FROM ALL THOSE SWINGIN’ SIXTIES STARLETS!

Sadly, I just learned that Cynthia Myers, of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fame, passed away on Nov. 11th. She was only 61 years old. Below is an excerpt from my profile on the former Playboy Playmate in Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood:

At age eighteen, Cynthia Myers, a 5-feet-4 dark-haired beauty with a tantalizing figure measuring 39-24-36, became Playboy’s final Playmate of 1968.  As Miss December, she graced the cover as a Christmas tree come to life (bet Santa never had it so good) and posed nude kneeling on a white rug alongside a teddy bear.  She immediately became one of the most popular pin-ups for the GIs stationed over in Vietnam and the magazine received the second largest amount of fan letters regarding her centerfold.  Strangely, she failed to be selected Playmate of the Year.  That honor went to Connie Kreski.  Instead, movies beckoned and Myers played a bit role as one of the marathon dancers in the depression-era drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) starring Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin.  She also made appearances as herself along side Hugh Hefner in his syndicated variety series, Playboy After Dark in 1969. 

That same year, Myers was brought to the attention of director Russ Meyer who was searching for three newcomers to play the leads in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls billed as the first rock, sex, musical.  Since she was a 39DD cup, the bosom master flipped over her and cast her as Casey the guitar-playing lost soul of the group—a powerful senator’s daughter who having been used and abused by men falls in love with Lesbian clothes designer Erica Gavin.  After the Carrie Nations hit it big about ten minutes after arriving in Los Angeles from playing a senior prom back East, Myers and her band mates Dolly Read and Marcia McBroom become emerged in decadent Hollywood complete with drugs, sex, debauchery, sex, violence, and even more sex.  Myers sleeps with the band’s former young manager David Gurian who is trying to prove his manhood after being called a “fag” by Edy Williams’ porn star Ashley St. Ives.  Myers winds up pregnant angering her girlfriend who immediately suggests an abortion.  She goes through with it but pays for her wanton ways when at the film’s climax she has her pretty little head blown off by John Lazar’s crazed Z-Man who reveals a set of knockers to rival any Playboy Playmate as he goes off the deep end as Super Woman also slaughtering Gavin, Michael Blodgett as a studly gigolo, and his German manservant.  Myers gives a sympathetic performance ala Sharon Tate in the original and doesn’t let her male fans down by exposing her breasts and shapely derriere in loves scenes with both a man and woman.  To help promote the movie, Myers joined Dolly Read and a host of bit players who posed semi-nude for the Playboy pictorial “The Dolls of Beyond the Valley.” Below is link to trailer:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QoofxBm-IA

Former Sixties starlet Suzanna Leigh, most famous for being Elvis’ leading lady in my fave Paradise, Hawaiian Style, is once again in the news. Click here to read the NY Daily News item where it is alledged that in 1989 Leigh took and never gave back a ring given to a model friend by Sharon Tate and auctioned it off recently. The woman, whom she alledgedily took it from, recently died and her son, with discovered proof, is fighting tooth and nail to get it back. Leigh claimed she was the rightful owner and denied stealing it.

Leigh has gotten a lot of bad press recently with her continued attempts to exploit her relationship with Elvis. A few years ago during Elvis week in Memphis, she tried to launch a rival convention to it featuring a number of his co-stars. The Night of a 1000 Stars was a bust and only about a dozen showed up.

With Christmas fast approaching, here are some film/TV books that I have enjoyed this past year and would make wonderful gifts:

From my former publisher McFarland and Company, Lost Laughs of ’50s and ’60s Television: Thirty Sitcoms That Faded Off Screen by David C. Tucker. As someone who writes about Sixties starlets , I loved this book that chronicles a number of sitcoms that these actresses appeared on that I really didn’t know much about since they never went into syndication or if so very briefly, such as Grindl with Imogene Coca; I’m Dickens…He’s Fenster; O.K. Crackerby!; Occasional Wife with Michael Callan wo pretends to be married to his neighbor so he can get ahead at work; etc. Two that are covered that I actually watched were my fave Love on a Rooftop starring Judy Carne as a rich girl who marries poor but proud Pete Duell and they move into a rooftop apartment in San Francisco, and The Governor and J.J. with Dan Dailey and Julie Sommars as his daughter. Tucker does a wonderful job giving the back stories of these not-so-successful sitcoms with interesting tidbits and reasons why they failed.

I just love reading back stories of TV shows/movies, which is patently obvious by my choices, and another book I loved and tried to emulate with my Dueling Harlows’s was Vanity Fair’s Tales of Hollywood edited by Graydon Carter. These were edited or expanded pieces from the magazine of the making of such classics as All About Eve, Rebel Without a Cause, The Best of Everything, Midnight Cowboy, Myra Breckenridge, etc. A great read chcok full of intersting anecdotes from the actors/creators who worked on these movies. My favorite thing in it was learning that Carol Lynley, Pamela Tifffin, Yvette Mimiux, and Sue Lyon, among others, were on the producer’s short list to play Mrs. Robinson’s daughter in The Graduate. Alas the role went to Katherine Ross.

I cannot praise enough the splashy coffee table tome Steve McQueen: The Actor and His Films by Andrew Antoniades and Mike Siegel. There are lots of books out there about McQueen, but this has to be one of the very best. Just chock full of interesting information and photographs galore. See my previous post for longer review.

And finally a shameless plug for my own Dueling Harlows: Race to the Silver Screen. Coinciding with the 100^th birthday of Jean Harlow, comes the backstory of the competition to get two rival film biographies both titled Harlow (one with Carroll Baker from Paramount, the other with Carol Lynley from Electronovision) into theaters first that quickly turned into one of the nastiest, dirtiest feuds between their producers (Joe Levine and Bill Sargent) that Hollywood ever witnessed.