Tom Lisanti

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.

A popular shapely Playboy Playmate, blonde German beauty Susan Denberg, with the far away look in her eyes, was handed a lead role in a Hammer horror movie after playing one of Mudd’s Women on TV’s Star Trek. She grew up in Klagenfurt, Austria.  At age eighteen, she traveled to London where, after working as an au pair, she became a Bluebell dancer in 1963.  About a year later she accompanied the famous dance troupe to perform in Las Vegas at the Stardust Hotel where she met and married singer Tony Scotti future star of Valley of the Dolls.  The marriage lasted only six months but the beautiful showgirl was bitten by the acting bug and relocated to Hollywood.

After studying at the Desilu Studio Workshop, Denberg made her film debut in the lurid over-the-top melodrama An American Dream (1966) starring Stuart Whitman as a TV talk show host who may or may not have killed his wife and is being pursued by the police and the mob. Small TV roles followed playing a German Girl on an episode of Twelve O’clock High and a gorgeous alien humanoid in “Mudd’s Women” on Star Trek.  Denberg looked stunning in her blue off-the-shoulder tasseled mini-dress as one of the three loveliest women in the universe who mesmerize the male crew members of the Enterprise.  The gals are cargo being transported by Roger C. Carmel who acts an intergalactic pimp providing brides to lonely men. Standing 5-foot-7 and measuring 34-25-34, Denberg had the same effect on Hugh Hefner who chose her to be Playboy’s Miss August 1966.  She lists “Harold Robbins” as her favorite author and her turnoffs are “impoliteness, bad dressers, and self-admiration.”  Susan’s pictorial was quite popular and she was one of the finalists for Playmate of the Year in 1967.

Denberg’s notoriety was noticed by Hammer Films in London who selected her to play the female lead in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) opposite Peter Cushing.  Wearing a long auburn wig, she played an innkeeper’s timid disfigured and crippled daughter infatuated with Robert Morris as the assistant to Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein.  When Morris is set up for the murder of her father and beheaded before her eyes, the despondent lass jumps off a bridge and drowns.  Frankenstein retrieves both bodies and melds Morris’ soul with the remodeled Denberg now a ravishing pigtailed blonde beauty.  However, things go terribly wrong when Frankenstein’s creation tarts herself up and goes on a murder spree avenging those who framed Hans.  After getting her revenge, she meets a tragic end.  The movie was a hit for Hammer in part due to the misleading title and promo photos that led audiences to believe that Frankenstein creates the scantily-clad Denberg, but her suggestive poses in a makeshift bra and panties were not part of the actual movie.  Though Denberg’s voice was purportedly dubbed by British actress Jane Hands because her German accent was too thick, the beautiful blonde still had the beauty and on-screen poise to become a Hammer Girl like Veronica Carlson and Ingrid Pitt. But Susan got caught up in the excesses of the Swinging Sixties.  She turned down many film offers and was content to live off her savings while blowing all her dough on clothes and jewelry by day, and partying by night. Hence, her acting career was blown as well. She is reportedly still alive, despite rumors to the contrary, and residing in Austria.

Read more about Susan Denberg in my book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

A reader recently posted a 5 star rave review on Amazon for my book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974. Click to read.

The late Lyn Edgington was a pretty sandy blonde with All-American girl-next-door appeal who specialized in playing fun-loving coeds on the big screen. Lyn made her film debut playing a proud college coed who leads Sandra Dee and other students in a sit-in (“Bottoms always on the floor!”) protesting book censorship in the comedy Take Her, She’s Mine (1963) starring James Stewart. She then transferred universities when cast as one of Carol Lynley’s envious college classmates who revel in the coed’s plan to live platonically with her boyfriend Dean Jones to see if they are marriage compatible in the comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) also starring Jack Lemmon as an amorous playboy landlord determined to deflower Lynley.  She played another perky coed who challenges poet James Stewart’s diatribe against science in the comedy, Dear Brigitte (1965).

But her most memorable appearance was in Girl Happy (1965). Coeds Lyn and Chris Noel convince roommate Shelley Fabares to defy her father Harold J. Stone and join them on a jaunt to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break.  However, the coeds aren’t as clever as they think as Stone hires Elvis Presley and his combo to secretly chaperone the trio while performing at a local nightclub.  As the girls drive south they sing the snappy tune “Spring Fever” along with Elvis and the guys in a scene that cuts back and forth between them.  As the naïve friend who thinks boys prefer the brainy types, Lyn has a few amusing moments at the hotel when the manager threatens to evict the three girls for having a boy in the room even though they were only playing cards.  Later on the beach Edgington feels uncomfortable and suggests to her friends that she feels like they are being stared at unaware that Gary Crosby is spying on them from a nearby sand dune.  The gals later get drunk and wind up in the slammer when a melee breaks out at a club where Fabares decides to do a sloppy impromptu strip tease.

The Loved One (1965) was Lyn’s last film of the decade and was relegated to the small screen for the remainder of the decade with roles on Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and three appearances on The FBI. In 1971, Lyn co-starred in the very popular Dirty Harry (1971) where she reunited with Clint Eastwood playing a hard-boiled San Francisco detective who throws away the rule book in tracking a perverted psycho nicknamed the Scorpio Killer who has kidnapped and murdered a number of women chosen at random.  As the wife of Eastwood’s injured partner Reni Santoni, Lyn has a poignant scene where she confesses to Eastwood her insecurities of being married to a cop.  She continued acting in minor parts on television until the late seventies and then retired to raise her family. She passed away in 2005.

https://youtu.be/R3TOt06w0jI