Sixties Posts

The outrageous Edy Williams arguably had the most determination and drive of most sixties glamour girls to become another Raquel Welch. Standing 5-foot-7 with dark brown hair and brown-green eyes she had a curvaceous body measuring 39-26-37, breathy voice, and captivating personality that men drool over. Loving the camera, Edy posed bikini-clad for numerous cheesecake and pin-up photos. She turned every public appearance into a media event and undeniably became a popular sex goddess of the decade leading up to her most notorious role as porn star Ashley St. Ives in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970).

Edy began her acting career with bit roles in a few movies including For Love or Money (1963) before getting noticed playing call girls in A House Is Not a Home (1964) and more memorably in Sam Fuller’s film noir The Naked Kiss (1964). As with her contemporaries, she landed minor decorative roles on TV including episodes of Burke’s Law, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The ravishing beauty then signed a contract with 20^th Century-Fox, ala Raquel Welch, but wherein Raquel landed big movie roles Edy continued to toil on television. Edy was voted a Hollywood Deb Star for 1965 but still was only landing bit parts on the big screen in Nevada Smith (1965), Red Line 7000 (1965), and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966). She finally got noticed and was simply delectable in The Pad (and How to Use It) (1966) playing one of playboy James Farentino’s girlfriends but went right back to bit parts in the awful Sonny and Cher musical Good Times (1967). It was at this point where Williams went blonde and had one of her best roles in The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) as the “dumb but well-stacked” suburban neighbor of Anne Jackson who imagines Edy as this sexy siren who can seduce any man. After playing one of sailor Gardner McKay’s shapely shipmates in I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew (1969) and a Vegas showgirl who is sent by casino owner David Janssen to seduce his son Robert Drivas who he suspects of being gay in Where’s It At? (1969), Williams scored big with droll over-the-top performance in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) directed by Russ Meyer. She hit it off so well with her director that they wed shortly after and she co-starred in his next movie the underrated The Seven Minutes (1971) starring Wayne Maunder. You can read my homage to Edy in Beyond, with comments from actors who knew and worked with her, in my upcoming book from BearManor Media entitled Talking Sixties Drive-In Movies.

https://youtu.be/g7-7SOW152M

Lisa’s birthday almost sneaked by me. A sultry siren with impeccable cheekbones, long dark hair, and a curvaceous figure, Lisa Seagram started off in sophisticated roles before literally cutting her hair short and loosening up in a string of mid-Sixties fantasy and adventure films and TV shows usually cast as the duplicitous vixen or wanton woman. She made her acting debut as a college coed in the forgettable teenage comedy Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961) with Tommy Sands and Fabian. More minor roles quickly followed in Man-Trap (1961), Bachelor in Paradise (1961), Too Late Blues (1962), and Come Blow Your Horn (1963), and The Thrill of It All (1963). Her early TV work included guest stints on The Gallant Men, McHale’s Navy, Gunsmoke, and six appearances on Burke’s Law.

With her dark sultry looks accentuated by elegant high cheek bones, Seagram was a natural for TV fantasy shows and appeared in a number of them most notably Bewitched as the bewitching “Miss Jasmine” a perfume spokes model and wicked witch who is determined to steal Darrin from Samantha in “It Takes One to Know One.” Back on the big screen, Seagram appeared as a fashion model who gets awaken from a deep sleep with a smack-on-the-behind from Richard Harris’ secret agent in the mod spy spoof Caprice (1967) and then played an ambitious secretary who plots with TV producer Pat Harrington to exploit an ancient Roman who materializes in the present in 2000 Years Later (1969). By the time of the satiric comedy’s release, Seagram had already packed it in and relocated to Rome joining the ranks of such female stars as Carroll Baker, Mimsy Farmer, and Pamela Tiffin who tried their luck in Italy.  Not finding much success there, she wound up in Hawaii where she opened a very successful acting school and even produced a few movies. You can read my interview with Lisa in my book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

https://youtu.be/DfOJtVmrVfU

Blonde, boyishly cute, and powerfully built, Johnny Fain was able to parlay his surfing expertise into a brief movie career.  One of the legendary champion Malibu surfers of the late fifties and early sixties he surf doubled in Gidget (1959) and Beach Party (1963). Due to his diminutive stature, Fain was just under 5’5”, he was able and happy to land lots of screen time (unlike his friend/rival Mickey Dora who tried to hide in the background) in the remaining Frankie and Annette beach films since he as shorter than the height conscious Avalon. His films include Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo (infamously being slipped a hot dog into his waiting mouth from surf buddy Mike Nader while Donna Loren sings about a lost love making us gays in the audience go hmmmm), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and Don’t Make Waves plus a few surf docs such as Strictly Hot and Golden Breed.  He concentrated solely on surfing during the later part of the sixties and then gave acting a second try during the seventies. Fain was excited to get cast in the surf epic Big Wednesday (1978) but he expected to get a bigger part and was further disappointed that he didn’t do much surf stunts as he anticipated. He was then cast as one of the three main supporting actors in California Dreaming (1979), which he was hoping would finally exploit his acting ability. His hot shot Malibu surfer Tenner who befriends Dennis Christopher’s awkward T.T. and teaches the Ohio native how to surf. It is believed in currently still resides in Malibu. You can read more about Fain in my book Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969

The late Hungarian blonde Ahna Capri began modeling as a child, which led to TV commercials and then bits in TV and movies. Warner Bros. signed her to a contract in 1959 and promptly re-christened her Anna Capri after the Isle. After appearing in a number of Warner Bros. produced television series (including Cheyenne, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Bronco, etc.) Capri landed the role of Mary Rose, the sixteen year old adoptive daughter of Andrew Duggan and Peggy McCay in the short-lived situation comedy Room for One More in 1962.  She was voted a Hollywood Deb Star that same year, but this baby-faced ingenue (she resembled a more alluring and sexy Sandra Dee) yearned to be the femme fatale. After playing the precocious good girl in Kisses for My President (1964) and then a vain sexpot in The Girls on the Beach (1965), Anna Capri got her wish when she was cast as the bad girl in “The Bridge of Lions Affair” on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  This two-part episode was also edited into the feature One of Our Spies Is Missing (1966) and rushed into theaters. For the rest of the decade, Capri concentrated on television making guest star turns playing various parts on such popular series as I Spy, The Wild Wild West, Run for Your Life, The Invaders, The Name of the Game, etc.

In the early seventies, Capri returned to the big screen and was billed as Ahna Capri. She remarked to The Hollywood Reporter in 1969, “Too many people pronounce ‘Anna’ with a flat ‘a’ and it comes out an ugly Aaaana. I want my name more musical sounding, with a broad ‘a,’ like Ahna, so I’m spelling it that way.” Using her new moniker, Capri co-starred with Strother Martin in the creepy horror film Brotherhood of Satan (1971). In the Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon (1973), a sort of combination spy, blaxpoitation and kung fu movie, Capri as the insatiable Tania physically stood out as she was the only Caucasian actress in the cast. The exploitation cult classic The Specialist (1975) gave Capri a starring role as an enticing assassin, however she retired from acting shortly thereafter. She tragically died in an auto accident in 2010. You can read more about Ahna Capri in my and Louis Paul’s book Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films & Television, 1962-1973 soon to be out in soft cover.