Lucky Days Are Here Again

The independent feature Lucky Days had its New York premiere on Saturday afternoon at the Coney Island Film Festival. The auditorium was packed and amongst the audience was many of the film’s stars including Angelica Page Torn, Rip Torn, Luke Zarzecki, Federico Castelluccio, Marilyn Sokol, Tom Wolfe, and Gail Gerber (pictured below with Angelica Torn) who all came on stage to field questions from the audience afterwards.

Lucky Days is an entertaining comedy-drama slice of life beautifully filmed on location in Coney Island capturing the essence of the area as we know it now before real estate developers move in soon to change the landscape. Angelica Page Torn, who wrote the screenplay and co-directed with her brother Tony Torn, gives a tour-de-force performance as Virginia a sad thirtysomething woman trapped living with her needy mother (the hysterical Sokol) and drug-addled stripper sister (Tina Benko) with four daughters while hoping to finally receive an engagement ring after 18 years from her Italian boyfriend Vincent (Castelluccio who is excellent as the bullying goomba). But a fortuitous encounter with her childhood sweetheart (the charming Zarzecki), who wants to see his brother (Will Patton) a patient in the psyche ward where Virginia works, opens her eyes to discover the secreted truths about her pathetic family and the abusive two-timing Vincent during the last summer weekend in Coney Island.

Also in the cast are Anne Jackson miscast as Vincent’s disapproving mother, Tom Wolfe as one of the many Coney Island denizens who help hide Vincent’s cheating ways from Virginia, Gail Gerber delightful as a crazy patient infatuated with Patton, and Rip Torn in a cameo as Vincent’s put-upon father.

After the successful screening, some of the cast with friends strolled along the misty boardwalk heading to Tatiana Restaurant in Brighton Beach for a Russian dinner and to celebrate the excellent reaction the film received from the audience. For more information about Lucky Days, click here.

Pictured below: Gail Gerber with yours truly; and Rip Torn with Tom Wolfe.

All photos are by Ernie DeLia.

MS. TORN, I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP

Sixties starlet Gail Gerber returns to the silver screen on Saturday 27, 2008 in Lucky Days co-directed, written and starring Angelica Page Torn screening at the Coney Island Film Festival in Brookly, NY. Click here for more information. Last seen on the big screen playing a pot-smoking high school student in End of the Road (1970), Gail plays a dotty old woman Torn’s lonely woman encounters during the last summer days of Coney Island’s famed amusement park. Also starring Frederico Castelluccio, Luke Zarzecki (pictured below with Torn), Will Patton, Anne Jackson, Tina Benko, Marilyn Sokol, Gary Wolf and Rip Torn.

Look for Gail’s memoir Terry Southern and Me: Uneasy Riders in Hollywood, co-wriiten by yours truly, in the spring of 2009.

IRENE TSU SLIPS ON THE SAND PEBBLES

Director Robert Wise’s epic war movie The Sand Pebbles (1966) starring Steve McQueen and Candice Bergen has been getting a lot of press lately due to its restored director’s cut being re-released theatrically in selected cities and on DVD. Click here to read more. One actor who almost made it into the movie but didn’t was Sixties starlet Irene Tsu.

During the 1960’s, beautiful Chinese actress Irene Tsu played a variety of “native” girls in a number of popular drive-in films including Sword of Ali Baba, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and Paradise, Hawaiian Style with Elvis. Tsu had poise and talent, which was noticed by producer/writer Arthur C. Pierce who cast her as a space traveler in Women of the Prehistoric Planet. It was her first starring role. She then played a South Vietnamese spy in The Green Berets, John Wayne’s homage to our boys in Vietnam before becoming part of the spy boom. She portrayed a geisha girl in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature Karate Killers and a fashion model in the secret agent spoof Caprice starring Doris Day.

But the one role that got away from her was the part of Maily in The Sand Pebbles. The heartache of losing the part almost made her quit the business. She was director Robert Wise’s first choice for Maily in his epic film but studio machinations kept her from getting the role. Commenting in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, Irene Tsu recalled,

“I interviewed with Robert Wise a few times and he set up an expensive screen test for me on a massive set with other actors. I thought I did very well but then weeks went by with no word. I went to see Wise and he told me he wanted me for the part but the producers overruled him. They gave the part to Marayat Andriane who was rumored to be Fox head Darryl Zanuck’s current mistress. When I found out I burst into tears and hoped never to have to go through something like that again.”

Though Irene was devastated, she wound up with a contract with 20th Century-Fox because “I had to sign with them before they allowed the screen test. For a short time I was treated like a star of the Golden Age. They gave me my own dressing room that was as big as a house. I even had my own parking space. Unfortunately, after only one film the studio went bankrupt. My contract was dropped along with all other such commitments Fox had.”

Undeterred, Irene kept working vigorously. The 1970’s saw Irene mature into a more than fine actress as she progressed from exotic parts to playing doctors, lawyers, and scientists in both film and television. And she is still active today.