Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Today's Forecast: Scattered Showers

Somehow, it's become a compulsion each year for a few years now for me to feature famous men in the shower every April. I almost didn't do it this year, despite wanting to, because I had a difficult time tracking down proper evidence to fill out a whole post. (If you come here often, you know I have a tendency to keep the nozzle running until I have around 60 or more pictures!) This is still not as exhaustive as some of the earlier one have been, but I did manage to scrub up and find 50 or so pics. So, now... adjust your level of hot and cold and let's press on!
That little cover photo I used today came from this interesting old ad. No one famous, but I'm such a fan of communal showers I just had to share it! To paraphrase something The Golden Girls' Blanche Devereaux once said, ever since Psycho, I hate to shower alone!
Recognize this gentleman from the early days of moviemaking?
Why, it's "The Great Stone Face" himself, silent movie legend Buster Keaton, taking a very makeshift shower with some interesting components.
I'm not sure what possessed hunkalicious Lex Barker to take a soapy shower with his towel on, but I must say I like the dangerous curves that poor, sopping towel is taking! Oh, for a better angle on this...  
Speaking of angles, or to be more specific, cropping. This showering shot of movie idol Rock Hudson is quite nice...
...but it's a touch more fun when the camera dips down even further!
Peering out from behind a shower curtain is young Dennis Hopper.
Elvis "The King" Presley hosing down in the 1960 movie musical G. I. Blues.
Here's Elvis Aaron in color from the same scene. He's wearing some rather obvious white shorts (or swim trunks?) on the set.
Midnight Cowboy's (1969) Jon Voight scrubs up before donning his trademark western garb.
A rather-steamed Charlton Heston takes a shower in Number One (1969) in which he played a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints who's almost washed up.
Costar John Randolph, as his coach, sneaks a quick peek at Chuck jr during their chat. Heston was truly nude during this scene (as on-set photos have revealed), though nothing is shown in the actual movie. 
Between The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959) and Planet of the Apes (1968), Heston spent a fair amount of time scantily-clad in his long career.
A dash of nudity in the scene is provided by a beefy teammate of his, shown here from behind and in the inset after having grabbed his towel and exiting.
This behind-the-scenes shot depicts college student Ryan O'Neal about to step under the shower head in Love Story (1970.)
Here he is with a pal after the water has started.
Next we find ubiquitous early-70s teen idol David Cassidy in a splashy magazine pictorial. This been a youth-aimed periodical, the camera stays a safe distance above the horizon.
In the 1971 relationship movie Carnal Knowledge, Jack Nicholson takes three showers during the course of the film. Here, he's seen hosing off while college roommate Art Garfunkel.
These beefcake-y shots are quite a contrast to the later, paunchier and (thankfully!) more often covered-up Nicholson that many of us are used to seeing now.
The second shower is taken in the company of Ann-Margret, obscured by a mottled sliding door.
A well-placed doorknob prevents us from making out anything in the shot.
The third shower is only heard, but we do see Mr. Nicholson toweling off directly afterwards.
That same year, Nicholson directed, but did not appear in, the lesser-known counter-culture film Drive, He Said, which features shaggy-haired William Tepper as a college basketball star who showers with his team after a game. (Note Michael Warren, later of Hill St. Blues in the lower-right inset.)
This already provocative scene was intended to be even longer and more explicit with Nicholson intending to treat it like a "symphony of dicks." (Interestingly Nicholson was, at the time, a near 24/7 nudist and this movie contains a startling amount of male frontal nudity! This phase of his only lasted about three months, however.)
There is a bit of horseplay and self-fondling during the group shower. Note the location of two urinals IN the shower room!
Warren indulges in some playful grab-assing during the scene. What a day of filming this must have been!
In 1973's The Possession of Joel Delaney, Perry King (with introductory billing) took a shower behind mottled glass while onscreen sister Shirley MacLaine brought him a towel and robe. As the title character, already becoming unhinged by this point, he opens the door slightly and begins splashing her and grasping at her face! 
The glass distorts his handsome face into a contorted visage that my friend Heather would describe as "creepy as fuck!" I placed a shot of his usual face alongside this for comparison.
One of the best parts of the 1977 football film Semi-Tough is the celebratory shower scene that takes place during the opening credits. An assortment of beefy, naked players are dragging the staff into the showers for a soaking. Four of the burly men are frontally nude in the scene. (BTW, that's Brian Dennehy on the far right in the gray t-shirt, open towel and with a jock-strap on his head!)
At one point (see lower photo), two of the players are wrasslin' around and wind up with one of them resting his butt on the junk of the player behind him! "I Love the '70s" is right!
Back to Perry King again, this time in 1978's A Different Story. In it, he plays a gay man who married a lesbian (Meg Foster) and they have a child. She grows suspicious that he's fallen in with men again and goes to his workplace to catch him, only to find him in the shower with another woman!
This is a lengthy rear nude scene for King as he steps out to try to resolve things with Foster.
She'll have none of it, however, and proceeds to trash the room while he tries to cover up with a towel.
Let's play "Mystery Butt." I sincerely doubt that any of you will be able to guess this one, even if you recall the man who it belongs to, but if you do know him, it's a shocker! I'll give you a hint... it's an Australian actor who enjoyed a brief run of leading roles in American movies in the mid-'80s before seguing into supporting and character parts.
The movie is 1979's The Odd Angry Shot and the rear end belongs to Bryan Brown! Brown was the star of F/X and Tai-Pan (both 1986) and costar in Cocktail and Gorillas in the Mist (both 1988) among many others.
The Australian movie, set during The Vietnam War, has a group of soldiers enjoying a makeshift outdoor shower (we love these!)
There are bits of frontal nudity sprinkled about the sequence.
Here we find Marshall Teague in the 1980s HBO football series 1st & Ten. The show always dotted each episode with boobs and the occasional male behind. In this scene, Teague is shown cavorting with a blonder when her husband catches them! 
Turns out that it's all a joke. The "husband" is just a teammate in disguise, brandishing a gun that is just a gag. We do get to enjoy the sight of Teague reacting while still under the shower with soap dripping.
We're about to head to prison for a three-film sentence, so watch your back!


Surely one of the most vivid and harrowing prison shower scenes ever came courtesy of American History X (1998), featuring Edward Norton in a blistering performance. As a white-supremacist skinhead, he winds up in the pen for murder.
Unfortunately, he runs afoul of his own gang of fellow baddies and is severely punished for it. (Is is wrong of me to point out that this would have been even more hideous had someone other than the tall, handsome drink of water at bottom left been the perpetrator?)
His former friends gang up on him and hold him steady while their leader forces himself upon the helpless Norton.
Things don't end too well for Mr. Ed and before it's over, he has to be hospitalized (on his stomach, no less....)
2005's Get Rich or Die Tryin' was the film debut of 50 Cent and has an extended prison shower scene (with frontal nudity from some of the participants, albeit in long shot.)
The scene, which includes a vicious razor blade attack, also includes Terrence Howard, seen in the middle of the top photo and from behind in the lower-right one. He provides the most visible nudity out of all the participants.
On a lighter note, as we are about to be released from the clink, we come to 2006's Let's Go to Prison with Dax Shepard and Will Arnett, seen showering under guard here.
Arnett is petrified upon entering the communal shower area, in which everyone is eyeing him for one reason or another. If you have to ask why he's nervous, just examine the prior two movies we mentioned!
It turns out okay, I guess, since the worst thing that happens is that he gets a little help with his shampoo...
And now we finish off our showers with a few comparatively contemporary pics.


Jean-Claude Van Damme
Usher (not really "showering," but it will do for our purposes today!)
Jamie Dornan, sitting amidst 50 Shades of Clay.
The End!