Sixties Posts

MEET MILLIE

On June 9th, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles will be screening the classic Academy Award winning drama, The Diary of Anne Frank. Director George Stevens’ son will host the event and special guests are two of the film’s costars, Millie Perkins who starred as Anne and Diane what’s-her-name who played her sister Margot.

Millie won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award for Favorite Female Newcomer of 1959, but 20th Century-Fox, who she was contracted to, just didn’t know what to do with her. For some inexplicable reason, they found starring roles for Diane but all they could muster for Perkins was the 3rd female lead in Wild in the Country (1961) opposite Elvis Presley.

After leaving Fox, sweet Millie co-starred with Robert Walker in the non-hit comedy Ensign Pulver, did two cult but barely released 1965 westerns for director Monte Hellman, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting, and played Senator Hal Holbrook’s wife and mother of 2 teenage sons (unheard of for a 60s starlet to play much older at that time) in one of the coolest films of the decade, Wild in the Streets (1968). When the voting age is lowered to 14 (“14 or Fight!”), pop star Christopher Jones becomes president and sends all the over 30s to live in “retirement homes” where they are forced fed LSD. Poor Millie is one of the “oldsters” carted off.

Perkins then acted on and off in the 70s only to return full force in the 80s graduating to mother roles beginning with At Close Range (1986) playing Sean Penn’s mama. She has worked steadily ever since including a stint as Elvis Presley’s mother in the short-lived but critically acclaimed TV series, Elvis in 1990.

KUDOS TO VIC

Carol Lynley’s last acting role to date was about three years ago in a short film entitled Vic directed by Sage Stallone, son of Sylvester. In it, she plays a cool, icy casting director for an upcoming big budget motion picture. Clu Gulager, who worked with Carol back in 1962 on an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (pictured), stars and gives a heartbreaking performance as a washed up actor whom the film’s young director is a huge fan. He gives him an opportunity to audition for a major role but Vic’s insecurities and circumstances doom his chances.

Vic is a homage to all those 60s/70s TV guest star character actors whose names most people can’t identify but whose faces are so familiar. Among the actors seen auditioning for Vic’s role are Richard Herd, John Phillip Law, Peter Mark Richman, and Robert F. Lyons. In only a half hour the movie brilliantly captures what a horrible place Hollywood could be for hardworking actors with long careers who never found fame but keep struggling to get work.

Click here to see the entire film broken into four parts.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MAGGIE THRETT?

One of the 60s starlets I get most asked about is brunette beauty Maggie Thrett whom I profiled in my book Film Fatales (co-written with Louis Paul). Some guys preparing a Whatever Happened to…? about guest stars from the original Star Trek are looking for her as Maggie appeared with Karen Steele (at left) and Glamour Girl Susan Denberg (at right) as “Mudd’s Women” along with Roger C. Carmel as the devious Mudd.

Maggie Thrett was born Diane Pine on Nov. 18 in New York City. She began working as a model, gracing the pages of many magazines including the cover of Harper Bazaar to help finance her singing career. Thrett made her Off-Broadway debut in Out Brief Candle in 1962 and had a modest hit record with “Soupy” produced by Bob Crewe. The song rose to #36 on MCA’s Fabulous 57 in June of 1965 and Thrett headlined at a few clubs including the Basin Street East.

Soon after Maggie Thrett headed West and made her film debut in a very small role as “the second sister” in Dimension 5 (1966) starring Jeffrey Hunter and France Nuyen. She landed a contract at Universal when she accompanied a male friend to his audition. She got in but he didn’t. Her first film for the studio was the beach/spy spoof Out of Sight (1966) in which she played the karate-chopping F.L.U.S.H. assassin Wipeout who arrives in Malibu on a surfboard from Hawaii.

Due to her stunning dark ethnic look, Maggie was able to play Mexicans or American Indians and was a frequent guest star on TV westerns including Dundee and the Culhane, Cimarron Strip, and two episodes of The Wild Wild West including “The Night of the Running Death” (12/15/67) where she excelled playing a dancer named Dierdre (a.k.a. Topaz) who has a passion for molasses-covered Cherries Jubilee and is the girlfriend of assassin Enzo (played by female impersonator T.C. Jones). She fakes her death in order to aid Enzo, masquerading as a female British schoolteacher, in killing a princess. As a disguised Dierdre goes to shoot her, agent Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) comes up from behind her and grabs her arm, deflecting the shot. He then says to his partner James West (Robert Conrad), “Let me present our dear friend Topaz to you James. We know her better as Dierdre.” Artemus then rips off her veil and quips, “And we gave you such a nice funeral.”

Reportedly, Maggie Thrett withdrew her life savings to buy out her contract with Universal. Her most memorable role thereafter was in the box office hit Three in the Attic (1968) playing a Jewish hippie who is making it with college Lothario Christopher Jones, along with coeds Yvette Mimieux and Judy Pace. When they all discover that Jones is having sex with them simultaneously, they tie him up in their dorm’s attic and try to drain him of his virility. After playing a prostitute in the feature film Cover Me Baby (1970) starring Robert Forster and a guest stint on TV’s Most Deadly Game in 1970, she disappeared from the Hollywood scene.

If anyone has information on how to contact her, please let me know.