In planning stages of branching out from 1960s cinema and working on a book about the daytime serial Ryan’s Hope. I interviewed actor Roscoe Born (ex-Joe Novak, 1981-1983; 1988). He sent me this photo of him and Linda Vail in the Washington Theatre Club production of Senior Prom and asked me to share. I told him looks like a still from Grease. More to come on the book in the near future, but for now take a look on my just released book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974.
In honor of it being the late Gail Gerber’s birthday month, thought I would share an excerpt on how the classic Easy Rider was created from her 2010 memoir Trippin’ with Terry Southern. It was the most talked about section as she refutes most of the bullshit Peter Fonda and the late Dennis Hopper have been shoveling for decades.
https://youtu.be/UjlxqANj68U
Excerpt from “Uneasy Rider” from Trippin with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember by Gail Gerber with Tom Lisanti
Peter Fonda showed up at the carriage house on East 36th Street one rainy night in November of 1967. The son of Henry Fonda and sister of Jane, Peter gave an impressive Golden Globe-nominated performance as a solider in The Victors (1963) but the studios tabbed him a new romantic lead pairing him with Sandra Dee in the corny Tammy and the Doctor (1963) and with Sharon Hugueny in The Young Lovers (1964). Fonda was saved from becoming another Troy Donahue when American International Pictures asked him to step in at the last minute as a replacement for actor George Chakiris who balked at doing his own motorcycle riding in Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966). Peter played Heavenly Blues the leader of a local Hell’s Angels motorcycle club chapter. The film was an immediate hit and suddenly a long-haired Peter Fonda was cool in the eyes of the youth culture. Signed to do two more films for AIP, Fonda next starred as a TV commercial director who decides to experiment with LSD in The Trip (1967). He had one more film owed on his contract and that’s when he knocked on our door.
Terry had known Peter Fonda from the time he arrived in Hollywood in 1964 when it was a sleepy town in the doldrums between cinematic highs, and the children of the great stars of another era were trying to develop careers … or not. Terry and I would spend time at the Malibu home of Bobby Walker where we met and became friendly with Peter.
Terry was expecting Peter when he turned up at our doorstep on that chilly autumn night. While Terry was in Rome a few weeks prior he had lunch with Peter who was making a movie for Roger Vadim and where he shared with Terry an idea for a film that came to him in a hotel room in Toronto. Per Terry it was first about two daredevil racecar drivers being exploited by greedy promoters but then morphed into a tale about two bikers who score some dope, go on a road trip, and have a series of “interesting incidences” when Peter realized that he owed American International Pictures one more biker film.
Terry was very enthusiastic about the project but Peter felt he wouldn’t have enough in the budget to pay Terry’s fee to write the script. After I let Peter into our home he reiterated the plot once again to Terry and said he had a title for the movie, something like The Loners. Terry, sitting on our golden couch, raised his hand to indicate a marquee, and said, “Why not call it Easy Rider.” Terry once again expressed great interest in writing the screenplay. As I remember, which differs from Peter’s recollection, the rest of the conversation went something as follows:
Peter: “We can’t afford you Terry. Can you do it on deferment?”
Terry: “I can’t, but I’ll do it for scale and a percentage. Who is going to direct?”
Peter: “Dennis Hopper.”
Terry: “Are you sure!?!”
Dennis had never directed before and had such a bad reputation at this time. Despite his trepidation about Hopper, Terry agreed with the understanding of receiving a percentage of the profits and was to come up with the “interesting incidences.” Fonda was pleased, and rushed out into the night. This was the era of oral agreements and handshake deals, and Terry had no reason to doubt Peter.
Despite the fact that he had co-authored such classic movies as Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, and Barbarella, Terry wasn’t getting any offers in the U.S. at this time. I thought it was a little strange, (soon we would learn that the FBI had a hand in Terry not working) but was not involved in his business. I assumed he had smart New York and Los Angeles people looking after his “best interests,” but it seems that they were looking out for their own welfare, where Terry only thought of the next project. Terry said to me once, “An agent never got me a job, but was always there to take their percentage.”
Peter returned after the holidays and moved into the monk-like half furnished room on the third floor. He and Terry finally got down to business, hired a typist from a typing pool in Washington D.C who came to the house, and started on the series of “interesting incidences.” They worked nonstop all day for about a month, Terry with his yellow pad and pencil, and Peter pacing around the living room—the better to think. The typist would come by about five o’clock in the afternoon and type up the pages, triple spaced, and then Terry would work on the script some more into the wee hours of the night.
One night, very late, Peter had gone out on the town. Terry continued to work with the typist. They finished up and were just talking while I made drinks. The typist mentioned that she had done a lot of typing for the government, and that these classified documents she was working on had to do with how there are alien people from outer space walking around amongst us, and working for the government. They looked just like us, and had infiltrated the highest offices, and had blended right in.
After she left, Terry got right to work on it and incorporated this into a scene he wrote with his good friend Rip Torn in mind. The part was that of the “Faulkner-like” country lawyer eventually played by Jack Nicholson in the movie. As Wyatt and Billy sit around a campfire with the lawyer getting stoned, he regales the bikers with this conspiracy theory about the government covering up the existence of aliens. Terry showed the scene to Rip and asked if he would do it. Rip was busy with rehearsals for his new play called The Cuban Thing, which coincidentally was the same play I had auditioned for but didn’t get. Rip said he would try to do the movie if his schedule worked out.
Eventually Dennis Hopper, who was to direct Easy Rider, arrived. Early in his career Hopper was being compared to James Dean. A confrontation with legendary director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas in 1958 pretty much blackballed him from the film industry though he remained active on television. Terry had met Dennis in 1965 when he was hired by Vogue to do a magazine piece on Hopper’s then-wife Brooke Hayward, daughter of the Broadway producer Leland Hayward. Dennis was not working as an actor at the time, but as a photographer. They had a house in the Hollywood Hills, and Dennis had quite a collection of contemporary art. Terry entitled his article, “The Loved House of the Dennis Hopper’s.”
We stayed friendly with Brooke and Dennis (Terry, always with the nicknames, called him “Den”), and we’d go to the house for dinner. Brooke would serve something wonderful and wisely go to bed. Dennis and Terry would retire, with drinks in hand, to the living room, which had a disconcerting dentist’s chair. I would find a cozy sofa and watch Dennis and Terry talk. Dennis would expound on his idea of how Shakespeare should be spoken, and rant on about a film he wanted to direct called The Last Movie, which he eventually managed to make. Terry loved madness and people behaving badly (and you couldn’t get any madder or badder than Hopper). Terry would draw this behavior out, and then go home and write “fiction.”
When Dennis showed up at our house in New York we let him stay in Nile’s room, which he complained about and rudely called “a closet.” I tried to stay out of the way as best I could. Dennis was there for about two weeks, and at night he and Peter would be pacing around my living room, gesturing, and throwing out ideas between passing joints between the three of them. Though Terry was a martini man he would just hold the joint and pass it along most times. Somebody had to stay straight to do the writing so Terry sat with his pencil and a long yellow pad on our golden couch, scribbling away. He would hand the pages to the typist and she would type them up immediately. Dennis would rant and rave, using a lot of four-letter words, and the typist would break into tears, and run sobbing out into the night. Terry would have to call the typing pool the next day, and get another typist. Terry suggested that they change the “drug of choice” from marijuana to cocaine, which was not in fashion yet, because pot was too bulky to be carrying on the motorcycles. Dennis thought that running the credits upside down might be interesting, and he also whined about why the two characters had to die.
Terry loved collaborating with other people. He always felt that two heads were better than one when creating a story or screenplay. Terry was really in his element sharing concepts with Peter and Dennis. He just loved to work in this free-for-all fashion with people yelling out story ideas while nestled on the sofa he jotted down the better ones in pencil on his yellow legal pad. Peter once remarked that Terry agreed to work on Easy Rider on a handshake “just for the sake of having the freedom to play with an idea that appealed to his individual nature.” This statement is oh-so-true.
Terry had the scripts neatly bound and held on to the original. He handed copies to Peter and Dennis, and off they went back to Hollywood. Terry also gave a script to Rip Torn who retained his copy after all these years.
Peter, who owed American International Pictures one more movie, took the script to studio heads James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Peter and Dennis were trying to use this biker movie to make a more interesting statement about the current state of affairs in the U.S. but also as a springboard to launch Dennis’ directing career. But due to the proposed budget and the rampant drug use, AIP turned it down to Sam Arkoff’s forever regrets. Fonda then made an agreement with Bert Schneider who, along with director Bob Rafelson, brought The Monkees to television and produced their movie Head in 1968. Bert had a production deal with Columbia Pictures, which wound up distributing the movie. However, there was a stipulation as the studio gave Dennis and Peter about $40,000 to go to New Orleans Mardi Gras to shoot some test footage, which was eventually used in the film, to see if they could really pull off making a movie.
This shoot was scheduled to commence in March. At the last minute someone was bright enough to check and discovered Mardi Gras that year was in February so the rush was on to get to New Orleans for the parade, where one of the last scenes was to be shot in a graveyard. It was Peter’s soliloquy, and a photo exists of Terry and Peter discussing it, with Fonda clutching the script.
Terry and I flew down to New Orleans and found the cast and crew settled in a crummy motel at the airport. We caught the end of the parade and then went to the graveyard for Peter’s scene. When night came there was no crew to light the set. In the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind, a crew member said that there was so much chaos someone’s girlfriend had to hold the Sun Gun. I was that person. I had no idea what a Sun Gun was when I volunteered to help while standing late at night in a boggy, soggy New Orleans cemetery. Some guy’s voice came out of the dark, and said, “We have no one to hold the Sun Gun.” Trying to be helpful, I chirped, “I’ll do it!” Before I knew what was happening, a couple of burly guys strapped this giant, heavy battery pack around my waist, which caused me to sink further into the bog. I was to hold this pole the size of a broomstick with a bright light on the end and keep it steady on Peter’s face while he did his monologue. This was a lengthy speech and it took all night to shoot. I tried so hard to keep the pole steady, while I continued to sink further and further into the misty marsh. Peter was emoting like mad, and the crew was concentrating, knowing this was going to be a one-take shot that they only had one chance to get. Luckily, we got it. If not, I’m afraid that I might have disappeared completely into the bog never to be heard from again.
Everyone slept all the next day, which is odd for people who are supposed to be shooting a movie. In the morning I went wandering, and found a classic New Orleans funeral. I saw the Dirge and later the joyful exit, and the Second Line with umbrellas in the light drizzle of rain. Later that afternoon, we gathered in someone’s room in the motel. It had been raining all day, and Dennis insisted he needed the camera to film the neon lights reflected in the puddles. No one was about to give Dennis a camera. I went back to our room and didn’t see the camera go through the motel’s plate glass window.
The next day I told Terry that I was going back to New York. I returned home to East 36th Street, and a few days later Terry showed up. He looked perturbed but was tight-lipped about it. When I asked him what went on down there after I left, all he would manage to bark out was a “Hrrrmph.” Actress Karen Black, who played a New Orleans prostitute in the film, said Dennis’ behavior became so unruly that Terry turned to him and said, “The cacophony of your verbiage is driving me insane.” There was nothing more to shoot in New Orleans that I know of, and I guess they all de-camped. The filming was finished for the moment. Peter and Dennis returned to Hollywood with the screenplay to raise the rest of the money. Everyone in the film business knows you can’t get financing without a script.
Later, in the early summer after Columbia agreed to release Easy Rider, there was a meeting in a restaurant on the Upper East Side to discuss shooting the rest of the movie with Peter, Dennis, Terry, Rip Torn, myself, and a director whose name I can’t remember. Dennis was late so we went ahead and ordered drinks and appetizers. Terry was sitting on my left and Dennis’ place was on my right. I was the only woman at the table. Rip was on the other side of the round table, and so was Peter, who was talking to a couple of pretty girls sitting nearby. Dennis soon showed up in full Easy Rider regalia—long hair, bushy mustache, and fringed buckskin jacket. He didn’t sit down but continued to stand on my right at his place at the table. Agitated, he exclaimed, “Man, I’ve been lookin’ for shootin’ locations in Texas and man, I’m lucky I’m still alive—those mother-fuckin’, redneck bastards!” He then spotted Rip across the table and said, “Hey Rip, you’re from fuckin’ Texas, aren’t you?” Rip replied, “Yes, but don’t judge all bastards by me.” Dennis continued his ranting and, still standing, picked up the knife at his place setting and leaned across the table, brandishing the knife at Rip. Rip, who had been in the army and was a tough Texan, didn’t even get up, but leaned over the table, grabbed Dennis’ wrist, and twisted. The knife clanked to the table. Peter, who had been leaning back in his chair and balancing on two legs so he could flirt with the girls, fell over backwards. Rip, controlling his temper, offered to meet Dennis outside to finish the fight, and left the restaurant. Dennis sat down, acting as if nothing had happened, and continued to dominate the conversation all through dinner.
Needless to say, Rip refused to work with Dennis Hopper and backed out of the movie. He not only lost out on a memorable movie role but unfortunately for Rip the controversial play he was starring in The Cuban Thing about a Cuban family during Fidel Castro’s revolution closed after opening night. During previews a Cuban resistance group bombed the theatre in protest of the play.
Scrambling to find a replacement for Rip, Peter purportedly talked with William Wellman, Jr. about a role but when Wellman learned that Dennis was co-starring and directing he opted to work in a Bob Hope comedy instead. Finally, they found someone who would work with Dennis—Jack Nicholson who was recommended by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. It was a star-making role for Jack, which was not surprising as Terry wrote wonderful dialogue for the character and Jack brilliantly brought to life this straight laconic Southern lawyer who smokes marijuana for the first time. At this point Terry had moved onto his next endeavor while Peter and Dennis traveled the country filming Easy Rider from Terry’s script…
Just got word from my publisher McFarland and Company that my new book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 has shipped. What a strange journey it has taken. I started off doing a book about American actresses who went to Italy to work during the sixties. I first wrote about Mimsy Farmer and then tackled Pamela. I just kept writing and writing and realized I had enough for a book just on her. My plans to turn into a biography with hopefully a new interview with Pamela was sadly squashed when I was informed by her husband that she could not participate. I was going to abandon the project, but knowing I was a big fan he suggested I continue.
Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 pays tribute to the stunning beauty that is Pamela Tiffin. Prettier than Raquel Welch. Funnier than Jane Fonda. More appealing than Ann-Margret. Yet they became superstars, but Pamela did not despite adulation from the critics and even James Cagney who hailed her “remarkable flair for comedy.” Contractual obligations and self-imposed exiles in New York and then Rome hampered her, though she remains a cult sixties pop icon to this day.
Dark-haired Pamela Tiffin debuted in the movie version of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke (1961) as the stunning innocent who steals handsome doctor Laurence Harvey from sexually frustrated spinster Geraldine Page and then she was a scene-stealing comedienne giving a Golden Globe nominated performance as an addle-brained Southern teenager who sneaks into East Berlin and marries Communist Horst Buchholz in Billy Wilder’s hilarious political satire One, Two, Three (1961) starring James Cagney.
Next came a succession of popular teenage drive-in movies where Pamela once again delivers highly amusing performances. She’s a bored farm gal itching for more than hanging out with the hogs in the musical State Fair (1962) with Pat Boone and Bobby Darin; a bungling flight attendant in the romantic travelogue Come Fly with Me (1963) with Hugh O’Brian and Dolores Hart; a surfing college student in the beach movie For Those Who Think Young (1964) with James Darren; a race car driver loving coed in The Lively Set (1964) again with Darren; and a naive tourist in the Madrid-set comedy The Pleasure Seekers (1964), a remake of Three Coins in the Fountain, with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley. With her beauty and seductive soft-voice, Pamela Tiffin instilled in her romance seeking characters not only a wide-eyed naïveté and endearing flightiness, but a sexiness that her contemporaries at the time could not match. It was these qualities that made these movies better than expected due to the actress’ comedic abilities and made her rise above the competition of the time. So successful was she that Turner Classic Movies has dubbed her “Hollywood’s favorite air-headed ingénue in the sixties.”
Sophisticated and intelligent in real life (she lived in New York to continue working as a model and taking college courses between films), Pamela was not a fan of her teenage movies and strove to get more mature roles. However, she was beholden to the contracts she signed with producer Hal Wallis (who discovered her), 20th Century-Fox; and the Mirisch Brothers. To her delight, Pamela was finally able to shed her ingenue image after landing a sexy adult role as a sharp-tongued, man-hungry heiress in the detective film Harper starring Paul Newman. Her sexy bikini-clad dance on top of a diving board has become one of the sixties iconic film moments.
Instead of taking Hollywood by storm at this point with her new sex kitten persona, she went blonde and headed overseas to become Marcello Mastroianni’s first American leading lady in the Italian three-part comedy Oggi, domani, dopodomani (1966) and then opted for a Broadway play, Dinner at Eight in the role essayed by Jean Harlow in the 1930s movie version. An unhappy marriage caused her to run away to Italy in 1967 putting a halt to her career trajectory in the U.S. leaving her many fans wanting more and wondering where she disappeared to.
Hollywood’s loss though was Italy’s gain. She was paired with some of the country’s most famous leading men including Franco Nero (twice), Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Nino Manfredi, and Lando Buzzanca. Though enjoying being a sexy blonde, Pamela wanted to act and went after more character parts during her time there hence her long blonde locks were hidden under dark or red wigs. Quite popular, especially when her notorious pictorial in Playboy was released, her films ranged from comedies such as Straziami ma di baci Saziami/Kill Me with Kisses (1968, one of Italy’s highest grossing movies of the sixties), L’arcangelo/The Archangel (1969), and Il vichingo venuto dal Sud/The Blonde in the Blue Movie (1971); to the underrated giallo Giornata nera per l’Ariete/The Fifth Cord (1971); to the spaghetti western Los Amigos/Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1973) featuring one of her best performances as a whore. In between, Pamela returned to the U.S. for one memorable role as a political activist taken hostage by Mexican General Peter Ustinov and his army when they retake the Alamo in the very funny satire Viva Max (1969).
Not a biography, Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974 is a career retrospective of Pamela Tiffin’s movies plus TV and stage appearances. Interviewees (including Franco Nero, Hugh O’Brian, Lada Edmund, Jr., Carole Wells, Tim Zinnemann, Martin West, Niki Flacks, Jed Curtis, Peter Gonzales Falcon, Eldon Quick, John Wilder, and Larry Hankin) provide a behind-the-scenes look at her work. Plus noted film historians Dean Brierly, Roberto Curti, Howard Hughes, and Paolo Mereghetti weigh in on Pamela Tiffin’s place in cinematic history.
https://youtu.be/GS14ml1KpyM
To most television fans actress Judy Carne is only remembered as the original Sock It To Me girl on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. But the bouncy auburn-haired British lass (born Joyce Audrey Botterill on April 27, 1939 in Northampton, England) had a prolific career on television before she literally made a splash on that groovy hit variety series. The daughter of a London fruit merchant, she danced with the Bush-Davies ballet and made her stage debut in the 1956 revue For Amusement Only in the West End. Before Carne headed for the U.S. she was a panelist on Juke Box Jury and a regular on the sitcom The Rag Trade.
Judy Carne was first introduced to American audiences as Heather Finch, a British exchange student who comes to stay with an American family in the first hour long comedy series Fair Exchange in 1962. She next played the rich Barbara Wyntoon daughter of the snobbish Cecil Wyntoon (John Dehner) and in love with the poor Jim Bailey (Les Brown Jr.) on the long forgotten sitcom The Baileys of Balboa during the 1964-65 season. And on the big screen she had a small role as one of the three “nameless broads” (the others being Janine Gray and Kathy Kersh) who are found in bed with James Coburn in the comedy The Americanization of Emily (1964).
With the advent of the Beatles in 1964, all things British were in during the mid-sixties so Carne with her cute looks and mod dress was perfect for the spy genre making two memorable appearances on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1965 and 1967.
In between, Judy Carne landed her third TV series called Love on a Rooftop during the 1966-67 TV season. She played newlywed Julie Hammond Willis, the pampered daughter of a rich used car dealer, who is married to struggling architect David (Peter Duel) and living in a tiny windowless apartment, which sits on the roof of a building with a wonderful view of the San Francisco Bay area. Though warm and original, critical kudos could not save it from cancellation after only 1 season. I remember this show and Carne in it quite fondly. It made me want to live in an apartment with incredible city views. Something I still have not achieved to this day. The sitcom was rerun at night during the summer of 1971, which was a few years after my first memories of watching prime time TV. Land of the Giants, Here Come the Brides, Here’s Lucy, Mayberry R.F.D., Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Mothers-in-Law, and the western Lancer still standout for me.
https://youtu.be/XsHhBbqgsMg?list=PL8CF0E638CF991118
Shortly after her last appearance on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Judy Carne found “overnight” fame on the innovative new variety series Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In beginning in January 1968. Though Carne had comedic talent she is best remembered as the Sock It to Me girl, in which she would invariably get doused with a bucket of water or fall through a trap door on the floor. Also memorable were scenes of Carne gyrating in a bikini as the camera zoomed in on phrases and slogans painted in Day-Glo colors on her body. She became one of the most popular actresses on the show (she was my favorite) rivaling even that of Goldie Hawn (who was funny but her incessant giggling annoyed this 8 year old). Capitalizing on her popular catchphrase, Carne even released a novelty single. Judy stayed with the series for two years and left part way through season three. She told TV Guide in 1969, “Frankly, it has become a big bloody bore.”
https://youtu.be/OpXP8abAv_w?list=PL059BD1E1F27817D0
Post Laugh-In, whole Goldie Hawn went on to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Cactus Flower and became a bona fide movie star, Judy Carne did not fare as well but remained popular nevertheless. She landed a one-year gig on The Kraft Music Hall, starred on Broadway in The Boy Friend, did a number of TV guest shots (including 6 appearances on Love, American Style always to my delight) and movies-of-the-week (most notably QB VII in 1974) and was a regular performer on the talk and game show circuits.
https://youtu.be/JSrxXBBBuy4
The late seventies, however, really did sock it to Judy Carne. She made headlines in the road company of Absurd Person Singular for an altercation with co-star Betsy Von Furstenburg who reportedly purposely spilled a glass of water on Carne during a performance. A nightclub act she put together failed and was a big disappointment. Her sixties experimentation with drugs developed into full-blown heroin addiction. In 1978 she was busted for illegal prescription drugs (she was acquitted) and suffered a broken neck in a car accident. People involved in accidents require a good lawyer to represent them Lawyers from Carlson Meissner Hart & Hayslett provide services as such.
In 1985 Carne co-authored (with former boyfriend Bob Merrill) her heartbreaking autobiography Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside: The Bittersweet Saga of the Sock-It-To-Me Girl. She candidly revealed details of her tumultuous three-year marriage to Burt Reynolds, her admitted bi-sexuality, her love affair with singer Lana Cantrell, life on Laugh-In and her drug addiction. The book put her back in the spotlight for a short period and to capitalize on her newfound notoriety she put together a cabaret act entitled Only I…. Her show ran for a few months at the Duplex in Greenwich Village during the early nineties and she caught the attention of radio shock jock Howard Stern appearing on his radio and TV shows. Shortly after, she returned to England and lived the rest of her life out of the spotlight.
Rear more about Judy Carne’s spy genre appearances in my and Louis Paul’s book Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973.