Pop Quiz: Who's that Girl?

Now a mere three days before opening night of my upcoming musical, I am still struggling to do any sort of in-depth posting here, but in the meantime I give you another of my infamous Pop Quizzes. This one asks you to guess the identity of some famous and semi-famous ladies of the screen who are depicted in photographs that don't necessarily coincide with their usual image. Die-hard cinephiles and TV addicts likely won't have any trouble figuring out who these gals are, but perhaps it will pose a challenge for some of you folks. In any case, I hope the pictures are fun, something I try to do with each of these posts.

1. Our first lady is all gussied up in a fashion that is different from the more typical covered-up and toned-down, fresh-scrubbed, girl-next-door qualities she was better known for in various light romances and musicals.

2. Now this chick certainly never showed up on her long-running television series (un)dressed this way! Perhaps this was a bid for an image change that didn't quite stick.

3. Goodness me, what an exotic person we have here. No, this is not a prehistoric public service announcement for breast self-examination, but a British actress getting her sexy on for an early role in a horror movie.

4. Someone seems to have lost the top of her swimsuit! This sensual shot is quite a one-eighty from the pert, innocent sort of roles that kicked off this actress's movie career.

5. Get a load of the colors in this outfit (and makeup!) What a time the late-'60s & early-'70s was. Do you know this well-liked television performer?

6. Sultry... and with a nod towards Rita Hayworth with the hair, though it's certainly not her. Do you recognize this talented lady who only wore her hair this way on infrequent occasions?

7. Flippy helmet hair in this one, so it's the mid-'60s, but who is this pretty brunette with the full lips and ample bosom?

8. Is this a screen test for Joan of Arc? Whoever it is has been de-glammed about as far as any studio chose to go back in the 1950s (and this look was quite a departure for the actress in question.)

9. This ponytailed girl became an immensely popular and successful star during the 1970s and while her movies range wildly in quality, they mostly retain heavy cult followings.

10. Do we recognize this scantily-clad swimsuit wearer? Like many of her peers, she was attempting to build a new image which wasn't able to take hold.

11. How about this fresh-faced '80s ingenue? This was one of her earliest parts and it would take about another dozen years before she became more well-known as a TV star.

12. There's a sort of ethereal glamour in this photo that, while not entirely outside the realm of the actress's usual milieu, suggests a bit more gauzy type of image than the more elegantly sensible and practical characters she tended to play in her gleaming career.

13. Here's another shellacked brunette, bewigged for a TV role that is light years away from the usual look this gorgeous starlet put forth.

14. We're seeing spots in this last one, but who is the young lady sporting them? As the years went by, we were far more accustomed to seeing a lighter shade of hair on her in movies and on TV.

And now...... Here come the answers!


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1. The brassy, blonde, (in this guise) Barbara Nichols look-alike shown above is Miss Gloria DeHaven, MGM contract player and star of Summer Holiday (1948) with Mickey Rooney, Summer Stock with Judy Garland and Two Tickets to Broadway (1951) with Tony Martin. The photo in the quiz is from The Girl Rush (1955.)

2. Our bikini-clad blonde is Alison Arngrim, legendary as the spoiled, spiteful, stubborn Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie (1974-1982.) Her acting career quickly petered out, but she proceeded to become a beloved public speaker, stand-up comedian, AIDS activist and a talented writer, reveling in the "hatred" that so many viewers feel towards her perfectly nasty character.

3. The photo of Kate O'Mara is from 1970's The Horror of Frankenstein. O'Mara went on to play Alexis' high-cheekboned, put-upon sister Cassandra (idiotically nicknamed "Caress") on Dynasty in 1986 for 19 episodes and later made a couple of sidesplitting appearances on Absolutely Fabulous (1995 & 2003.)

4. That topless blonde gal is none other than once-brunette Pamela Tiffin, star of Summer and Smoke (1961), State Fair (1962) and The Hallelujah Trail (1965) among others. She retired from acting in 1974 after marrying for a second time, not too long after this attempt at a completely new image.

5. That was Miss Jaclyn Smith prior to her success on Charlie's Angels (1976-1981) and later reign as Queen of the TV Movies.

6. The gal with the wave of hair to one side is toe-tapping marvel, Miss Ann Miller! She later went with a ginormous bouffant look and then later still segued back to this large bun at the nape of her neck, which I love.

7. This curvaceous cutie is Linda Harrison, best known for her basically speechless role in both Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), but also appearing (billed as "Augusta Summerfield") in Airport 1975 (1974.)

8. The plain-faced actress is Miss Joan Collins during her role in Sea Wife (1957), where she portrayed a shipwrecked nun. Later, Collins would adopt a staggeringly heavy eye-makeup scheme that really worked for her (but led to all sorts of scary real-life imitators!)

9. The young lady in ponytails is Miss Olivia Newton John, world-renowned singer and star of Grease (1978), Xanadu (1980) and :::cough::: Two of a Kind (1983.)

10. Child actress Dana Plato debuted on TV in 1975 and later spent 1978-1984 (with a few subsequent guest appearances) on the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. Sadly, a drug habit led to her untimely death at only age thirty-four in 1999.

11. That is Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-2014), the offspring of bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay and buxom bombshell Jayne Mansfield.

12. Our hazy heroine is none other than Irene Dunne, star of Magnificent Obsession (1935), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939), Penny Serenade (1941) and I Remember Mama (1948) among many other films.

13. The brown-haired lass is none other than Miss Sharon Tate, the stunning blonde beauty of Eye of the Devil (1966), Valley of the Dolls (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1968) during one of her fifteen appearances on The Beverly Hillbillies (1963-1965) as a secretary.

14. The spotted starlet is Jill St. John, star of The Lost World (1960), Tender is the Night (1962), The Oscar (1966), Tony Rome (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971), now the wife of Robert Wagner.