Watched the entire 18 hour PBS documentary series The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. It was a time investment but overall really worth it. Great job showing a balanced look at the war from U.S., South Vietnam and North Vietnam perspectives as well as personal stories from military men and civilians from all three countries. Powerful, moving, and informative. However, I was surprised that the celebrities who went to Vietnam to entertain the troops were given such short shrift including Bob Hope. Only Hanoi Jane was really talked about and that was because of her blunder to go to North Vietnam.

So I would like to salute my 60s starlets that gave up their time to go to Vietnam. Most were not part of Bob Hope’s big USO tours that played the major military bases in safe zones and instead went solo as Chris Noel did or with Johnny Grant (the unofficial mayor of Hollywood) to smaller fire bases in-country with enemy fire all around.

Chris Noel (of Girl Happy; Beach Ball, Wild Wild Winter fame) must lead this list. She was a DJ on Armed Forces Radio with her show “My Date with Chris” and journeyed to Vietnam many times.

Excerpt from my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema:

After she began doing the show, Chris received a letter from the Department of Defense that asked her if she would volunteer to go to Vietnam to help build the morale of the troops. She jumped at the chance without even considering the danger. But unlike Joey Heatherton, Raquel Welch, Jill St. John, and others who were part of Bob Hope’s entourage, Chris traveled on her own to hospitals, fire bases, and remote outposts. Clad in the shortest of mini-skirts (“my fatigues”), Noel would sing, dance, comfort, and bring joy to many servicemen. It is no wonder she became the favorite pin-up of GIs in Vietnam. “It was the most courageous thing I ever did,” remarks Chris. “All I had with me was a tape recorder and a portable record player. I would play all the latest music for the guys and I would dance with them. I also would tape messages from them to their families. I eventually traveled the entire scope of South Vietnam many times and was shot at on more than one occasion. I probably had one of the most unusual experiences of the Vietnam War.” The Vietcong however did not take too kindly to Chris. “They put a bounty on my head,” says Chris laughing. “Bob Hope’s head was worth $25,000. Mine was only worth $10,000.”

While Noel’s personal life was being fulfilled aiding the servicemen in Vietnam, her acting career was suffering. Hollywood in the late sixties was anti-Vietnam and Noel received a backlash from the acting community for doing her radio show and for visiting Vietnam. “My family and friends thought what I was doing was neat,” says Chris. “People I knew casually just started to hate me for going to Vietnam. I never expected the backlash I received. And I’ll tell you it’s bothered me ever since. But at the time I was so absorbed in it that I just threw my hands in the air and said, ‘What will be, will be.’ I believed in supporting my country. Since I was asked to visit Vietnam, I felt it was my duty to go. Reporters would always question me if I were a hawk or a dove. And I would refuse to answer. I wouldn’t discuss the war. I would only speak about my work and the needs of the GIs. I would not take sides. Now however I believe we were all told a lot of lies in the beginning and most of us bought it.”

Today Chris Noel manages Vetsville Cease Fire House, Inc. which she founded in 1993. Her organization consists of halfway houses in three Florida cities that provide shelter, food, clothing, and counseling for homeless Vietnam vets. “I had a desire of doing this about five years before I did it. As a leader in the national Veteran’s community, I’ve always been on top of the needs of the vets. As I traveled around, people would tell me of vets that killed themselves. I had a real feeling for that because my husband [a Vietnam vet] had killed himself. And I started to see that many vets were suffering from PTSD or the effects of Agent Orange. Many were living on the streets because they couldn’t afford to even rent an apartment. So one day I just decided to go out and rent a house for homeless vets. I began this using my own money until we started fundraising.”  Though the Vietnam War is long over, Chris Noel’s commitment to the men who served there is unwavering.

Other starlets that I interviewed that went to Vietnam to boost morale and deserve to be saluted:

Diane McBain

Salli Sachse

Melody Patterson

Sharyn Hillyer

Arlene Charles

With all these stories spewing forth from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie in light of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment accusations, you would think that this was a new phenomenon in Hollywood. Hell it has been going on for decades. I started interviewing 60s starlets in the mid-1990s. A lot of the actresses I spoke with had long been retired but even then some who shared incidents about being sexually harassed by actors or directors or producers were still hesitant to name names. Even if the guy was deceased some didn’t want to shame his living relatives. even though their loved one behaved badly.

Fortunately their were a few brave ladies who recounted with names some of their worst experiences in Hollywood though thankfully none are as bad as what Weinstein is alleged to have done. Here are their anecdotes from their own lips from some of my books.

Julie Parrish in Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Hollywood:

“I couldn’t understand why an old guy with white hair would be after me. I was revolted by it. From the beginning, my agent taught me to make excuses to get out of these situations. The main thing was to not hurt their feelings because they might fix it so you didn’t work again. I would look at my watch and say, ‘I would love to stay and talk but I have another audition I’ve got to go to.’ I really had nobody in Hollywood to guide me. Anne Helm and I talk about this a lot. We got ourselves into situations that were pretty insulting—just because we believed everybody. In those days a lot of us were very naive—much more than the young actresses of today.”

“I really wanted to work with Elvis. I was in every Elvis fan club around when I was a teenager. I would even do Elvis imitations with the long sideburns and guitar when I was in high school. So I convinced Hal Wallis to give me another shot and did the test over. Then I got the part. Mr. Wallis, who was married, was an old letch. I think he felt there was an unspoken promise that I would sleep with him since he allowed me to re-test for the part. On the day before filming began, he called me into his office, led me over to the sofa, and briefly kissed me on the mouth. He said, ‘Little girl, we’re going to have a long talk about your future.’ I made up any excuse to get out of there. While on location he was constantly calling me and asking me out. It was quite annoying and insulting. He called me one last time in Hawaii and said, ‘Little girl, you’d better think again.’ I knew I would probably never work for him again, but that was fine with me. This whole incident highly offended me.”

“I really didn’t get along with William Shatner [on Star Trek]. I’m not blaming him because he was of that generation of actors and really didn’t think that women had feelings—we were just something to use. Even though it was early on, he really played up being the star of the series. There was one particular day when I was broke and decided not to go out to lunch. So I went to my dressing room to lay down and rest. Shatner knocked on my trailer and said, ‘The electricity is out in my trailer to you mind if I use yours.’ I said, ‘Sure, come in.’ But I didn’t bother to get up. He entered and suddenly he was on me! I remember saying to him something like I would like to have a choice about this. He stopped but then he treated me badly for the rest of the week. It was so unprofessional. Majel Barrett [Nurse Chappel] told me that he that he used that excuse about the electricity with everybody.”

Chris Noel in Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Hollywood:

“I did not like Edd Byrnes [her leading man in Beach Ball]. He was so egotistical! We had a kissing scene and he would slip his tongue practically down my throat. I felt that was uncalled for. I didn’t like it. It was invading my privacy. I told him he was a jerk. He still wouldn’t stop! So I went to Lennie Weinrib [the director] and said to him, ‘Get Byrnes to stop or I’m walking off the set.’”

Marlyn Mason in Film Fatales:

“We [she and Robert Vaughn on The Man from UNCLE] had to do a kissing scene. In those days when people kissed on television and in movies it was all very tame stuff. There was no slurping and nobody was eating anybody’s face like you see nowadays. So we do this scene and Vaughn just jams his tongue down my throat. Of course the actress in me just kept on acting but I was not responsive. I was trying to keep my mouth shut. I was so stunned and I decided that I was just not going to say anything. We did this in one take but I thought, ‘There is no way that they are going to see this in the dailies and pass it. We’re going to have to do this again.’ Sure enough, the next day the director came and told us we had to do the scene over again. I was watching out of the corner of my eye as the director took Robert Vaughn aside and told him, ‘You can’t kiss her like that.’ We did it a second time and he made a half-ass attempt to do it again! But my mouth was tightly shut.”

Sharyn Hillyer in Drive-In Dream Girls:

“I was a nervous wreck [doing her first topless scene in A Guide for the Married Man]. I had never done anything like that before. I took the first tranquilizer that I ever took in my life in order to do this. They put pasties on me because I was nude from the waste up. Joey Bishop knew my husband at the time and he still came on to me. I was so angry at that asshole. I just felt he was an absolute creep especially since he was friendly with my husband. That made it very uncomfortable doing this scene over and over with him all day.”

Linda Rogers in Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood:

 

“My agent got me an interview for this [Winter a-Go-Go] with the director Richard Benedict. He got fresh and I ended up dumping an ashtray in his lap. I wasn’t used to that at all. As you can tell I just fell into these roles. My agents would tell me where and when to show up. I hardly ever interviewed so when I came across him [Benedict] I was stunned. I never in a million years thought I’d get the part because I rudely told him off. He left me alone after that. But I know he would make remarks to the other girls.”

I am a guest tonight on the radio program TV Confidential airing tonight 7pm ET 4pm PT on KSAV.org Internet Radio.

I will be promoting my newest book Talking Sixties Drive-In Movies and will be talking Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Elvis Presley, Bobbi Shaw, Pamela Tiffin, Gail Gerber, Christopher Riordan, Diane Bond, Nancy Czar, Shelley Fabares, Irene Tsu, Celeste Yarnall, Steven Rogers, Aron Kincaid, Arlene Charles, Edy Williams, and all our fave 1960s teenage silver screen stars.

 

Climate change is rearing its head in NYC this week since it is almost mid-October and having hot humid days forcing me to turn on the air conditioning all week. The strange hot weather made me want to have a Ski Party (1965) personified by the “Lots, Lots More” song performed by Frankie Avalon. For me, this is the best musical number in the movie and perhaps the entire Beach Party series as the bathing suit clad college boys and girls are shimmying away poolside in the open cold air with snow-covered mountains in the background.

The first scene features beach party regulars Salli Sachse and Patti Chandler leading the girls to fight to regain the boys’ attention away from Swedish blonde bombshell Nita (Bobbi Shaw). The song begins with Frankie flanked by beach party regular Luree Holmes (daughter of AIP studio head James Nicholson) and Salli Sachse. As he gets up and moves to the side of the pool, two dudes (one being big time surfer and another beach party regular Mickey Dora) hop up. Frankie makes his way over to Patti Chandler and Playboy Playmate Jo Collins as their dancing partners blonde hunk Aron Kincaid and another dive into the pool. Frankie then dances his way over to AIP beach party movie first timer Mikki Jamison (though she had a rival beach movie Beach Ball already under her belt) and then his leading lady Deborah Walley.

The song ends with hunky but not to bright beach boys Steven Rogers (another AIP first timer) and beach party regular Mike Nader trying to score with Bobbi Shaw’s winsome Nita. Also in the movie are Dwayne Hickman, Yvonne Craig, Robert Q. Lewis, Mary Hughes, Christopher Riordan, with musical numbers by James Brown and the Flames, Leslie Gore, and The Hondells.

Being able to sneak in a pool scene with bikini-clad cuties and shirtless surfer boys in the middle of snow covered Sun Valley was genius and just what the teenage audience wanted. “Lots Lots More” would just have been a catchy song warbled by Frankie Avalon with twistin’ beach babes dancing beside him if it were not for Rafkin’s unusual camera angles capturing the curvy features of Walley, Chandler, Jamison, and Collins in particular and sometimes of just their torsos. HE also positioned the camera on a low angle looking up at the gals a few times, making them look almost Amazonian-like. This style would be used even more ingeniously by Russ Meyer when shooting his wildcats in the following year’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Read more about the making of Ski Party from Aron Kincaid in my book Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969.

Bobbi Shaw, Christopher Riordan, and Steven Rogers talk Ski Party in Talking Sixties Drive-In Movies.

Luree Holmes talks Ski Party in Drive-in Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties.

Salli Sachse talks Ski Party in Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Hollywood.