Sixties Posts

During the mid-sixties television viewers could not change the channel without catching a glimpse of Eileen O’Neill. This beautiful brunette (sometimes blonde) Irish lass was a regular playing a police officer on Burke’s Law starring Gene Barry for two years. She then made appearances on practically all of the era’s top sitcoms including The Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Get Smart, and Batman as Clock King’s (Walter Slezak) wonderfully named henchgirl Millie Second. Eileen’s career was not limited to the small screen though.  She made her film debut in A Majority of One and then played a haughty rich girl in the teen exploitation film Teenage Millionaire.  After taking small roles in Four for Texas, Kiss Me, Stupid, and The Third Day Eileen played the heroine in the James Bond spy spoof A Man Called Dagger starring Paul Mantee. In 1973, she retired from acting to concentrate on her marriage. You can read my interviews with Eileen in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema and my and Louis Paul’s book Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films & Television 1962-1973 (in which she wrote the foreword). As a side note, my friend Shaun Chang and I visited Eileen about 15 years ago in LA. She was warm, friendly, and a gracious hostess living in a beautiful home with spectacular views of the Los Angeles basin.

Pretty, perky Chris Noel was once described as “devastation in a bikini.” A former model, this green-eyed blonde was discovered while doing summer stock. With her fresh-faced, innocent look, Noel was perfectly cast as the wholesome girl-next-door looking for fun or romance on the beach, on campus, or on vacation. Wearing the skimpiest of bikinis, the effervescent actress was a highlight of a gaggle of teenage and beach films—Get Yourself a College Girl (“The swingin’-est blast ever filmed.”), Beach Ball (“Nothing bounces like Beach Ball!”), Girl Happy (“Elvis jumps with the campus crowd to make the beach ‘ball’ bounce!!!”), Wild Wild Winter (“A surfin’ snow ball!), and For Singles Only (“See how the single half lives…in co-ed pads where the unmarrieds swing 24 hours a day!”).  When the beach films became passe during the late sixties, Noel segued to the biker genre with roles in The Glory Stompers and The Tormentors. No typical starlet she, Chris became the first female disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio in 1966 and began visiting Vietnam on her own to help boost the morale of the GIs. Her devotion to our military has never stopped and she dfounded Ceasefire House in Florida to help homeless Vietnam vets. Read more about Chris Noel in my books Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema and Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave. Or check out the many books Chris Noel has written herself on Amazon.

Inga Neilsen was dubbed on the Internet as “A Nordic Goddess Supreme, the World’s Greatest Glamazon” and the statuesque beauty clearly deserves the title. Standing 6-foot-3 in heels, this striking blue-eyed blonde had curves galore and was built to be ogled on the big screen in spy spoofs (The Silencers, The Ambushers) and musical extravaganzas (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Funny Girl where she stood out as the Winter Bride). Her body was not all Inga offered as she was an accomplished singer and had comedic talent to hold her own opposite some of the decade’s top comedians. Read my interview with her in my book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.