Thursday, June 20, 2013

"Dinah"? Shore!

Holy mackerel... That's almost all I can say. (Well, if you frequent this site you know that I can say and say and say plenty!) Over the course of my several-decades-long immersion into vintage movies and TV, I have occasionally heard mention of a little-known film called Dinah East (1970), but it's been off the radar for so long and so difficult to lay eyes on that it sort of drifted out of my consciousness for quite a while until recently when a fellow blogger (and an excellent one!) unearthed it for a tribute at his wonderful site.

Having gotten a taste of the movie there, I had no choice but to order myself a copy of the newly-restored, wide-screen DVD, for it seemed like my type of movie: soapy, glossy, melodramatic, containing late-'60s/early-'70s clothing and hair and, in no way lastly, a parade of men in various stages of undress! I was not disappointed. So obscure is this movie that I could find no original poster, stills or lobby cards to use for this post!

Dinah East (originally to be called, “The Great Put-On of Dinah East”) is an exploitation movie made with an eye for capitalizing on the age-old rumors that stage and screen legend Mae West was, in fact, a man all along and not a biological female! (I think if it had been me, I might have named the film “June East” instead... get it?!) What's ironic (or was it purposeful at the time?) is that the rather drag-queeny West herself was making a long-awaited return to the screen in 1970, appearing in the then-X-rated Myra Breckinridge alongside Raquel Welch, John Huston and others.
The writer-director-producer-composer of Dinah East, Gene Nash (eat your heart out, Eddie Murphy!), ran into tax problems with the low-budget movie and it was pulled from circulation after only limited showings. Most likely in a bid to add notoriety and publicity to the movie, he began to claim in ads that Mae West had managed to block and suppress the film because of its ostensible connection to her and her career. In truth, there is precious little about the film that bears any relation to Mae West. The moldy rumor about her gender is merely a starting point for a film that recalls many “Old Hollywood” scenarios from “Norma Desmond” to Greta Garbo to Jean Harlow.

Have you ever watched a movie, be it anything from Up Periscope (1959) to The Magnificent Seven (1960) to Ride the Wild Surf (1964) to Cool Hand Luke (1967), and wondered what it would be like to see the men of the film naked? (I sound like Peter Graves in Airplane! right now!) Good luck with that. The rules were different, though, for exploitation movies with no stars in them to speak of. Producers opting to target the oglers out there could pretty much set their own standards.

But most of the time, even in lots of exploitation films then and right up to the present day (with Andy Warhol protegee Joe Dallesandro, seen here with Sylvia Miles, a notable exception), male nudity was scant, fleeting, obscured and de-emphasized. The focus was often on women and their bodies. Not so with Dinah East. Yes, there are some naked females, but unquestionably the limelight is shone most prominently on the men. When one watches this movie, an exploitation flick dressed in Ross Hunter's bargain-basement thrift store donations, and wonders what the men might look like naked, the wishes are often granted! No less than seven actors go full-frontal, matter-of-factly captured by the camera as they go about their melodramatic business.

The film begins with a young, blonde man (Reid Smith) swimming in a luxurious pool without benefit of trunks. As he exits the pool and enters a Hollywood mansion, draped in a towel, he is stopped in the hallway by his mother, who proceeds to tug at his towel, causing it to fall off. His casual response as he stands there naked is, “I suppose being one's mother gives one the right to look every once and awhile.” In other words, the kink and the skin is present in this film from the get-go before the credits have even rolled! (The mansion was reportedly that of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, left mostly empty with Candice grown up and living in Europe at the time. Hopefully, Charlie McCarthy was safely in his case and didn't witness all the nude goings on!)
Reid's mom, the Dinah East of the title, then heads out in her Rolls Royce limousine for a toddle around Beverly Hills. Seemingly suffering from dizziness and shortness of breath, it's a struggle to get to the car. Her driver (Matt Bennett) turns around at one point to see that she has passed out and in short order discovers that she has actually died in the backseat of the car! When an ambulance comes and takes her away, Bennett is distraught.
Soon, we find that the ambulance drivers have been paid off in order to take the body to a specific mortuary/ funeral home where the shiftless embalmer likes to have celebrities deposited. Eager to get his hands on the departed star, he heads into the room with the slab and begins to undo her clothing. He is startled to see that her bra isn't actually filled with breasts, but is downright stunned when he hikes down her underwear and finds a penis!
His reaction to this news is to recoil in horror, run down the hallway and ravenously gnaw on a Baby Ruth candy bar (when he had JUST eaten one prior to going into the room with the body!) How's that for Freudian imagery? He then alerts the newspapers of his discovery.

Yes, Dinah East, played by Jeremy Stockwell, was a man all along. We learn in flashback how Stockwell was a young cinema hopeful who could never get a job in the movies. He would report to cattle calls and be sent packing without any sort of entree to the sets. When he realized that the big need was for chorus girls and other female talent, he decided to cross-dress his way into the world of film-making!

From a simple dress extra to a supporting player to a major star, Stockwell manages to maintain the illusion of female gender, building wealth and legions of fans in the process. As the movie progresses, we come into contact with various people whose lives were either affected by or intertwined with Stockwell and each one flashes back to a key period of time in the relationship.

One is Margaret Rolfe as the wife of a security guard who was one of the first (and few) to discover Stockwell's secret, but who was kind enough to keep it. In return, Stockwell made sure that his widow was financially secure, her house paid off in full.
Studio costume designer Ultra Violet is caught by Stockwell in a lesbian clinch with one of her clients, causing a minor furor, but in time the designer becomes aware of Stockwell's peculiar situation and the two become devoted friends and confidantes. (It might be noted that Mae West had a strong connection to Oscar-winning designer Edith Head, who sexual orientation was often in question. Head designed West's costumes for Myra Breckinridge, but flatly refused to see the actual film, which, by today's standards is tame indeed.)
We next meet a flamboyant actor (Ray Foster), known for his derring-do on the silver screen, but now washed up and drowning his sorrows in a gay bar. The bar, which must be seen to be believed, has a Lawrence Welk bubble machine on overdrive and a cage containing a dancer partially clothed in pirate gear. I say partially because the well-endowed dancer's private parts (belonging to porn star Joe Frost) are swayin' in the breeze as he gyrates around inside the cage! A collection of catty queens in various modes of outre dress sits at the end of the bar gossiping (almost forty-five years later, how much of this part has really changed?!)
Foster recalls, in a rollicking and quite preposterous flashback scene, himself prancing around the studio backlot in revealing tights, debating with his agent the pros and cons of using Stockwell as a beard in order to throw people off the scent of his homosexuality. The two head out on a date to a swank dinner club where they scope each other out warily, but with a certain level of captivation. (Stockwell briefly imitates Louella Parsons in this sequence, an act that a handful of people – out of the slightly larger handful who have actually scene this movie – have mistakenly interpreted as a Mae West impression!)

He wines her, dines her and almost 69s her, but when push comes to pump, he finds that he just can't go through with it. It's okay, though, because Stockwell is able to use Foster for his own purposes as well, given that as a man posing as a woman, he can't just date anyone!

Back in the present day, we then come to know Stockwell's attorney, played by Andy Davis. Davis is being fired by the head of his conservative law firm from his connection with Dinah East, the scandal now raging furiously. Davis is disturbed by the fact that this secret has become public and has now severely damaged his career and livelihood. He studies a portrait of his son and his own late wife, which segues into a scene with that son (Joe Taylor.)

Taylor is at the seashore awaiting his girlfriend (Susan Romen), pensively processing the fact that his father has been the longtime lawyer and, allegedly, once the lover of a legendary female star who has now been revealed to be a man! His thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of his gal pal who insists that the two take advantage of the free time to make love. They hold hands and frolic (in 1970s slo-mo!) to a secluded section of the woods where they get it on. Afterwards, she starts running her mouth about his father and he angrily hits her and takes off, allowing us a momentary glimpse of his naked body.

He confronts his father Davis who then reveals in flashback how he became Stockwell's lawyer and was able to arrange the adoption of his/her son Smith. With Stockwell petrified that anyone might find out the big secret, he/she reveals it to Davis, who is apoplectic. Filled with a mixture of resentment, revulsion, betrayal and, truth be told, arousal, he proceeds to rough Stockwell up a little and then attempt to sexually abuse him/her, though it ultimately comes to nothing.
Davis, confused, frustrated and, eventually, drunk, proceeds to his girlfriend's apartment. The girlfriend (Vicki Carbe) and he have not yet had sex together, but he's decided that this will be the night. In this scene Davis finally shucks his pants and the after-effect of their love-making is their son Taylor, who is horrified to learn the details of his conception.

Taylor departs to Stockwell's mansion where he hopes to console his friend Smith, who is himself in shock over losing his adoptive “mother” who was actually a man! I cannot tell you how much I was hoping that these two buddies were going to somehow “turn to each other” in their respective hours of need, but, sadly, it wasn't to be...

Smith is facing a tidal wave of scandal and scorn including the loss of his fiancee, whose parents refuse to let her see him after hearing the news. In yet another flashback, we see Smith cavorting naked with the girl (Kitty Carl) in his backyard swimming pool. They are deliriously happy at the prospect of marrying, but first he must break the news to his mom. Again, as before, Smith is nude throughout most of the scene.

Overhearing Smith's grief, we then spy chauffeur Bennett again, who is desolate after the death of his employer. In the movie's final flashback sequence, we discover that Bennett was a professional boxer, hired to train with swashbuckling (and swish-buckling) actor Foster, which led to his meeting Stockwell. Bennett and Stockwell begin to see more of one another and, in one of the film's corniest, yet somehow most irresistible, moments they are shown jogging together, Stockwell riding a bicycle alongside a running Bennett and sailing together. A cheesetastic song called “Thank You Alex,” sung by Jon and Sondra Steele, plays over this sequence.
Bennett falls in love with Stockwell and, as it turns out, couldn't really care less that Stockwell is actually a man! (As Joe E. Lewis said at the end of 1959's Some Like it Hot, “Well... nobody's perfect!”) The two carry on a clandestine romance that transcends their outward roles of boss and driver. Bennett does have a nude scene in the movie, but primarily a rear one, though one can see from his white sailing britches that he's no slouch. Amazingly, in this ostensibly lurid and exploitive flick, the love affair between these two more-than-complicated characters is treated with surprising tenderness and acceptance.

The finale of the movie involves Dinah East's wordless funeral service with the chief participants gathered around (but, strangely, NO ONE else!) Naturally, though I have revealed much in this synopsis, there is still a lot that I have chosen not to tell in order to maintain a level of surprise for those of you (I should think most of you!) who have yet to see this. I can not recommend the movie enough to fans of camp and old-style Hollywood soap.

The men are handsome (and with a variety of body types and hair levels), but not unusually "hung," displaying a welcome comfort with their bodies that is foreign to what we generally see today outside of folks like Ewan McGregor or Michael Fassbender. So often we only catch a glimpse of naked stars or quasi-stars who feel they have something worth showing. The others contort or obscure themselves out of (legitimate!) fear of ridicule as the standard for what is acceptable has become distorted by repeated exposure to pornography or to those who are justifiably confident in letting it all hang out. (Even many of the men on pay cable series with frontal nudity rely on either digital enhancement or prosthetics -!- in order to meet this standard.)

What's most staggering about Dinah East, though, is that its budget is low and its acting is of highly variable quality, yet the participants seem to really be trying to give their all. None of the people in the film (with the exception of the clammy, hammy mortician at the beginning) plays his or her role for laughs or even with tongue in cheek. They are serious about what they are doing and, as a result, occasionally obtain a fleeting level of excellence! Of course, this dire seriousness can also be quite funny when things go the opposite way. And we can't discount the mindblowingly sympathetic, progressive and accepting way in which subjects like homosexuality and gender-bending issues are handled in an era when most other films presented these things as either garish comedy or grotesque sickness.

This was the screen acting debut of Houston-born Stockwell and he was not seen again for almost two decades after. (IMDB.com lists this Jeremy Stockwell as the same man who later became a TV actor, panelist and sought-after acting coach in the U.K., but I could not pin down this information as fact!) So many times, Stockwell has been derided for not looking enough like a woman, yet I can't see where he's any less feminine-looking than, say, actress Lindsay Crouse:
To me, he looks damned similar to omnipresent 1970s TV actress Laraine Stephens, shown below:

Yes, the voice is a bit low, but I'll take that any day over the forced, high-pitched falsetto that so many men playing women have adopted. He's also done no favors by a few wretched wigs amid the occasional okay ones. But for a pronounced chin and an occasional unease in gait, I think Stockwell pulls it off very well! He is small-framed, has petite, attractive hands (often another dead giveaway) and an appealing, even sparkling, smile. I really appreciate the understated, realistic quality that he brings to the part. There's a thick Texas accent that he is unable to disguise despite trying, but, listen, this could have been a lot worse! Incidentally, some of the clothing he wears in the movie belonged to co-producer Paula Stewart (comedian Jack Carter's wife!) as they wore the same size!

This just in! (12/20/23) - Stockwell was part of the near-legendary Sal Mineo-directed production of Fortune and Men's Eyes in 1969. He played Mona, who was tormented by fellow inmates at a tough prison. This would have been just prior to the filming of Dinah.

The person in the film with the most personal fame was Ultra Violet, a French actress (born Isabelle Dufresne) who spent significant stretches of time with noted iconoclastic artists Salvadore Dali (shown with her below) and Andy Warhol. A minor screen acting career lasted through the early-'70s and she published a book about her time with Warhol in 1988. Her own accent creates an occasional chuckle in the film such as when she refers to the studio “grape VINE” at one point. She is currently seventy-seven.
Foster had been working on TV and in movie bit roles since the mid-'50s, but Dinah East seems to have slammed the lid on anything further. Though his performance is sometimes too broad, he does have several sincere and quiet moments that are played quite skillfully and it's a shame he disappeared from view after 1970. He is apparently still alive today at age seventy-eight, but like most people in this movie, information is hard to come by.

Loveable lug Bennett had played a small role in Tony Curtis' The Boston Strangler (1968) and went on to small parts in Hickey & Boggs (1972), a Robert Culp/Bill Cosby big-screen teaming, and such TV projects as Little Ladies of the Night and Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (both 1977) as well as How the West Was Won, a 1978 miniseries, before petering out in the mid-'80s. He died of a brain tumor at only age fifty-seven in 1991.

Three young men received “Introducing...” credit in Dinah East. Reid Smith proceeded to a surprisingly busy, though minor, career in television and the odd movie. He had a role in Anne Baxter's The Late Liz (1971), was a regular with Mitchell Ryan on the short-lived police show Chase (1973-1974) and guest-starred on many shows from Columbo to Mork & Mindy to Remington Steele to Dynasty before retiring in the mid-1990s. He is sixty-four today.

The second, Joe Taylor, proceeded to a role in the gay-themed movie Some of My Best Friends Are... (1971) that featured an eclectic cast including Fannie Flagg, Rue McClanahan, Carleton Carpenter, Sylvia Syms, Gil Gerard, Candy Darling and Gary Sandy, followed by a couple of bits. His last credited part was in 1974. I am fascinated by his thick eyebrows, huge, pouty lips and voluminous hair. He is about to turn sixty-seven, presuming he is still with us.

The other actor who was “introduced” in this film was Andy Davis as Taylor's father. Remark- ably, Davis was four years YOUNGER than Taylor, but I really must say that he pulled the casting off with considerable skill. Davis was twenty when he worked on the picture.

Davis had actually worked for a couple of years in the business prior to this as a guest star on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and The Wild Wild West along with a role in the low-rent, awful, sci-fi flick Journey to the Center of Time (1967), which featured Scott Brady, Anthony Eisley and Gigi Perreau. He was to perform just one more tiny role after East in 1971's The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler before sliding off the radar. He is currently sixty-two. He is my favorite performer in the film, thanks in no small part to the fact that his looks and build are exactly what I like (and scarce as all-get-out to find these days... everyone around me seems to fall into three categories now: gaunt, six-pack cut-or obese!)

When it came to titling this post (my pithy, punny titles either seem to come to me very easily or else I agonize over them), I had quite a few! I settled on the one I did because I wanted to try to use the word Dinah and because Dinah Shore also had some rumors about her, true or not, whether regarding her sexuality or her ethnicity. Some of the discarded ones include: “Help! I've Got an 'East' Infection,” “The Wild Wild 'East',” “Go 'East', Young Man” and “Let's Grab a Seat at the 24-Hour 'Dinah.” One imdb.com user had a great one, "Dinah Sore." Grateful as I am to the folks who put out the restored, wide-screen DVD (which is still of so-so quality thanks to the low-end original materials), it would be sensational for somebody to dig up this cast and get them to talk about it themselves!

19 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent! I just made a made dash to amazon and picked up a copy!

BloggerJoe said...

Thanks for the fascinating retrospective!

Ken Anderson said...

Yay!!! Can't tell you how happy I am that you enjoyed the film enough to write about it so swiftly and so amusingly! (Thanks for the shout out, by the way). Between your post and mine, this amounts to more publicity than "Dinah East" has EVER had!
The quality of your copy looks good (as good as possible for such a cheap film)and you write about it in a way that is sure to spark interest. It really is a curiosity isn't it? And as you point out, and what I've noticed myself, everyone involved is giving such sincere performances! They're showing the material a good deal more respect than it perhaps deserves.

As I've said, I've spoken to the film's producer (Boy! does SHE have stories to tell and amazing anecdotes about this movie)who would just love to see this film get some cult attention- although the rights have fallen out of her hands and she wouldn't see a penny of its profits- and she will be thrilled to know that a film she says both Lucille Ball and Rex Reed (!) enjoyed, is slowly emerging from its undeserved obscurity.

I loved reading your thoughts on the film and happy this oddball artifact has a little bit more internet visibility than it once had. By the way, there is so little online about this film, but I would LOVE to see what the original poster art for this film was. How did they sell it?

Ken Anderson said...

Oh, by the way...I love that you dug up 70s actress Larraine Stephens, who seemed to be everywhere back in the day, but whom I've not thought about for ages. Lastly, I cracked up at your comment that you hoped the two heterosexual buddies in this film would "turn to each other." Chiefly because I harbored the same hope.
If only "Dinah East" wasn't so darn "tasteful"! :-)

Knuckles Girlyskirt said...

Surprisingly, I have never heard of this movie!

I have a strange feeling that I will be placing an Amazon order in the coming days.

Thank you.

Poseidon3 said...

Hello and thank you, guys, for leaving comments on this post! I hope that my rather blatant promotion of this film doesn't lead anyone to be disappointed by its purchase, but, truly, I think if you are tuned in enough to my sensibility to come to The Underworld frequently, then you'll find something to love about "Dinah East!"

Ken, thanks especially for coming here to comment and provide further info. I know you deliberately avoid reading posts here of movies you're ABOUT to profile and I do the same, though - as you say - there was such a short turnaround time from my reading your post to creating my own that I hope I didn't overlap too much. I never read yours again after the first time in an effort to maintain my own perspective. :-) You know what I would LOVE, though it may not fit in your blog's scheme of featuring a movie about every other week, would be for you to do an interview with Paula Stewart and transcribe it onto your site! Fans of this movie would lap up any info that she could share (and, of course, I'm dying to hear ANY behind the scenes anecdotes about it myself.)

I could swear that this movie was mentioned in Candice Bergen's auto-bio "Knock Wood," but it was too long since I read it to be sure and perusing it did no good. Maybe I read about it in an old Edgar Bergen bio (was there one?!) I seem to recall, for soem reason, Frances Bergen taking care to avoid the naked actors slinking around their property! Ha!

Ken Anderson said...

Hi Poseidon
Truthfully, my "Dinah East" post is a bit of a capitulation where Paula Stewart is concerned. I really wanted to write a piece on her AND the film (she's so interesting: she dated Marlon Brando, fixed Lucy up with Gary Morton, and Vladimir Horowitz [sp?] gave her a piano!)
But alas, she and her manager are trying to get some kind of Dinah East screening "event" going with UCLA or Outfest, and hope to gather together as many cast members as are still alive (and don't mind being associated with the film) to talk about it. She gave me her blessing to write about the movie, but hopes to share her stories in a bigger forum. So as much as i wanted to spill the beans about more behind the scenes stuff, I (uncharacteristically) kept my mouth shut.
And, by the way, I think your post is truly fabulous! The voice is similar but completely (and hilariously) YOU, so reading your take on "Dinah East" was just the sort of in-depth piece I wish I had encountered when I first heard about the film.
I like that we can write about the same films and our essays actually compliment one another.
One day we should do a gang-post about a particular film: write about the same movie simultaneously from our own unique perspectives. It would be like a gay Siskel & Ebert!

A said...

I've never heard of this either! I just ordered it from Amazon. I think you can Netflix the DVD, but you can't stream it.

I can't wait to see it, thanks for turning me on to it!

Narciso said...

What is this? Something I sincerely have never heard of before? Poseidon never ceases to amaze me. I have to re-read this post and then I am going to purchase! Yowsa!

joel65913 said...

Sounds fascinating and is unknown to me. Happily when I went to the site I found it is available from Netflix, it's coming Monday! Anxious to see it and will drop back in with my thoughts after viewing.

Thanks, Poseidon!

Johnny C said...

Thanks for writing about this movie You hit it on the head with the seriousness that the cast takes their roles.

I thought that Dinah East was the spitting image of Donna Mills.

Love your blog!

joel65913 said...

Well that was an experience! Watched this last evening and it had some very interesting points.

First you were right Poseidon about the nudity, they dropped trou at the slightest provocation!

Jeremy Stockwell gave a committed performance as Dinah East and with some of the wigs especially the slightly purple short curly one remained me of Connie Stevens, without her annoying kewpie doll voice.

Allowing for the low budget it was obviously a project that everyone believed in and all contributed serious work, except for that ridiculous coroner! Some of course were better than others but that's often the case even in top of the line films.

All in all an enjoyable film although I don't see it becoming a treasured classic but it was great to discover something new.

Poseidon3 said...

Joel, THANK YOU so much for coming back to update us on your viewing experience. I appreciate that a lot. I think "Dinah East" makes for a fascinating curio, something to show your friends that is most unusual and hopefully fun. I plan to show it to two friends of mine this Friday and see what they think. Take care and thanks again.

angelman66 said...

Based on the double strength of your post and that of Le Cinema Dreams, I too bought this film and was NOT disappointed.

I agree with you that Jeremy Stockwell's Dinah is curiously understated but I think it works here. There is such a temptation to turn a central role into a venue for scene-stealing and scenery chewing and divine divadom (which I love), but this film has a particular style. As I mentioned to Ken at Le Cinema Dreams, Dinah reminds me strongly of those 1960s biopics made by Joseph E. Levine, such as Harlow (1965) and The Oscar (1966). I particularly recommend watching Carroll Baker's understated, perhaps a little zombie-like portrayal of Jean Harlow, and you will see parallels with Jeremy's interpretation of Dinah.

LOVED your aside about the proliferation of male nudity...I too would mentally undress all these movie hunks, wondering what each looked like naked. This is a movie that fulfilled every promise in that department!

Thanks for your great blog. I have bookmarked it under favorites and look forward to hours more fun with you.

ilduce said...

Thanks for this review!

I just watched this film this weekend and am now recommending it to all my friends,

You've got a great blog and I've never been disappointed in your recommendations!

A said...

I just watched it and loved it. It really was impressive how seriously they all seemed to take it.

I too thought Stockwell looked like Donna Mills (maybe it's the other way around?).

I can't believe Andy Davis was only 20!

Anyway, thanks for the referral. Too bad you can't get a credit for all the sales on Amazon.

Poseidon3 said...

My goodness, I believe I started something with this! (As Ken Anderson did before me. We'll have this film on people of the world's minds one way or another!) SO GLAD that y'all liked it. I watched Dinah East again this past Friday with friends and they enjoyed it, too, as well as being pleasantly startled at the imagery in it. There's something strangely comforting about this movie that I cannot quite put my finger on!!! Angelman66, I think you're on to something about the other glossy bios and melodramas that this movie seems to be trying to emulate. Fascinating stuff... Okay, I'm off to try to get another post done before the 4th rolls around!!

Ptolemy1 said...

So...bear with me, I have a lot to get off my chest with you heheh. I've followed your site religiously for quite some time, we share a great abiding love of films and the often lascivious aspects that come with them. "Dinah East" was one of my bucket list films, (That and Roddy McDowall's "Tam Lin") which I eventually tracked down on the intertubes. I can't say I was dissapointed in East, but like someone at a buffet I was a bit put out it only had salads and bread sticks. The film had so much potential and honestly should have been an all out naked parade without all the dull filler. But such are the 70s.
I also know you love an extraordinary film I first saw with my father, a fireman, in the theaters when I was 11. My father and I bonded over the thrilling scene of an enormous wall of water, that loomed up in that darkened theater while squeals and screams could be heard across the sold out audience. Who could have conceived of such a brilliant concept? An ocean liner, slowly rolling over while formally dressed passengers celebrated a joyous occasion? Many years later my obsession continued when I met Borgnine and Stevens at an autograph convention in New Jersey. They sat near each other and it was heaven. Stevens as you must already know is a very intelligent woman and was thrilled I wanted to talk about her films rather than her cheesecake career. I held a special edition of the film while men held their Playboys. That special edition has a GREAT commentary from Martin Stevens and Lynley. I'm sure you know much of the trivia but it's a joy to listen to them comment. My impression of Borgnine was that he was a gentle man, conservative, religious and greatly loved with a line that stretched outside the hotel venue and around the block. I had a special sketch of him as Marty that he autographed. I have an AMAZING photo of Stevens sitting on the ballroom set, looking rather tired in her evening gown she autographed. Have you seen it? If you haven't I would love to send it to you in some way. I'm divesting a lot of my things, the idea is to eventually move to Vietnam after I retire in a few years from nursing. Anyway, that film. Often imitated never eclipsed. I don't mean to talk down about it but it has SUCH a gritty, almost Grindhouse aspect to it that's just so great. I asked Borgnine about the moment he and the men lift the tree for the first time. I could swear he groans out "FUuuuucccck, it's HEAVY". Sure enough he confirmed it, an extraordinary word to hear in a film in 1972. He said the tree was way too heavy and they should have never been made to carry it the way they did. Stevens thrilled me when she told me they made two of every costume, some more than two. One to distress as the film went on, and one to preserve. She said her gown (a very timeless beautiful dress) is in the Smithsonian. The idea that she designed with her hair dresser to have her hair come undone during the underwater scene was thrilling to hear her say. The opening credits I think are my favorite shots, I often show the film and ask my friends "Now tell me, is that a model or a real ship?". Amazing model work.
Please keep up the work, as a tired and stressed nurse I hang on your every post Poseidon, especially the extensive bulge finds. I cannot tell you what your writing means to me.
Again, let me know if you'd like that photo, I know you'd cherish it.
Very fondly. Ptolemy1, also known as Philip, from Pennsylvania.

Poseidon3 said...

Ptolemy1, I am so jealous that you met "Mike and Linda Rogo!" If you go on YouTube and search for Ernest Borgnine Pioneers of Television, he has a CHARMING interview that is very captivating. He was a wonderful person. And I do know of the pic of Stella you mention. It may be somewhere in the mire of The Underworld. She was so great in the movie and so much better than the Linda in the book. I will have to take a closer look at Ernie at the tree. I am always focused on the Jesus-ish way Gene Hackman looks at that point. You may read here somewhere how my own first exposure to TPA (again I'm jealous that you saw it on the big screen. I was only 5!) was on a black & white TV! So it was even MORE gritty and grindhouse that way and came off more seriously, I think, without color. I appreciate your comments and compliments so much!!! Take care.