Sixties Posts

RIP

Actor Kerwin Matthews passed away this week at the age of 81. Kerwin who? you may be asking. He was one of Hollywood’s most handsome actors in the late Fifties and early Sixties. Resembling Sean Flynn and just like Sean’s daddy Errol, Kerwin excelled in swashbuckling adventure or fantasy movies such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and Jack the Giant Killer.

I personally was not a fan of these movies but Kerwin deserves kudos as the openly gay actor wouldn’t play the Hollywood closet game and for a time only found work in Europe. Among his films was a chance to co-star opposite the luschious Tina Louise in the Italian historical epic Warrior Empress. Click the link to a great tribute page to him on the fantastic web site, Brian’s Drive-in Theater.

DVR ALERT

Some rare airings of ’60s starlets movies are upcoming this week on our favorite channel Turner Movie Classics. On 7/15 @ 6pm Shelley Fabares, Suzie Kaye, Angelique Pettyjohn, and Arlene Charles play vacationing gold diggers out to snare themselves a rich husband down Miami Beach way in Clambake (1967) starring Elvis Presley as a rich boy masquerading as a poor water ski instructor. Though not considered a high point in the King’s career, it is one of my 5 top Elvis movies–breezy fun with a great theme song sung by Elvis of course which rates 5 stars on my iPod. Fave scene: playboy Bill Bixby tossing olives into Arlene Charles’ cleavage. Huh? It’s that type of movie.

On 7/15 @ 10pm comes from the folks who gave the world Guns of Navarone the so-bad-it’s-entertaining misfire of a western MacKenna’s Gold (1969). Gregory Peck leads a disparate group of desperate desperados including Telly Savalas, Camilla Sparv, Omar Sharif and the film’s saving grace Julie Newmar as a mean mute Indian warrior to find the lost river of gold somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

Finally on 7/18 @12pm one of our fave starlets Barbara Luna has a rare leading role in the charming children’s movie filmed in Mexico Dime with a Halo (1963).

DVR ALERT

Set those timers for Thursday July 12 at 4:15pm as TCM will be presenting a rare airing of the amusing sex comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree starring Jack Lemmon and Carol Lynley giving a wonderfully charming performance as a coed who tries to live platonically with her boyfriend Dean Jones while trying to fight off the amorous advances of landlord Lemmon. Paul Lynde and Imogene Coca lend fine comedic support and the scenery is decorated with the lushious Joy Harmon, Lyn Edgington, Jane Wald, and Pamela Curran all featured in my upcoming book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

Though Under the Yum Yum Tree was the 14th highest grossing film of 1963, this sex comedy is considered one of Lemmon’s weaker efforts. This is a constant in Carol Lynley’s career and hampered her from becoming a bigger movie star. When she co-starred opposite some top leading men it was in films that either the critics disliked or the audiences ignored. For example, Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas in The Last Sunset and Laurence Olivier in Bunny Lake Is Missing. Then instead of working opposite such leading men as Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford or Paul Newman, Lynley got saddled with the forgetable Richard Beymer, Stuart Whitman (twice), Gig Young, and Paul Burke. And she herself blundered such as when she was offered a co-starring role opposite Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces then turned it down because they were only paying scale!

Finally since I will be in Viva Las Vegas for a few days, early birthday wishes to Edy Williams best known for her campy performance as the voracious sex star Ashley St. Ives in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Check out this funny YouTube clip of Edy getting a Rolls in the hay.