Our sixties surfer boy of the week is blonde Aron Kincaid who is also the cover boy of my upcoming book, Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969. Aron starred in such beachy keen films as The Girls on the Beach, Ski Party, Beach Ball and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. Today, Aron is a very talented and accomplished artist and you can see some of his work at Gallery Grace.
January 12, 2005
Continuing my diatribe started last Blog on overrated sixties starlets, I would like to know how in hell did Stefanie Powers ever achieve so much fame? The woman gives the same exact one-note performance in every film and TV show she appears in. They always say in Hollywood you need a combination of talent and luck and in Powers’ case the luck part is oh so true. She never appeared in one memorable film (excluding of course my childhood fave, The Boatniks) and her idea of emoting is flipping her wild mane of hair. Give me Pamela Tiffin or Anjanette Comer any day!
Another starlet from hell is Connie Stevens. I can give you Sixteen Reasons why but let’s just say foremost that it is because she always gave icky sweet performances in such films as Parrish and Susan Slade. I always found her to be annoying and irksome with that whispery baby doll voice. It has always galled me that every time they produce a nostalgic piece on the sixties they roll out Stevens to appear. Memo to Hollywood: Stevens is not the only actress in town that can invoke memories from that swinging decade.
Ciao for now,
Tom
I thought I’d start the New Year by debunking the myth that I never met a sixties starlet I didn’t like. It was recently brought to my attention that Diane Baker is teaching acting classes at a university on the West Coast. Who is Diane Baker, you may ask? In my opinion, she was one of the least attractive and overrated actresses of that decade. You may remember her as the brunette contrast to blondes Elke Sommer in The Prize and Tippi Hedren in Marnie or from that camp fest, The Best of Everything with Joan Crawford. Other “classics” on her resume include Tess of the Storm Country, The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit, and Congratulations, It’s a Boy!
I never could understand the appeal of Baker. To be fair she did give one sweet performance as Millie Perkins’ sister in The Diary of Anne Frank but she was mostly bland, icy, and/or sleep inducing playing opposite some big stars such as Paul Newman and Gregory Peck. And unlike her contemporaries Carol Lynley and Stella Stevens who we were rooting for to survive in The Poseidon Adventure, Baker couldn’t drum up an iota of symphony for her disaster movie characters. We were hoping she’d become lava food in Krakatoa, East of Java and were praying that her fellow lifeboat denizens would put us out of our misery and throw her overboard in The Last Survivors. Alas, she survived to the bitter end of both those flicks in the seventies. Thankfully her reign as leading lady didn’t last much longer.
Dec. 24, 2004
Holiday greetings! Santa has delivered acting jobs to three of our Fantasy Femmes. The vivacious and still gorgeous Francine York, whose credits are too numerous to mention, can be seen in a lead guest role as Mrs. Sokol on the hit NBC drama Las Vegas starring James Caan and Josh Duhamel on January 17. If the series pilot is ever rerun catch it to see Drive-in Dream Girl Beverly Washburn of Old Yeller and Spider Baby fame who played Mrs. Johnson. But I digress, back to Francine. She can also be seen in her recurring role as Evelyn the va-va-va-voom former Miss Yonkers who floats Jerry Stiller’s boat on the CBS sitcom, The King of Queens.
Lovely Irene Tsu who beach party fans remember as the wisecracking native girl who tries to entice Frankie Avalon away from Annette in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini has been busy too. She recently made a guest appearance on the Lifetime medical series Strong Medicine and can be seen in an upcoming episode of CSI-NY on CBS.
On the direct-to-video front, Fantasy Femmes cover girl Celeste Yarnall who lost Elvis to Michele Carey in Live a Little, Love a Little can be seen in the 2004 thriller Skinwalker: Curse of the Shaman.
Since I am in a plug-happy mood, I thought I’d share some books that I have enjoyed recently. First, that old adage of “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” definitely applies to Louis Paul’s new tome Italian Horror Film Directors. For some reason his publisher saddled it with a less than deserving cover. But once you open this nicely illustrated book you horror and foreign film fans will be treated to an exhaustive and entertaining overview of some of Italy’s legendary genre directors and their cult films.
One of Tinsteltown’s hippest entertainment journalists, Nelson Aspen, has written his second cook book called Let’s Dish Up a Dinner Party! Nelson, a great guy and a huge Carol Lynley fan like moi, is one of the wittiest writers around and dishes up lots of gossip with his recipe selections.
Though forties actresses are not my cup of tea, I prefer my starlets bikini or mini-skirt clad, Laura Wagner and Ray Hagen have written a wonderful McFarland book called Killer Tomatoes, which features a killer cover. I have to praise their graphic artist for such an eye-catching design. Inside you’ll read interesting profiles on such dames as Joan Blondell, Jane Russell, Lucille Ball, Gloria Grahame, Ann Sheridan, etc.
Finally from the if-you-don’t-promote-yourself-who-will? department, my new book Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969 should be out in June. It is sort of a compendium containing reviews and synopses on 32 beach movies. To my knowledge it is the first book of its kind for this genre. To make it a bit different from all those similar horror and western books I interviewed a number of folks who worked on the movies for behind-the-scenes gossip. Everybody offered entertaining anecdotes but Jody McCrea, Aron Kincaid, Edward Garner, Quinn O’Hara, Don Edmonds, and Chris Noel really dished the dirt on what went on while the camera was not rolling.
See you in the New Year!
Tom