Sixties Posts

CINEMA RETRO

Click here to read the latest posts from my friend columnist David Savage. He pays tribute to the singing talent of Karen Black and the underrated Smile (1975) starring Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon and such ’70s starlets as Joan Prather, Annette O’Toole, Colleen Camp, Melanie Griffith, and Denise Nickerson.

Trivia: Karen Black won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the tacky waitress girlfriend of concert pianist dropout Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces (1970). Carol Lynley was offered the role of Catherine, the sophisticated financee of Nicholson’s brother who has more in common with Jack. According to Carol herself, she wanted the flashier waitress role and since the producers were only paying scale she turned the other part down. “Big mistake,” Carol exclaimed to me. Susan Anspach took Carol’s role and had an affair with Nicholson which produced a son named Caleb.

TALKING HEADS

For a look at two disparate actresses, click on their names below for recent interview clips of these ladies. One is completely humorless while the other doesn’t take herself or her career seriously in the least. You decide who is who.

Elizabeth Ashley

Diane Baker

KUDOS TO KURYAKIN

While the starlets had varied comments about Robert Vaughn, some not very flattering in the least, all of them admired David McCallum who was the epitome of the English gentleman. Read what the Film Fatales had to say about this Golden Boy:

“David was playful and would have lunch with me.” Sharyn Hillyer

“What I remember most…was his hair. It was very silky and blonde…He seemed very preoccupied in doing his job well.” Arlene Martel

“[He] was just terrific to work with.” Marlyn Mason

“A very sexy man, very virile.” Diane McBain

“He was a very precise actor.” Irene Tsu

TONGUE-STABBING SOLO

Continuing on about Robert Vaughn, I give actress Marlyn Mason the last word as she described working with him in “The Deadly Quest Affair” on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in my book Film Fatales:

“We had to do a kissing scene. In those days when people kissed on television and in movies it was all very tame stuff. There was no slurping and nobody was eating anybody’s face like you see nowadays. So we do this scene and Vaughn just jams his tongue down my throat. Of course the actress in me just kept on acting but I was not responsive. I was trying to keep my mouth shut. I was so stunned and I decided that I was just not going to say anything. We did this in one take but I thought, ‘There is no way that they are going to see this in the dailies and pass it. We’re going to have to do this again.’ Sure enough, the next day the director came and told us we had to do the scene over again. I was watching out of the corner of my eye as the director took Robert Vaughn aside and told him, ‘You can’t kiss her like that.’ We did it a second time and he made a half-ass attempt to do it again. But my mouth was tightly shut.”