DVR ALERT

Set those timers for Thursday July 12 at 4:15pm as TCM will be presenting a rare airing of the amusing sex comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree starring Jack Lemmon and Carol Lynley giving a wonderfully charming performance as a coed who tries to live platonically with her boyfriend Dean Jones while trying to fight off the amorous advances of landlord Lemmon. Paul Lynde and Imogene Coca lend fine comedic support and the scenery is decorated with the lushious Joy Harmon, Lyn Edgington, Jane Wald, and Pamela Curran all featured in my upcoming book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

Though Under the Yum Yum Tree was the 14th highest grossing film of 1963, this sex comedy is considered one of Lemmon’s weaker efforts. This is a constant in Carol Lynley’s career and hampered her from becoming a bigger movie star. When she co-starred opposite some top leading men it was in films that either the critics disliked or the audiences ignored. For example, Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas in The Last Sunset and Laurence Olivier in Bunny Lake Is Missing. Then instead of working opposite such leading men as Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford or Paul Newman, Lynley got saddled with the forgetable Richard Beymer, Stuart Whitman (twice), Gig Young, and Paul Burke. And she herself blundered such as when she was offered a co-starring role opposite Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces then turned it down because they were only paying scale!

Finally since I will be in Viva Las Vegas for a few days, early birthday wishes to Edy Williams best known for her campy performance as the voracious sex star Ashley St. Ives in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Check out this funny YouTube clip of Edy getting a Rolls in the hay.

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.

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.

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!