STARLET MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Crank up the DV-R players as Turner Classic Movies is re-running on 5/24 at 1:30PM one of the best “3 Girls Looking for Romance Films” MGM’s Come Fly with Me (1963). In this charming piece of Sixties fluff, Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton, and my fave Pamela Tiffin are airline hostesses working the NY Idlewild to Europe route out to snare themselves a man. Hart is a chain smoking gold digger duped by a con man, Tiffin the naive newbie who succumbs to the charms of playboy pilot Hugh O’Brian (pictured, woof!), and Nettleton is the level-headed one who stumbles into love with older tycoon Karl Malden. Beautifully filmed on location, this is one trip well worth taking for fans of Sixties Starlets.

Incidentally, this was Hart’s last movie before she quit Hollywood to become a cloistered nun. Per Pamela Tiffin, Dolores confided in her that she wanted to become a nun on the set and Pamela told me that she exclaimed, “‘Oh Dolores you don’t want to!’ Back then I didn’t understand her decision. Now I do.”

A Gaggle of Starlet Birthdays!

Birthday greetings are due to Diane McBain (at left) who played a rich bitch in Parrish and a slutty farm girl in Claudelle Inglish before riding into infamy as the hog riding leader of The Mini-Skirt Mob; Nancy Kwan who enjoyed being a girl in Flower Drum Song but was much more fun as a karate-chopping bad girl in The Wrecking Crew; and Joan Staley (top) who slapped Elvis after he dumped her in Roustabout and then settled for “he-man” Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To luscious Sixties Starlet Yvonne Craig. Yvonne appeared in a number of movies including It Happened at the Worlds Fair and Kissin’ Cousins with Elvis, Ski Party, Mars Needs Women, and In Like Flint but her turn as librarian-by-day Barbara Gordon and masked crimefighter-by-night Batgirl on Batman is her most memorable role. Check out this YouTube clip to see why.

Also a belated Happy Birthday to former Playmate Corinne Cole who went on to co-star as a treacherous Slaygirl who tries to assassinate Dean Martin in Murderers’ Row, a harried secretary in The Swinger with Ann-Margret, and a inebriated dinner guest in The Party with Peter Sellers. Read more about Corinne who I interviewed and Yvonne in my upcoming book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

LAND OF THE GIANTS

My prayers have been answered! On July 24, Fox will be releasing the entire two seasons of the Irwin Allen sci-fi series Land of the Giants, my favorite show as a kid, in a deluxe package including cast interviews, booklets, and trading cards. I always liked this show more than Lost in Space because even though I was only seven when I first started to watch I liked that it was more adult and less of a “kiddie show” than Space. Plus it had fiery redhead Deanna Lund in the coolest miniskirts and minidresses (she’s featured of course in my upcoming book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood), and muscular Gary Conway as the pilot of the ill-fated Spindrift, which crash landed on a planet where everything is ten times the size of our small group of intergalatic castaways.

For more information about the DVD set, check out this link.