Sixties Posts

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SHE’S PURE SOUTHERN FRIED EVIL

For all you Tina Louise fans, and I am one of course, who know there was more to her acting ability than playing Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, check out these YouTube clips from the TV-movie Nightmare in Badham County where our Tina plays a vicious prison guard at an all-women’s prison farm in the deep South. (That’s Lynne Moody as the black inmate hiding on the bus and Della Reese who puts the choke hold on Tina in Clip #2.) When not lounging around with fellow guard buxom Lana Wood in their bed clothes watching women’s wrestling on TV, Tina likes to slap around the inmates to show who’s boss woman. Along with her part as Charmaine in The Stepford Wives, it is one of Tina’s best performances.

Also sorry to report that Gail Gerber will not be attending the Night-of-a-Thousand-Stars convention in Memphis afterall.

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The Elvis Starlets Are Coming! The Elvis Starlets Are Coming! Part 2

Well, it is official. Gail Gerber has accepted the invitation to participate in The Night of a Thousand Stars Convention in Memphis from August 15-17. She’s billed on the site as Gail Gilmore, which was her stage for Girl Happy and Harum Scarum.

The list of Elvis’ co-stars who will be attending is growing daily. However, the convention run by actress Suzanna Leigh, still does not have a venue posted. Also the tickets are quite pricey to attend. I am a bit skeptical if Ms. Leigh is going to be able to pull this off especially when she will be competing with the official Elvis Presley convention run by his estate happening at the same time. Stay tuned.

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YVETTE MIMIEUX

I have always been indifferent about ’60s starlet, Yvette Mimieux. In the mid-sixties one critic tabbed her the “poor man’s Carol Lynley.” In fairness, Lynley was tagged the “poor man’s Carroll Baker.” Mimieux consistently played waif-like roles while Lynley was able to play more varied roles to better effect i.e. the harried heroine in Bunny Lake Is Missing, the psychotic heiress in Once You Kiss a Stranger, etc. However, by the early ’70s Yvette was snagging lead film roles in which I though Carol should have got and I started to resent her. Two of those movies have just been released on DVD.

First up was my favorite movie as a kid until I saw The Poseidon Adventure a year later. Skyjacked (1972) features an all-star cast trapped aboard a jetliner hijacked by disturbed Vietnam vet James Brolin with Yvette as the head stewardess. The following year she appeared in The Neptune Disaster in the role of the “girl” who accompanies a team of scientists to the ocean floor. Check out a great review of this on the CinemaRetro site. Buy them both. I will and as I am watching I’ll still mutter under my breath that Carol Lynley should have been cast instead!

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THREE ON A ISLAND

Sultry Pamela Tiffin starred in two 3-Girls-Out-to-Trap-Themselves-a-Man movies, Come Fly with Me (1963) with Dolores Hart and Lois Nettleton, and The Pleasure Seekers (1964) with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley. So Pamela was the perfect choice to lead a trio of starlets looking for romance in New York City in the failed TV pilot, Three on an Island (1965). Long, leggy Julie Newmar was the sophisticated one and Monica Moran (never heard of her? hell neither have I!) was the gruff one.

Check out this clip on YouTube. Never have any women just waking up in the morning look as glamorous as Pamela and Julie.