Friday, April 15, 2016

Weather Forecast: April Showers!

Yes, children, it's about to rain again in what has become a yearly tradition, but there's no need to grab an umbrella. Instead grab a cake of soap, because these April showers take place in the locker room or bathroom (or, in the case of our cover boys, outside under a tarp courtesy of Yanks, 1979!) If you've never seen Yanks, you will want to at least view the brief, but entertaining, shower that Richard Gere, Chick Vennera and their friends are forced to take in the cold. It's harder and harder to dig up examples that we haven't already featured before, but I did manage to scour up a few.

Child star Jackie Cooper is in his teen years here and a bit shy about having a photo shoot during his morning shower.
Before long, though, he's overcome his modesty and allows the camera to click while he soaps up. By the way, Jackie Cooper was 5'9" and yet he still towers over this shower head! Were they in Shirley Temple's trailer for this?!
Here's quite an eyeful of another child actor who continued to work as an adult, Mickey Rooney.
In 1941's The Man Who Lost Himself, Brian Aherne combines his shower with telling S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall something he wants him to do.
This is from an excised scene in State Fair (1945), in which Dick Haymes reprised the number "Isn't It Kind of Fun" while taking a shower at the campgrounds. Poseidon's Underworld never approves of the editing of ANY shower scene!
1950s screen villain David Brian lightens up for a fast shower.
1950s actor Howard Duff is in the buff!
Farley Granger is all done and ready to dry off.
Beauteous '50s & '60s leading man Jeffrey Hunter also makes a grab for a nearby towel.
Popular French leading man Yves Montand is having a grand time during his shower.
It's not easy to make out his face, but this is Mr. Cary Grant rinsing off outside.
This young man is Sean Flynn, adventurer, photographer and sometimes actor son of swashbuckling Errol Flynn.
And now a digression into the world of boxing. First up is Rocky Grazziano, whose story was told in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) starring Paul Newman.
Need a closer look?
Famed heavyweight champion (for a dozen straight years!) Joe Louis is treated to a rain-style shower head (and you thought these were recent inventions...)
There's more to see of Mr. Louis in this shot. (Louis acted in about a dozen TV and movies projects, most often playing himself.)
Joe says, "bye!" for now!
Another much-heralded boxer, a middleweight, Sugar Ray Robinson cools off after a turn in the ring. (Robinson also made a few acting appearances in the 1960s & '70s.)
Back to the showbiz side of things, we find Goldie Hawn singing a number (presumably "Y.M.C.A."?) while a couple of her dancers hose off behind her (sharing one shower head no less!) in the 1980 TV special Goldie and Liza Together.
After all those seasons of Oz (1998-2003), it's hardly unusual to find Christopher Meloni underneath a shower head.
Male model Tyson Beckford uses the shower for a pose, though he neglected to take off his clothing!
Movie strongman Vin Diesel gets wet for a magazine portrait.
Some film-specific showers now. Renato Salvatori and Alain Delon share a scrubdown in Rocco and His Brothers (1960.)
A homoerotic thread runs through Conversation Piece (1974) with Helmut Berger under the nozzle as Burt Lancaster looks on.
Death Race (2008) starred Jason Statham as an ex-con who's a participant in the savage title event, a violent car race. This is a deleted scene in which he gets a rather rough hosing down.
Statham worked like a dog for three months to gain his 6% body fat physique, but he's FAR too skinny this way for my own tastes. I like some man on my men. LOL
Moving on now to some multiple shots of shower scenes from particular films, ones I've recently viewed and wanted to share with readers visiting Poseidon's Underworld!
The 1969 counterfeit ring drama The File of the Golden Goose was a pretty standard, even a bit dull, story until Yul Brynner went on the hunt for a key member of the enemy camp. He was instructed to look in the Turkish baths of London for his man.
As a result, he went from bathhouse to bathhouse, looking over the various men in the hopes that one of them might be the guy he was hunting for. (This lends an obvious tinge of homoeroticism to the proceedings, not diminished by the fact that the object of Brynner's search is indeed gay.)
Brynner, at close to fifty by now, still has his physique. More shots from this movie will be popping up later when I do my next tribute to stars in towels!
This scene of Brynner in a steam bath (while a dress undress extra behind him showers off) occurs before the sequence shown above, but I saved it for last.
This is a pretty obscure horror movie from 1982 called Death Screams. I start with these non-shower shots so that you can get a bit of a look at the star Martin Tucker who takes a shower in the film. (Gotta love the Kelly green sweater over the shoulders!)
Since 1960's Psycho, women in peril while showering had become a cinematic cliche, so it's nice to see the flip side for a change as Tucker heads into the bathroom, doffs his towel and steps into the shower.
We get a nice shot of his back side as the camera slowly zooms in, anticipating danger. Don't miss the yellow (!) toilet with the furry brown (!) seat cover.
You may be surprised to find out that this movie was directed by none other than David Nelson, son of Ozzie & Harriet! We think most all movies need a scene similar to this one...
The danger turns out to be merely a false alarm as it's just a woman coming in to his bathroom and opening the shower door (though depending on the circumstances, that could be scary, too!  LOL) For this part, in which the actress is present, he suddenly has on flimsy flesh-toned panties, seen slightly in the bottom right photo.
Vigilante (1983) was an exploitation drama in which Robert Forster (far right) is sent to prison for taking personal revenge on criminals in his neighborhood.
Forster was no stranger to screen nudity having stripped down for his movie debut Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and especially Medium Cool (1969.)
He finds himself on the receiving end of unwanted attention from a hulking fellow inmate. The other bathers scramble out of the room asap, leaving Forster to his fate!
The burly attacker picks up Forster like a rag doll and begins to hurl him around, but fortunately Woody Strode (in the short-sleeved blue shirt) is there for the rescue.
Forster continued to pop up naked on film as late as 1997's American Perfekt.
Next up is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), noted for its homoerotic content. A dreaming Mark Patton is taking a shower and bears witness to some wild goings on.
Patton has been involved in some disputes and discipline from his school's coach and gym teacher Marshall Bell. Bell is paid back in spades when he's telekinetically dragged into the shower room and tied to the pipes with some jump ropes.
Then his clothes are ripped from his body and a towel jumps from its stack and comes into the room!
Towel-snapping is taken to a whole new level as the coach is repeatedly whipped with it (and things only go downhill for him from here...)
These next shots are from the baseball flick Bull Durham (1988.)
The hunky players are showering off (or in the case of the guy on the right, soaking.)
Their highly-disappointed coach, however, has a severe tongue-lashing in mind and comes into the shower room with a large armful of baseball bats, which he tosses at the players' feet in disgust.
The naked or half-naked players have to hop around to avoid being pummeled by the heavy wooden bats.
Every player is corralled into the showers for the coach's diatribe.
Here's a closer look at several of the hirsute hunks. Long live the '80s!
I've actually never watched this entire movie, but I feel like I've already seen my favorite part of it...
For our final shower of the day, we're flipping back a bit chronologically, but I really wanted to end with this one. Recently, thanks to a loincloth tribute, some of you became enamored of one Reb Brown. Here, making his screen debut in Sssssss (1973), he plays the brawny, bullying classmate of the movie's star Dirk Benedict.
After trying to force himself on Benedict's girlfriend Heather Menzies and killing her pet snake in the process, Brown takes a different girl to bed, but eventually tosses her out so that he can grab a shower and get some sleep. (Note the clear shower curtain in front of him, if you can take your eyes off that rump!)
 Quite peculiarly (not to mention disappointingly!), the shower curtain has turned opague once Brown has shucked his briefs and stepped inside! What's really bizarre is that it's not a different shower curtain. This some sort of photographic process or cheesy special effect in order to make sure we don't see the delectable hunk's nude body TOO clearly in this PG film...
Cute as he is, he comes close to spoiling the whole sequence with his horrendously off-key warbling of the song "On Top of Ol' Smokey" while he's rinsing off! It is truly unbearable.
In retaliation for his misdeeds, Menzies' father Strother Martin has slinked into Brown's room and is creeping up to him as he takes his mouth-watering shower.
Martin (who, as an actor, had some of the most deliriously exciting blocking here in the history of motion pictures!) tosses one of his deadly snakes into the shower so that Brown will step on it and cause it to attack!
It all goes according to plan and Martin reaches in and pulls out the snake (no, not that one, the one he brought!) Poor, naked Reb Brown is done in.
The End!

7 comments:

Gingerguy said...

Has it been a year? Wow, love these shower posts. I know David Brian as a villain and didn't recognize him with a smile. He doesn't look so evil at all. Yves Montand had a pretty nice body by today's standards. Sean Flynn reminds me of James Franco, I had never heard of him before. Sugar Ray with a'stache? he's a cutie pie either way. "Death Screams" reminds me of a gender switch on "I saw what you did and I know who you are" and "SSSSSS" is a scream, but for all the wrong reasons. I remember the movie was on past my bedtime (early 70's I think). Every time someone got killed another head would pop up on an animated snake that would flash on the screen before the commercial break. But the real horror is "Goldie and Liza Together" I heard a rumor that it was a kind of screen test for their chemistry, as they were talked about for a screen version of "Chicago"? does that ring a bell? and being a very big Donna Summer fan at that time (still) Liza just murdered "Bad Girls" on that show. I watch it as self inflicted punishment on Youtube.

Roberta Steve said...

Poseidon, I am always intrigued by these posts. I'm not surprised that many of them come from films of the 80s when nudity in films became more commonplace for male actors. Just a couple of observations:

I can't believe they got away with the shot of Mickey Rooney in what I'm guessing was the 1950s. Very revealing as we see more "South of the border" detail than expected.

Sean Flynn became a photographer, and went missing during the Vietnam War. Took a long time before the family had him declared dead.

I cannot unsee Howard Duff naked. On the list of actors I never imagined ever wanting to see naked he may be at the top of the list. To each his own, and I guess there was something there that kept Ida Lupino (Mrs. Duff) interested!

Finally, is it me or does Reb Brown have a very weird little toe? There is obviously something wrong with me if I am noticing a little toe among all the beefcake!

joel65913 said...

Oh Poseidon you do the nicest things for us! Quite a variety of types.

It's always a bit startling to see Mickey Rooney in such good shape considering the pagoda like form he assumed almost directly after the Andy Hardy years.

No matter the angle Jeffrey Hunter was ever dreamy.

I am almost completely immune and mystified to the charms of Yves Montand outside of The Wages of Fear but perhaps if he had plastered that big almost goofy smile on his face more often he wouldn't consistently strike me as akin to a cigar store Indian.

Christopher Meloni is so effortlessly sexy, even in that relatively simple pose he just exudes studliness.

Funny to see The File of the Golden Goose pop up here, until last week I wasn't aware of its existence but happened upon it on some station or another at the beginning and gave it a watch. It was underwhelming despite a good cast but that voyage Yul takes though bathhouses was quite surprising and certainly pepped the movie up!

Robert Forster so handsome in a rumpled way and so unselfconscious, bless him.

I was not a fan of Bull Durham, truthfully I only half watched, but I can't believe I was so disengaged that I have no memory of this shower sequence!! I don't think I could endure the film again just for this so thank you for the pictures!

That situation with Reb Brown's shower is a frequent happenstance in film with men. If it had been a woman showering there would have been no shower curtain at all probably and she would have been twirling around like a majorette. Oh the inequity!!!!

A said...

Boy, Sean Flynn was good looking.

hsc said...

joel65913: "That situation with Reb Brown's shower is a frequent happenstance in film with men. If it had been a woman showering there would have been no shower curtain at all probably and she would have been twirling around like a majorette. Oh the inequity!!!!"

Actually, there was censorship in two earlier scenes involving Heather Menzies and Dirk Benedict-- the movie is rather notorious for the obviously inserted leafy branches during a skinny-dipping scene and lamps and other objects pasted optically over an indoor nude lovemaking session.

Unfortunately, the tampering was done just before release in order to drop the rating on the film-- for years, people wrongly assumed the meddling was done to create TV-safe prints-- and there are apparently no "uncut" versions extant.

Which really "Ssssssucks."

Poseidon3 said...

Gingerguy, yes, the years fly by! I think this is the sixth one of these I've done and P.U. (Lord, those initials! LOL) will be seven years old this August! I've often wondered about David Brian, if he was nice at all in person because he was one nasty persona on screen, over and over! And I do think every conceivable combination of ladies was bandied about for "Chicago" over the years including Goldie & Liza. (Which makes it quite a head scratcher that when they finally did the movie, it was with Renee Zellweger! She's about ready for a Richard Lamparski "What Ever Became Of...?" by now!)

Roberta, I have to assume that some of these more revealing mostly-naked photos of the stars were done as a lark or as a surprise or with the intent of being cropped in closer if they were ever used. I would almost put this one of Mickey in the late-'40s! In a prior post, there was one of Rock Hudson cut pretty low, though he did come along later than this. And the most infamous of all was when a photographer spent the day with Sal Mineo (who I think was seventeen?!) and took a full frontal of him in the shower! A cropped version ran in the magazine(s), but the more explicit version made its way around eventually. (Likewise, LIFE magazine spent a day with Pat Boone at the gym at took several of his naked body showering as well!) I also think that the act of showering was seen a bit more as everyday, hygienic activity, often in a group at school or health club, and not quite as eroticized as it later came to be (such as with pervs like me! ha!) As for Howard Duff, I could understand if I posted a pic of him from his days as Titus on "Flamingo Road," but he's young here! He was an object of desire for several ladies including Miss Ava Gardner. And, yes, Reb has a weird toe... I zeroed in on it right away myself, but didn't know if anyone else would, too. Good eyes! LOL

Joel, I too have no idea what Montand's appeal is. To each his own, said the woman who kissed the cow, as my grandma used to say! LOL I will make it quite easy for you to see the Bull Durham shower scene WITHOUT having to watch the movie again. Click here ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtmKIWa4tY I have always liked Robert Forster, too.

hsc, that's a shame about the editing done to "Sssssss." Dreamy Dirk Benedict should never be obscured by branches, lamps or anything!

Unknown said...

Here is actor Scott Brady. I would love to see the uncensored version (if there is one): http://www.babyjaneofhollywood.com/bradyn01.jpg