Tom Lisanti

The late Jill Haworth was a saucy, petite blonde with a wonderfully throaty voice and just a trace of an English accent. She was discovered in 1959 by producer/director Otto Preminger and made her film debut in Exodus (1960) as the ill-fated Jewish girl opposite Sal Mineo (with whom she had a romance and long friendship with). She received a Golden Globe nomination and then co-starred in Preminger’s lavish epic The Cardinal as a selfless young woman caring for the terminally ill and his all-star WWII adventure In Harm’s Way as an ill-fated nurse. “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.

After appearing in the horror film It!, Jill temporarily abandoned films for Broadway when Hal Prince cast her over countless actresses in the coveted role of Sally Bowles in the hit Tony Award winning musical Cabaret. Jill enjoyed great success as Sally and remained with the show for over two years. When asked years later if she had a shot for the movie, she quipped, “No, they always wanted Liza Minnelli for the movie. She’s still doing the movie!” Returning to films, she played a swinging Londoner opposite Frankie Avalon in the horror opus The Haunted House of Horror.  Haworth continued in the horror genre begrudgingly through the mid-seventies before returning to the stage. The eighties and nineties found her only doing voice-overs, but she was coaxed out of retirement in 1999 to play an ex-hippie mother in the independent film Mergers and Acquisitions. Sadly, we lost Jill in 2011.

Read my complete interview with Jill in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema.

The Eve Arden of the motorcycle set, the late wisecracking hazel-eyed blonde Glamazon Alberta Nelson never got her man as the ruff-and tumble biker chick loyal to inept Harvey Lembeck’s Eric Von Zipper in the Frankie and Annette beach movie extravaganzas.

Alberta Nelson began the decade with a Broadway flop. Playing a servant in the 1961 Broadway play Once There Was a Russian co-starring Walter Matthau, Roger C. Carmel, and Julie Newmar, the drama closed opening night. With nothing to lose, Nelson journeyed to Hollywood where she was cast in minor decorative dramatic roles in episodes of Thriller, The New Breed, and Dr. Kildare before Harvey Lembeck chose her to be his comic foil in Beach Party (1963). Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, and their friends share a beach shack during spring break where their main concerns are surfin’, dancin’, and romancin’. Their idyll life is interrupted by Harvey Lembeck as the inept Eric Von Zipper and his motorcycle gang The Ratz and Mice who “hate those beach bums.”  Nelson and redheaded Linda Rogers were the Mice—the only two girls in the gang.  Even early on in the beach party cycle it looks as if Nelson’s character is resigned to the fact that Lembeck will never have eyes for her.  Here he lusts after Annette but when she rebuffs him he turns to platinum blonde sexpot Eva Six. Even though she is always passed over, Nelson is a good sport and joins the gang for the end of the movie pie-throwing melee against the surfers.  Her character began as the dependable yes-girl but as the bikers began to have more prominence in the films due to their popularity, Nelson delivered more wisecracks in her trademark screechy Brooklyn-style manner.

Nelson reprised her role in all the remaining beach movies from Bikini Beach (1964) through The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). In between, she and Amedee Chabot play fitness nuts who hang around the bodybuilders in Muscle Beach Party (1964).  The service comedy Sergeant Deadhead (1965) featured Nelson as a WAC and in the spy spoof Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) starring Vincent Price in the title role, Alberta is a robot reject.

With the beach party movies dead at the box office, Nelson returned to television in 1966 with appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. Impressing the producers of the Griffith series, they brought Alberta back later in the year to play Flora Malherbe, a somewhat naïve, warm-hearted waitress sweet on George Lindsay’s Goober.  She played the role in three episodes and in “Emmett’s Retirement” on Mayberry, R.F.D. in 1969. In 1971, Alberta remarried and retired from show business moving with her new husband to Millcreek, Pennsylvania.
They had three children and Nelson spent her free time gardening and doing needle work until her death from cancer on April 29, 2006.  She was sixty-eight years old.

A former model, Laurel Goodwin’s only acting experience was doing summer stock when producer Hal B. Wallis saw her photograph in the Paramount studio publicity department and tapped her to play a lead role opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962). Goodwin was cast as rich girl Laurel Dodge who vies with sultry torch singer Stella Stevens for the charms of fisherman Elvis Presley amid the lush scenery of Hawaii. With her fresh-faced, adorably cute looks, strawberry blonde hair and charmingly perky screen persona, Goodman was a hit in her film debut and won over the critics and fans alike. However, Hollywood typecast her in prim and proper type roles. After playing Jackie Gleason’s daughter in the comedy Papa’s Delicate Condition (1963), she did two B-oaters before getting a good part in the Sam Peckinpah scripted-western The Glory Guys (1965), her last movie. Goodwin’s most famous role though was not in film but on TV. She played Ensign Colt opposite Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike in the original pilot for Star Trek called “The Cage.”  When Star Trek finally became a series, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the other cast regulars traveled the galaxies while Goodwin pounded the pavement in Hollywood for a few more years before calling it quits in 1971 to concentrate on her marriage.

Read my interview with Laurel Goodwin in my book Drive-in Dream Girls.

A fresh-face, wholesome brunette, Jo Collins was one of the most celebrated Playboy Playmates of the Sixties becoming the pin-up du jour of GIs stationed in Vietnam due to her many visits to that war torn country.  Despite her popularity, she was never able to rise above decorative minor roles on the big screen. But with her figure, bikini-clad on the shores of Malibu is where she belonged.

Jo Collins was Playboy’s Miss December 1964 and was selected as Playmate of the Year in 1965 Collins became a favorite pin-up of service men worldwide and to show her support she traveled to Vietnam a number of times to help boost morale resulting in her being nicknamed “G.I. Jo.”  She made her film debut in Ski Party (1965) as one of the anonymous beach girls who don ski clothes for a party in the snow.  Of course there is an occasion for the gals to doff their bulky sweaters and slacks and slip into their bikinis as Frankie Avalon croons “Lots Lots More” poolside.  Collins is featured very prominently in this production number as she dances and gyrates to the catchy pop tune.  She also competes with ski bunnies Patti Chandler, Salli Sachse, and Mikki Jamison for pompous ladies man Aron Kincaid’s attention but he only as eyes for Dwayne Hickman dressed in drag as a feisty English lass.  Despite her fantastic figure, Jo was pushed to the background in her next beach film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) though she makes the first comment about bikini girl Beverly Adams, the new competition on the sand, and joins the beach girls singing “Hey, What About Us” to try to get adman Mickey Rooney to select one of them for his new advertising campaign.  Later she and the other beach girls reluctantly try to teach Adams how to walk seductively.  In the lame service comedy Sergeant Deadhead (1965) the beach gang once again puts on clothes as Collins played one of Deborah Walley’s military friends.  Her most outstanding screen appearance was in the satire Lord Love a Duck (1966) directed by George Axelrod.  The former Playmate looked fantastic and gave a surprisingly droll performance as a shapely bored starlet seen lounging on a yacht.  The star of Cold War Bikini and plaything of producer Martin Gabel, Collins finds him to be “what a drag” when he announces she is too over exposed and will now be playing the older sister to new discovery Tuesday Weld in his upcoming beach movie extravaganza, Bikini Countdown.   Jo Collin’s last feature film was Fireball 500 (1966) wherein the beach party gang abandons the shores of Malibu for the drag strip.  Collins was part of a gaggle of groupies who coo over handsome racer Fabian rival to Frankie Avalon on and off the track.

After she stopped acting, Collins continued visiting Vietnam while working as a Playboy Bunny in clubs. In 1970 Jo married former baseball player Bo Belinsky.  That marriage ended in divorce in 1975 and Collins dropped out of the limelight working at Playboy, Inc. as a Bunny Mother.  In the January 2000 issue of Playboy, Collins was named one of the 100 Centerfolds of the Century placing seventeenth.  She appeared as herself in the DVD release Playboy: 50 Year of Playmates (2004) and in “Hugh Hefner: Girlfriends, Wives and Centerfolds” on E! True Hollywood Story in 2006.