The one new fall TV series that I am truly looking forward to is Westworld on HBO due to debut this Sunday October 2, 2016. It is a remake of of one of my favorite sci-fi movies Westworld (adapted from the novel by Michael Crichton) released in 1973. The film featured in a supporting role the lovely former Playboy Playmate Anne Randall whom I interviewed in my book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

A sort of precursor to TV’s Fantasy Island, the exciting Westworld (directed and scripted by Michael Crichton) starred Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as rich vacationers to Delos, an adult-themed amusement park, where they can live out their wildest fantasies in wild west world, medieval world, or Roman world. The duo choose to play cowboys in the wild wild west where they battle with Yul Brynner’s robotic gunslinger when Delos’ robots start to flip their lids and begin killing the guests.

Before Anne Randall was cast in Westworld, the lovely blonde was Playboy’s Miss May 1967 and appeared in a number of movies and TV shows. Most memorably she was a teenage temptress in the drive-in exploitation hit Hell’s Bloody Devils (1967); a sex shop receptionist in director Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969); and a gorgeous mostly topless private detective in Stacey (1973). Westworld would be her last film appearance. Here she played a sexy wench in the resort’s Medieval World and the first robot to malfunction striking guest Norman Bartold as a Knight trying to seduce her. Recalling her role, Anne Randall remarked in my book:

“It is one of the few movies I made that when watching it I thought, ‘I like this movie.’

Michael Crichton who wrote and directed this was absolutely brilliant. I loved and admired him. For my part they were looking for a girl to be sexy.  That was it. I wore sexy clothes and my hair long to try out for it. I didn’t have to read for Michael because all he did was talk with me. And I got picked for the part. I understand that is how he cast people because he figured if you already have gotten work you would not freeze on the set and should be easy to direct.  I just had a wonderful experience working with him.

I didn’t work with any of the stars because my character worked in Medieval World. My scenes were with character actor Norman Bartold who was a really nice guy.

I was surprised how popular Westworld became. It was the only movie that I was in that became such a smash at the box office.”

Diane Bond was a real looker with long straight auburn hair, green eyes, and a distinctive look that set her apart from the young actresses of the day. The fact that she was extremely athletic and worked as a stunt woman also made her an atypical starlet. A shapely beauty (the press book for A Swingin’ Summer extolled her measurements as being “36-23-36”), Bond was bikini-clad in practically all her film appearances from Pajama Party with Annette Funicello, to Tickle Me with Elvis Presley, to A Swingin’ Summer as “The Girl in the Pink Polka Dot Bikini.” However, her most memorable movie was the spy spoof In Like Flint playing one of the three shapely beauties (bikini-clad, of course) who work for super cool spy Derek Flint (James Coburn). Bond didn’t take advantage of the movie’s success and moved to Rome, ala Mimsy Farmer, where she made a few films including Barbarella and House of a 1,000 Dolls with Vincent Price.

Read my interview with Diane Bond in my upcoming BearManor Media book Talking Sixties Drive-in Movies.

A sexy mini-skirted blonde in the mode of Alexandra Hay and Melodie Johnson, Anne Randall, Playboy’s Miss April 1967, descended on late sixties movie audiences and epitomized the new breed of independent free-spirited women. You may remember her most from the classic sci-fi flick Westworld (soon to be a new HBO TV series) as a Medieval wench who is the first robot to flip her top. Her film debut was in Hell’s Bloody Devils in 1967 but she quickly progressed to more prestigious fare with The Split with Donald Sutherland; Jacques Demy’s Model Shop with Gary Lockwood; and the western A Time for Dying with Audie Murphy in his last film appearance. She spent time on TV’s corn pone Laugh-In rip-off Hee-Haw before returning to the big screen in drive-ins across the country playing leads in The Doomsday Voyage and Stacey. She retired from acting in 1979.

Read my interview with Anne Randall in Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

https://youtu.be/j62V1u8gLv0

Pretty Mary Mitchel resembled and sounded a lot like Connie Stevens.  But Mitchel was more appealing and less annoying than her famous counterpart as she played the ingenue in various low-budget drive-in movies during the early to middle ‘60s.  She danced in the rock-and-roll musical Twist Around the Clock (1961) and screamed her way through Panic in Year Zero (1962), and the cult horror movies Dementia 13 (1963) and Spider Baby (1964).  In 1965, she hit the beach for typical teenage shenanigans in A Swingin’ Summer with William Wellman Jr. and Quinn O’Hara, and The Girls on the Beach with Martin West, Aron Kincaid, and Gail Gerber. During this period she was married to actor/producer Bart Patton. She retired from acting in 1968 to work behind the camera.

Read more about Mary Mitchel in my book Drive-in Dream Girls.