off promiscuous teenagers. And it is notorious for its abundant male and female nudity.

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Three American teenage tourists (including the hunky John Hamill not shy about revealing his hot naked body and British sex comedy fan fave Robin Askwith wasted in a small role) are discovered gruesomely murdered on SnapeIsland and the lone survivor Penny, lingering in a catatonic state, is wrongly suspected of being the killer. Coincidentally a Phoenician artifact is found on the island and a team archeologists is sent to excavate. Their private lives however on more akin to All My Children than a horror movie. Haughty Rose (Jill Haworth) is the ex-fiancée of Adam (Mark Edwards) and is having an affair with meek Dan (Derek Fowlds) whose pot smoking promiscuous wife Nora (Anna Palk) had a one night stand with Adam and still won’t give Dan a divorce. Also along for the ride is Evan Brent (Bryant Haliday) a detective hired by Penny’s family to unearth the truth; boatman Hamp who has a family connection to the island; and his horny hip long-haired tight-pants wearing nephew Brom (Gary Hamilton) who scores with Nora. Back in London, as Penny remembers what happened on Snape Island, the body counts begins to pile up after their boat is blown to bits and the castaways begin to realize Hamp’s mad brother Saul, who resided here with his wife Martha and supposed dead infant son Michael, is the culprit…or is he?

In the book The Horror Hits of Richard Gordon by Tom Weaver, the producer mentioned that he had seen Jill in Cabaret and was “grateful” she agreed to be in the movie. He commented, “She was absolutely cooperative  in any and every respect. I was shocked and saddened when I heard that she had passed away…” He also revealed that 99% of the movie was shot at Shepperton Studios and just one scene on location. Kudos to the cinematographer, set designers, and special effects team for making it look quite realistic.

After a few intermittent film and theatre roles in the late seventies and eighties (she received rave reviews for the national tours of Bedroom Farce and Butterflies Are Free), Jill quietly dropped from the limelight.  Her last screen credit was the independent movie Mergers & Acquisitions in 2001. Sadly, Jill Haworth passed away on January 3, 2011.

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In 1969, adolescent boys could be found sitting in front of the television on Sunday nights enthralled by the sci-fi series LAND OF THE GIANTS.  Created by Irwin Allen, the show focused on seven people stranded on a planet identical to Earth except everything is twelve times bigger.  Though the special effects were impressive, most boys were captivated by the antics of red-haired, mini-skirted actress Deanna Lund as intergalactic castaway Valerie Scott.  During the course of the series, Deanna’s character is menaced by cats; imprisoned in a dollhouse; cloned; prodded by scientists; carried off by an ape; and even used as a human pawn on a giant’s chessboard.  Of all the actresses who toiled in sixties sci-fi television Lund was arguably the only one who portrayed more than a one-dimensional character.  She was able to bring real strength to her role, as Valerie evolved from selfish party gal to likeable team player.  Lund made the transition beautifully, giving skilled performances.  With a mane of red hair and clad in the shortest of mini-skirts, Lund was perhaps every young teenage boy’s first crush at that time—me included!

LAND OF THE GIANTS was the fourth series from Irwin Allen whose name became synonymous with TV fantasy and science fiction.  After scoring on the big screen with such fantasy epics as THE LOST WORLD (1960) and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961), Allen turned his attention to the small screen.  20^th Century-fox asked him to create a weekly series based on VOYAGE.  Starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison, it premiered to mixed reviews and high ratings.  Allen then went on to create LOST IN SPACE (sort of a Swiss Family Robinson in outer space) and TIME TUNNEL (a hit with the critics, but not the public) before LAND OF THE GIANTS, whose story idea supposedly came to him in a dream.  After seeing Lund in an episode of BATMAN and the rushes of Frank Sinatra’s new movie TONY ROME, Allen offered the role of spoiled jet setter Valerie to a skeptical Deanna without even meeting her.  “I just signed with a new agent named Maury Calder and didn’t believe him when he told me I had this part,” says Deanna.  “Being in Hollywood for awhile, I knew you had to audition and screen test before you get a role.  Maury said, ‘Deanna, I swear it’s true.’  I replied, ‘Don’t jive me, Maury!’  I finally believed him but everybody told me not to do television—especially science fiction.  When I was offered the series I had to do it for financial reasons.  I had two little children to raise.”

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Co-starring with Deanna Lund on LAND OF THE GIANTS were Gary Conway (as Captain Steve Burton), Don Matheson (as tycoon Mark Wilson), Don Marshall (as co-pilot Dan Erickson), Heather Young (as stewardess Betty Hamilton), Stefan Arngrim (as orphan Barry Lockridge), and Kurt Kaszner (as resident schemer Col. Alexander Fitzhugh).  Though the series premiered in the fall of 1969, the pilot was produced almost a year before.  ABC was so impressed that instead of using it as a mid-season replacement, they decided to wait for the new fall season.  The first episode titled “The Crash”, which premiered on 9/22/68, set the story of how three crew members and four passengers on a suborbital flight from New York to London in 1983 pass through an electrical storm and crash on a planet of giants.  Amid the gargantuan flora and fauna, the “little people” (as they were referred to) are menaced by a cat, a giant spider, and a scientist who captures Steve and Valerie.  The pilot received Emmy nominations for photography and special effects.  It garnered huge ratings—especially among younger audiences.  And at $250,000 per episode, LAND OF THE GIANTS was the most costly series on the air.  Giant props such as a slice of bread made from foam rubber, a six-foot pencil, gigantic leaves, and a nine-foot revolver were expertly but expensively created.

“LAND OF THE GIANTS was not an actor’s show,” remarks Deanna.  “We were always being upstaged by the visual effects.  At the time I was embarrassed by the series because it wasn’t Chekov, it was LAND OF THE GIANTS!  I thought then, ‘My God, is this what I studied acting for?’  But I recently have seen some episodes that I haven’t seen in thirty years.  I’m impressed with how good they are.  The effects are so well done.  And imagine none of this is computer generated!  It amazes me how fantastic the show is but I did wish that the character relationships were developed more fully.”  The critics agreed.  Variety commented that “the series’ strong suit is its special effects.”  Newsday said, “Visually, this science fiction series is a gas.”  And Cleveland Amory in TV Guide wrote, “If you’re under 11, you’re bound to enjoy this show.”  And did they ever as a young audience (mostly boys) propelled the series into the top twenty-five.  Soon there were LAND OF THE GIANTS lunchboxes, board games, model kits, and coloring forms (I still have mine,)

The premise of each episode of LAND OF THE GIANTS had the Earthlings trying in some way to find a way to return home while being hunted by the giants.  It was reminiscent of the old Saturday morning serials.  “LAND OF THE GIANTS was a sort of child-like fantasy—even working on it,” says Lund.  “Not that it wasn’t hard work—it was long hours and it wasn’t all fun and games.  It was actually pretty intense with a lot of stunt work and a lot of repeating the same thing.  We would shoot some scenes three times and everything had to be exactly the same for each.  Not only did I have to worry about learning the dialog but my costumes and hair had to match perfectly.  Irwin Allen hated that we changed clothes.  It was much more economical if we wore the same thing because he could intercut any of the shows if he was short screen time and not worry about matching up the wardrobe.  Paul Zastupnevich was the costume designer and he was great!  His costumes were a bit futuristic yet not too outlandish to be contemporary.  He’d get these boots and paint them to match the plaid skirts we were wearing.  Of course Paul couldn’t do just a few.  He had to do tons of them because they were trashed so quickly.”

As for Irwin Allen, who was known for being a taskmaster, Deanna says, “Irwin was a larger than life character.  He directed the pilot and was very meticulous with details.  Later he kept a very close tab on all the show’s directors.  I respected that.  LAND OF THE GIANTS was his baby.  He created it.  I think any kind of a good manager is going to see the ship is running his way.  I didn’t find fault with it—I didn’t always like it—but as an actress and a professional I had to respect his input and caring.   I’d rather have someone who cares than didn’t care but sometimes it was a pain in the butt.  I’m a natural blonde and every time we had a hiatus I would add a little blonde streak to my hair.  I would casually go back to work and Irwin would nail me every time.  He’d yell, ‘I bought Rita Hayworth red and Rita Hayworth red you’re going to be!’”

During the run of the show, the Earthlings found themselves in some bizarre situations.  Deanna was featured prominently in a number of them.  Unlike his former series LOST IN SPACE, which became the Will and Dr. Smith show, Irwin wanted the cast of LAND OF THE GIANTS to be featured evenly throughout.  In “Deadly Pawn” Lund is a human pawn on a giant’s chessboard.   She is fancily dressed and placed in a giant music box in “Collector’s Item” and is duplicated and sent back to the spaceship to capture the others in “The Clones.”  “I was exhausted doing this episode because I had to run around this drain so many times chasing the other Valerie,” says Deanna with a laugh.  “I lost so much weight doing this.”  In “Chamber of Fear” Deanna and co-star Don Matheson were almost seriously hurt when Deanna got stuck in the gears of this giant robot.  When Matheson fell trying to free her, Lund wasn’t able to reach the lever to stop the grinding gears.  When the crew realized they weren’t acting but in trouble, they came to their rescue.

As the series progressed, Deanna’s haughty rich girl softened much to her chagrin “because it was more interesting if I stayed kind of witchy.  But Irwin wanted me more likable.  Heather Young’s character of Betty was gone a lot because Heather was pregnant a lot.”  Despite Lund’s disappointment, the writers were able to make the progression of her character believable, which was no doubt helped by the acting skills of Lund.  And her character was constantly tempted by the rascal Fitzhugh to join him in his duplicitous schemes.  “Kurt Kaszner and I had a great rapport, on screen and off,” says Deanna.  “We really liked each other.  He was so hilarious.  The funniest stuff was never on camera.  We’d just be laughing hysterically.  In “The Graveyard of Fools” episode our characters were trapped in quicksand and Kurt was goosing me under this guck we were in.  I remember yelling, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get out of this show?!!’  The two of us would tease the rest of the cast unmercifully.  They were good sports and fun to work with.’

Regarding her other co-stars, Deanna comments,  “Gary Conway was a perfectionist.  He would always stand up to Irwin Allen if he felt something wasn’t being done right.  Don Marshall was very solemn and intense.  He was one of the first black actors to be a regular on a primetime series and took his position seriously.  Heather Young was wonderful and we are still in contact to this day.  And Don Matheson was a good friend to me on the show.  Everybody adored him.  He was just so nice to everyone.  We became romantically involved and were married after the series was cancelled.”  What is interesting to note is that though a number of well-known actors (including Warren Oates, Jack Albertson, Yvonne Craig, Bruce Dern, Diane McBain, Francine York, etc.) guest starred as giants, the regular cast never got to work with them.  Usually when the little people interacted with them they would be talking up to the klieg lights while the actors portraying giants would be talking down to some object on a table or the floor.  The scenes were then edited together.  “The actors playing giants usually worked on different days and on a different sound stage,” recalls Deanna.  “But I do remember some of the ones that played little people.  Zalman King [from “The Lost Ones”] was very interesting.  He played a juvenile delinquent and was a very dynamic actor.  It doesn’t surprise me that he is so successful as a director and producer.  And Celeste Yarnall was very pretty and seemed to be very effective in the episode “The Golden Cage.”  [Celeste plays a Lorelei-like girl who has been brainwashed by the giants to entrap the Earthlings.]  I thought it was an intriguing situation and it would have been interesting if they would have added her to the cast.  Instead you never hear of her again.”

After the end of the second season, Deanna and Don Matheson announced their engagement.  Ever the publicity mongrel, Irwin wanted their characters to be married on the show as well.  “He said if we agreed he’d pay for our honeymoon anywhere we wanted to go,” remembers Deanna.  “So we said, ‘Hmmm!’  But we were cancelled because the show was too expensive to mount.  It was too bad because I think another season would have been really fun and interesting.  If our characters had a relationship it would have been a first for an Irwin Allen series.  It might have taken it into a whole different direction and brought in more of an audience.  I probably would have also fought to make my character go the other way some more and be witchier.”

With LAND OF THE GIANTS being my favorite TV show as a kid I was devastated when it got cancelled. Deanna Lund was my favorite back then of course (though now I favor me some Gary Conway) so I would scour the TV Guide to see if she was going to be on any other shows. She was a regular on the syndicated TV celebrity game show STUMP THE STARS and remember catching her on LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE. Thankfully, the entire series was released a 2 years ago in a great box set. Mine is proudly sitting in my livingroom.

httpv://youtu.be/6grUoZBq_Rc

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Dark haired and sultry, Susan Hart displayed her shapely body as bikini-clad beach girls or monster movie heroines in a string of popular ‘60s B-movies.  It is no wonder considering her measurements were usually touted as 37-23-36 as she was being groomed to become Hollywood’s newest sex symbol.  After fleeing from The Slime People (1963) in her film debut, Hart frolicked on the sand as a hula swaying, half-Hawaiian in Ride the Wild Surf (1964).  She snagged a contract at American International Pictures and soon after married the boss, James H. Nicholson, the studio’s co-founder.  The curvaceous starlet thought better roles were ahead for her but she was back in a bikini as a hip-shaking beach girl in Pajama Party (1964) and back to being chased by monsters—this time gill-men—in War-Gods of the Deep (1965).  Donning a bikini yet again, she played a robot programmed to seduce, marry and kill a bungling playboy millionaire in the spy spoof Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965).  Most famously, Hart stepped in to save the last official Beach Party film, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) as (what else?) the title bikini-clad character, before hanging up her swimsuit to raise her son.

Susan Hart was born in Wenatchaee, Washington—the apple capital of the world.  When she was in the second grade her family began spending the winters in Palm Springs, California and the summers in Washington because her mother had contracted Tuberculosis. She went to high school in Palm Springs where she began acting in school plays and after graduating moved to Hawaii for a short period where she worked in a dress shop. She recalled, “I was working at the International Market Place when a fellow named Morton Smith came in one day and handed me his card.  “He was an agent and also a photographer on assignment for Playboy Magazine.  I didn’t pay too much attention to him but he came back and took some snap shots of me at the counter and on a surfboard.  He told me that I should me in movies and to look him up if I ever got to Hollywood.   It was rather exciting to have somebody praise you like that.  Being a young girl, I thought, ‘It would be really nice to be in the movies.”

Susan Hart returned to Palm   Springs and got a job managing a dress shop.  With Smith’s words of encouragement and praise still in her head, she decided to take him up on his offer.  “I went to his office and said, ‘Here I am!  What am I supposed to do now?’  Within a month he sent me out on an interview for The Joey Bishop Show and I got it.  I had about four or five lines.”

Hart landed an agent named Bill Schuyler who kept her busy playing small parts on TV.  (“He was probably the best agent I ever had because he got me a lot of work.”) One of her roles was as a biker chick on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.  “I worked with Billy Mumy [of Lost in Space] who was only about ten years old but he was such a flirt,” remembers Susan with a laugh.  “He was a darling little kid with a charming personality and he was an absolute lady-killer for that age.”

Though she only played minor roles on TV, Hart was honing her craft to make the leap to features.  She screen tested at MGM but did not land a contract.  However, photos of her turned up in the film Boys Night Out (1962).  “They shot pictures of me to be the centerfold in a magazine that Tony Randall and James Garner open up,” reveals Hart.  “This really was my first part in a motion picture.  I have a towel wrapped around me and I am answering a telephone.”

In Hart’s next feature, she is not only seen but heard as well as she was cast as Robert Hutton’s leading lady in the grade-B horror film, The Slime People (1963).  When asked how she landed this role, Hart answers facetiously, “Just luck, I guess.”  Actually, Robert Hutton who also produced and directed The Slime People went to Hart’s agent and several other agents and asked if they had anybody on their rosters suitable for the role of Gwen.  “All Bill Schuyler told me about it was that it was a reading for lead in a motion picture.  At that point I still did not know the title of the film.  But I did know it was going to star Robert Hutton, whom I remember my sister Helen thought was just a fabulously handsome man.  I read for the role in the morning.  I went to lunch with a friend and when I arrived home around four o’clock I got a call from my agent telling me that I got the part.  Not only did I get a role but also my roommate, Judee Morton, was cast as my little sister.  It was incredible!  Even after I found out the title I thought this was still a pretty good opportunity.”

The Slime People was shot at KTLA Studios.  After about nine days of filming, the cast stopped getting paid and the make-up man left.  However, Hart proved to be a trouper and continued with the production.  She even did her own make-up.  Despite these working conditions, Susan does not look back on this film with any bad memories.  “Everybody connected to this was really nice.  Don Hansen was the name of the man who financed the film.  As I recall, he always wore a Fedora and owned a lot of dry cleaners.  Robert Hutton knew I didn’t have any experience doing films and he couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful.  He practically told me every move to make and taught me about hitting your mark.”

In The Slime People, nuclear testing decimates Los Angeles leaving the city enshrouded in a blanket of fog.  A small group of survivors try to make it out of the deserted metropolis while battling subterranean creatures roused from hibernation.  Robert Hutton starred as a hotshot pilot with Robert Burton as a professor and Susan Hart and Judee Morton as his daughters.  One of the films many unintentional laughs is that despite the fact that she is being terrorized and chased by the Slime People, Hart’s character Gwen keeps on her four-inch high heel shoes and never lets go of her oversize black pocketbook. “Isn’t that funny,” laughs Susan.  “I think I still have that purse around my home somewhere.  We were given something like eighteen dollars to select our own wardrobe. Judee and I went to Orbach’s and it was my decision to buy those shoes and purse.  Those heels killed my feet, which were never the same again.

“A man named Tracey Putnam played the doctor in this,” continues Hart.  “He was an actual doctor and had discovered a drug which keeps Epileptics from going into seizures.  He was a brilliant man.  His stepson, Jock Putnam, played one of the Slime People and talked his stepfather into playing one of these roles.  It was a riot to see Jock and the other actor who played the Slime People sitting on the set smoking a cigarette.  You’d see smoke pouring out of all of the orifices of these gigantic costumes.”

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The ad copy for The Slime People proclaimed, “Up from the Bowels of the Earth Come …The Slime People.”  Needless to say, the film did not receive rave reviews.  It is no wonder then Hart tried to distance herself from this as much as she could.  “Now talking about The Slime People is fun,” admits Hart.  “But a few years after making it I kept thinking that The Slime People was a terrible movie to be associated with.  It was a mediocre movie and didn’t play in many theatres.  The reviews weren’t very good if it even got reviewed at all.”  To keep journalists from asking about the film, when Hart landed one of the lead roles in her fourth movie, Ride the Wild Surf (1964) it was touted as her first starring role.

On the big screen if you blinked you missed Hart’s bit in her next movie, the Bob Hope comedy A Global Affair (1964). The audience would have seen more of her in a locker room scene but she balked at doing it.  “I remember working with Barbara Bouchet and Brenda Benet on this,” says Susan.  “Brenda was a very moral girl.  When the director told us we had to strip down to our bras we both called our agents and screamed, ‘You didn’t tell us we had to take off our blouses!’  We both got dismissed from the film.  I didn’t feel that they were paying me enough money to do that.”  That same year, Hart turned up along with Nancy Sinatra and Claudia Martin as one of Pamela Tiffin’s sorority sisters in the beach film For Those Who Think Young (1964).

The movie though that put Susan Hart in the spotlight was another beach film, Ride the Wild Surf (1964), which was Columbia Pictures answer to AIP’s Beach Party.  Aficionados consider Ride the Wild Surf one of the best from the genre because of the awesome surfing footage.  Three California surfers travel to Hawaii during Christmas vacation for the yearly surfing event at WaimeaBay.  Recent college dropout Jody Wallis (Fabian) debates the life of a surf bum versus returning to school and falls for Brie, a vacationing coed (Shelley Fabares, sporting bitchin’ blonde hair) not impressed with his quitter’s attitude.  Reliable, down-to-earth Steamer (Tab Hunter) falls in love with a beautiful island girl named Lily, sweetly played by Susan Hart (“I didn’t quite look the part but I guess it worked out all right”), to the consternation of her stern and disapproving mother (Catherine McLeod).  Staid law student Chase Colton (Peter Brown) is attracted to the playful, athletic Augie Pool (Barbara Eden) who teaches him to loosen up.

Before filming officially began, Susan Hart, Peter Brown, and Jim Mitchum (who played rival surfer Eskimo) went over to Hawaii three to six weeks before the rest of the cast and crew.  Hart recalls, “The producers sent me to Hawaii to learn to ride a horse.  First they put me on a pony and then I worked my way up to a decent-size horse.  Everyday they had me out in the cane fields learning to ride.  I got pretty good.  When we finally got to film my one scene where I come riding down the beach they brought in this huge horse that Charlton Heston rode in the film Diamond Head.  They dressed me in white shark-skinned pants and they oiled the horse down pretty good to make him look beautiful.  But there was no way I could stay on the horse.  I kept sliding right off.  They ended up double space taping me on to the horse.  To get me off they actually had to peel me off of it.”

httpv://youtu.be/AIWqIBLzCeM

Though Ride the Wild Surf did not prove as popular as Beach Party, it was still a hit.  And with the good notices received by the cast Columbia took action. According to Hart, “I think everybody in Ride the Wild Surf was put on a six-month option.  Mike Frankovitch, who was the head of the studio at that time, always had great faith in me.  About the fifth month of my term with Columbia I went over to AIP and that is when I met Jim Nicholson.” Unbeknownst to her, Nicholson had access to the dailies of Ride the Wild Surf and that is the first time he saw Susan Hart.  “After we met that ended any pursuit I had to sign a contract with Columbia because not only was I offered a contract with AIP through Jim, but there was a bit of chemistry between the two of us.”

After signing with American International Pictures, Hart was cast in the small role of Jilda in Pajama Party (1964), starring Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello.  This was a bit of a comedown from her much bigger role in Ride the Wild Surf.  “Once you go under contract they can put you in anything they want,” sighs Susan.  “I don’t know whose idea it was to put me in Pajama Party but I never questioned it.  I never questioned a lot of things.”  Hart doesn’t have many lines in the film but she is a standout nevertheless wiggling her curvaceous bikini-clad body, which obviously got the motors running of the surfer dudes in the movie and the teenage boys watching in drive-ins across the nation.

Also in 1964, AIP chose Susan Hart as their Hollywood Deb Star.  Interestingly, of all the Hollywood Debs that year, including Mary Ann Mobley, Brenda Benet and Claudia Martin, only Raquel Welch clawed her way to super stardom.  Hart opines, “For an actress to become a star in the sixties you had to have great determination.  However, everybody has a different story.  You may have the determination but it may not have been a lasting determination.  Or you may have had the determination but it is too difficult to follow through.  You have to give up an awful lot because something will suffer along the way.  You pick which part of your life is going to suffer.  I think Raquel Welch did have that boundless resolve and I imagine that she wanted stardom more than anything—and she got it.”

Susan Hart also with great fanfare became part of AIP’s Starburst of Youth program.  When asked to explain exactly what that was, Harts says with a laugh, “I suppose it was a great title—another Jim Nicholson creation—but I think it was primarily for the exhibitors.  I remember at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles one weekend it was filled with theatre owners from all over the nation.  It was called Starburst of Youth.  We put on a show for them.  Several of the girls were in bikinis.  We mingled and had our pictures taken with them.  It was more of a promotional gimmick than a real program.”

httpv://youtu.be/Fo8SrycaTFE

Back on the big screen, Hart starred in her next two features for AIP.  The fantasy film War-Gods of the Deep (1965) reunited her with her Ride the Wild Surf co-star, Tab Hunter.  (“I was so happy when I was told Tab Hunter was going to play my leading man,” exclaims Hart.)  The film was inspired by the poems “City Under the Sea” and “A Descent into the Maelstrom” by Edgar Allan Poe.  Set in the turn-of-the-century, Hart played Jill Tregellis, a young American lass who owns a converted manor house hotel on the Cornish coast of England.  In the middle of the night, she is dragged off by ancient gill-men to an underwater city called Lyonesse complete with a tyrannical ruler called The Captain (Vincent Price), his cadre of thieves and a threatening volcano.  Life in Lyonesse is eternal except for people who commit a crime and then are thrown to the gill-men.  The Captain thinks Jill is his reincarnated wife as her daffy artist friend (David Tomlinson) with his chicken Herbert and a hunky American guest at the hotel (Tab Hunter) go to her rescue.

Recalling Vincent Price, Hart remarks, “He was quiet and pretty much stayed to himself.  In private, he was pretty much as he appeared on screen in terms of his delivery and attitude.  He and Jim Nicholson got along really, really well.  We had dinner on several occasions with him.  Vincent was the consummate gentleman.”

The reviews in 1965 for War-Gods of the Deep were mixed.  Though most critics at the time found it entertaining and thought Vincent Price was excellent, the film was hampered by a weak script, unfunny comic relief by Tomlinson and that annoying chicken, and less-than-convincing performances by Hart and Hunter.

Susan rebounded from the water-logged Jules Verne-ish tale to give an amusing, well-received performance as a bikini-clad robot in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), a goofy take-off on the James Bond film Goldfinger co-starring Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman. (“Both of them were charming and pleasant to work with.”)  Surprisingly, this spy spoof was quite entertaining and grossed $2.5 million, a smash hit for AIP standards.

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) was filmed on location in San   Francisco by director Norman Taurog.  The script was by Elwood Ullman and Robert Kaufman, based on a story by James Hartford.  The film stars Vincent Price as mad scientist Dr. Goldfoot (named for his wearing of gold slippers) who plans on capturing the fortunes of the world’s richest men with the aid of his invention.  As lights blink, dials wiggle, horns blow, and the machine vibrates manufactured bikini-clad robots (Patti Chandler, Salli Sachse, Deanna Lund, Luree Holmes and Marianne Gaba, among them) are produced one by one.  Hart played Goldfoot’s most prized robot, No. 11 named Diane, who is sent out to entrap playboy millionaire Todd Armstrong (Hickman) but is hampered by the bumbling of inept Secret Agent 00.5 Craig Gamble (Avalon).

Budgeted at $1.4 million dollars, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is quite elaborate for an American International production.  According to the press notes more than $150,000 was spent on creating “a haunted palace, a pit and a pendulum, and an electronic device that manufactures a dozen beauties in bikinis.”  And if you watch closely you can spot cameos from AIP stars Annette Funicello, Deborah Walley, Harvey Lembeck, and Aron Kincaid.

The film also has an interesting pre-release history.  It was to be originally titled Dr. Goldfoot and the Sex Machine and was conceived as a musical along the lines of the Beach Party movies.  The first to go was the title, which was a bit too risqué for 1965.  The film was shot with only one musical number in place but it was excised prior to the film’s release. “That musical number was left on the cutting room floor because Sam Arkoff thought Vincent Price was too fey in it,” discloses a disappointed Hart.  “It was a fabulous production number with Price singing and dancing around the bikini machine.  The lyrics went something like ‘I have a machine.  I have a bikini machine—a most marvelous invention.’  I would love to see that footage because Vincent Price had never done anything like that before.  The whole point was that he played it campy because Dr. Goldfoot was a silly doctor.  Vincent Price just acted the role to the hilt and he was quite wonderful.”

Hart proved to be a talented comedienne and handled the pratfalls in the movie excellently.  As Diane is programmed to speak many different languages, Hart used an array of accents (including Southern, French, British, etc.). “Nobody helped me with most of these dialects,” states Susan proudly.  “I simply mimicked and learned it all on my own except for one.  AIP hired a coach for one day to help me master the Japanese dialect.  A Japanese girl went over and over the lines with me until I got the dialect down pat.”

The extra coaching paid off and Susan Hart received very good notices for her performance.  Variety, in particular, raved, “Susan Hart is very good in a role which demands several dialects, human warmth, and robot inanimity, often in rapid sequence.”  Hart credits her well-received performance to director Norman Taurog. “He had so much faith in me and he thought I was terrific,” says Hart fondly.  “Norman Taurog boosted my ego.  I don’t know if he did that with other actors but it was a great ploy.  I had so much confidence in myself because of him.  He was the type of director really made you feel that whatever you were doing, it was right.  I do not think I had anybody speak to me and assure me the way he did to make me feel completely at ease.  I was never nervous before a shot, which I usually had the tendency to be.  Norman Taurog completely calmed me down because he would say if it was not right the first time we’d just do it over again until we got it right.  Therefore, it was generally one take because he instilled a confidence in me.  I will always be grateful for that because it crossed over into many things.”

To promote the film, an hour special entitled The Wild, Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot was produced and aired in place of Shindig.  It featured Price, Hart, Tommy Kirk, Aron Kincaid as a last minute replacement for Frankie Avalon (“He backed out because his contract with AIP did not require him to do TV”) and some of the bikini girls. “They needed a half-hour fill-in for Shindig and I think Deke Hayward came up with this special on his own,” recalls Hart.  “He wrote it and it was not the same music that was cut from Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.  It was different songs written by Guy Hemric.  I sang in it with Aron Kincaid.”  The duo performs “What’s a Boy/Girl Supposed to Do” and “Lower, Lower.”  Their duets are not half bad considering the short amount of time they had to prepare for it.

After garnering much praise for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, the red hot Hart was much in demand.  But her pregnancy and marriage to Jim Nicholson sidelined her. After the birth of her son, there was much talk of Susan Hart appearing in the Italian production Planet of the Vampires and a proposed sequel to Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine to be titled Dr. Goldfoot and the S Bombs.  For reasons she can not remember, she didn’t do the former film and the latter was re-titled Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966) and filmed in Italy by director Mario Bava with only Price reprising his role.

Very rare clip of Susan Hart on Australian Bandstand promoting Dr. Goldfoot. She comes on around the 7:30 mark.

httpv://youtu.be/9aj08k09ev4

For her next film, Susan Hart deserved better than yet another bikini role as she was cast as The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966).  Asked if she felt that the studio exploited her body, Hart responds, “When you are living something, you don’t question it.  It’s only when you look back in retrospect that maybe you think, ‘Oh gee, I should have done this.’  All I knew was that I was working as an actress—which was my intention.  When I was in my twenties I was not very introspective so I didn’t question what I was doing very much.  I was the type of person who had to be active all the time. All the roles I was offered were body-type roles.  I didn’t know how I could ever get out of that.  That always plagued my career.  I didn’t know how to get what I called a real part.  And maybe I never would have.  I was only offered roles that exploited my body.  Unfortunately, that’s only how people saw me.  I suppose that is what I projected.

“Hugh Hefner wrote me to pose for Playboy,” continues Hart.  “He was very flattering and mentioned that Stella Stevens was a Playmate and she went on to do great things.  I turned him down but at one point was I actually entertaining the thought of doing it.  But then I got a good part in something and changed my mind.  I recently read one of the letters he sent me and there is a line in there that says ‘If you ever change your mind, please let me know.’  I wonder if it is too late?”

httpv://youtu.be/s_b75WofGcs

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini was originally titled Bikini Party in a Haunted House and was not supposed to feature Suan Hart.  Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley topped a cast that included Aron Kincaid, Quinn O’Hara, Nancy Sinatra, Claudia Martin, Piccola Pupa, Bobbi Shaw, Ed Garner, Luree Holmes and veterans Basil Rathbone, Patsy Kelly and Jesse White.  Kirk and Walley must spend the night in a haunted house in order to collect their inheritance, hidden somewhere in the creepy mansion complete with a chamber of horrors, an escaped gorilla, surfer boys and bikini girls and Eric Von Zipper with his biker gang.  The weak film was deemed unreleaseable by AIP and a quick fix was needed.   “Jim came up with the idea of having a ghost in the invisible bikini,” reveals Susan.  “I got the part about three days before they began shooting it.  I was a very quick study.”

Boris Karloff and Hart were added to the cast to play, respectively, millionaire Hiram Stokely and his sexy blonde wife Cecily.  The recently deceased Hiram must perform a good deed to get into heaven and as a bonus is promised eternal youth.  Cecily, who died as a young woman, is sent down to Earth to make sure Hiram’s rightful heirs inherit his money.  Their scenes together were tacked on to the beginning and the end of the film.

Hart was wasted in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and unfortunately this was her last feature.  A number of things contributed to that including the caring of her son and the problems that arose between Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff. “At first, Sam Arkoff was great fun to be around because he had a wonderful sense of humor.  We ended up traveling to foreign countries quite a bit together.  AIP always had co-productions filming in Germany, Spain and especially England.  We spent a lot of time abroad with him and his wife, Hilda.  Of course, he and Jim were equal partners at that point so it was a very good time. When Jim had to give up shares of his stock [to his wife in a divorce settlement] Sam became the majority stockholder and that’s when things began to become strained.

“It was so difficult to continue acting under those circumstances,” continues Susan.  “It was too complicated for me to work.  I was happily married and I had had my son Jimmy. I thought that when Jimmy got a little bit older I’d go back to acting.  That was always in the back of my mind.  I’d say, ‘Once Jimmy is in the first grade I’ll go back to work.’ But between caring for him and trying to move on—I always wanted to be a singer—I thought I’d try focusing on that instead of acting.  I did cut several songs for MGM and went on the road to promote them.”

Hart ‘s final acting role was in “The Night of the Fugitives” (11/8/68) on TV’s The Wild Wild West.  Hart (resembling and sounding a lot like actress Yvonne Craig) played Rhoda the glamorous double-crossing owner of the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon (“When a girl, um, does a favor she should get a favor–like they always say quid pro quo.”) who is searching along with everybody else for bookkeeper Norbert Plank’s syndicate records.  But this episode is more notorious for the almost fatal head injury suffered by series star Robert Conrad while doing one of his own stunts on a landing above a saloon.

Though Susan Hart left AIP, Jim Nicholson continued with the company until 1972 when he signed a deal with 20^th Century-Fox.  He was the executive producer of The Legend of Hell House (1973) and was readying Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) for production when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  He passed away on December 10, 1972 before The Legend of Hell House was released.

As for her feelings regarding Jim Nicholson’s contribution to AIP, Hart proudly comments, “He was the creative genius and essence behind American International Pictures.  Jim was the show and Sam was the business.  Jim started every trend AIP ever had from the biker pictures to the Poe pictures to the beach pictures to the blaxpoitation pictures.”

Sam Arkoff held on to the company until 1979.  He sold it to Filmways, which was bought by Orion.  Today MGM-UA holds the rights to all of the AIP movies except the forty-two films in the limited partnership that Nicholson and Arkoff formed during the fifties.  These films were divided up between Arkoff, Susan Hart and Nicholson’s daughters.  Through a court decision, Hart won the rights to some of the more popular titles including I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Invasion of the Saucer Men and It Conquered the World.

Today, the still beautiful Susan Hart resides year-round in Palm Springs and was just awarded a “Star” on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.  It is a fitting tribute to this talented and popular actress who never got the chance to progress beyond her bikini roles.

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