LADIES TAKE A BOW

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The 92nd Y in New York City hosted a panel discussion recently on the PBS series The Pioneers of Television. Angie Dickinson of Police Woman, Stefanie Powers of The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Linda Evans of The Big Valley, and Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek were in attendance. Click here to read more.

GOODBYE PUSSYCAT!

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I just read my Blog post tribute to Jill Haworth at her touching memorial this past Thursday and now have to report the passing of yet another 60s starlet. Tura Satana of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame died on Feb. 4 due to heart failure. Below is a portion of my profile on her from my book Glamour Girls of ’60s Hollywood:

Tura Satana was spotted by director Billy Wilder while working at the Pink Pussycat Club and he cast her as Suzette Wong, an Asian hooker in Irma La Douce (1963) starring Jack Lemmon as a Parisian policeman who assumes a double life to keep streetwalker Shirley MacLaine with whom he has fallen in love with away from her other clients.  Satana got noticed in her small role and kept busy for the next three years playing minor exotic roles on film and TV.  Her dancing prowess got her cast as a stripper in Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1964) and later as a go-go girl in Our Man Flint (1966).

She then was cast in the role of a lifetime—the man-hating viper Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966).  The movie was ahead of its time and possibly made audiences especially men squirm in their seats as buxom Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams physically and verbally abused the males in the movie.  To make the gals even more Amazonian, Meyer brilliantly positioned the camera close to the ground so he could film the girls from an angle looking up.  Clad in a black cat suit with her cleavage prominently displayed, Satana was the trio’s depraved leader who after breaking the neck of her teenage male opponent in a car race takes his nubile prissy girlfriend hostage. The terrified teen is dragged along as the vixens plot to rip off the fortune of a crippled old man despite the presence of his two sons—one beefy and dumb and the other weak but suspicious.  Satana oozes a sort of evil sexiness as the angry Varla and menaces, karate chops, and kills her way into B-movie infamy though the film was a box office disappointment when released [but today is a camp cult classic and one of my favorite drive-in movies of the decade.]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcuLxFpuzVY

THEY NO LONGER ASK DOLORES HART WHERE THE BOYS ARE…

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She’s a nun now–has been in a cloistered Order for over 45 years. Rush out and buy the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine, which features a surprising and wonderful 6-page interview with Mother Dolores featuring a current photo.

Dolores Hart was one of my favorite 60s starlets. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in two of his best received movies Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1958), she led college coeds Yvette Mimiuex, Paula Prentiss and Connie Francis to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break in Where the Boys Are (1960), gave a touching performance in the colorful adventure movie Lisa (1962) as a Dutch Holocaust survivor smuggled into Palestine while chased by the authorities, and along with Pamela Tiffin and Lois Nettleton played stewardesses out to trap themselves a man in Come Fly with Me (1963).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU8AyxTLmOg

It was during promotion for Come Fly with Me that Hart announced her intentions to leave Hollywood for the convent. Pamela Tiffin remarked in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema (now available in soft cover with minor revisions), “Dolores Hart and I had some nice conversations.  She is a warm, decent, and vulnerable woman.  Dolores had some unhappy experiences in love matters.  And if I’m not mistaken, she was ending one up at the time.  She told me the story and was still very upset about it.  She said she was going to enter a convent.  And at that time I couldn’t understand it.  I said, ‘Oh, but you don’t want to, Dolores!’  Now I understand it.  So there she is.”

In the EW interview, Mother Dolores reveals that she almost signed a contract with MGM after doing Come Fly with Me. One wonders what roles she might have played if she stayed an actress. I easily could see her as Lara in Doctor Zhivago (MGM pushed contract player Yvette Mimiuex for the part but David Lean declined) or the young missionary played by contract player Sue Lyon in John Ford’s last movie Seven Women. I could even see her as Rosemary in Paramount’s Rosemary’s Baby. For me any 60s starlet would have been better in that role than Mia Farrow, but I digress.

Mother Dolores Hart is still an active member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences so the EW article concnetrates on her views of today’s Hollywood as she receives DVDs to vote for Best Picture and all the acting categories. It is just so great to see Dolores Hart get such a big splashy tribute in such a mainstream magazine.