Poseidon's Underworld

Faded Jean

2012-01-30T16:27:00.005-05:00

Those not interested in older movies are probably hard-pressed to identify the face or name of today's featured actress. Her career was a fairly short one, but of her own choosing, for she was a compelling and reasonably popular persona on-screen. She costarred with several famous and enduring actors and it is interest in them which most likely leads viewers to her films now; their discovery of her beauty and talent a happy side effect. One of her biggest claims to fame happens to be the one thing she didn't want to be solely remembered for. The lady was Jean Peters.

Elizabeth Jean Peters came into this world on October 15th, 1926. She and her younger sister were the children of a farm couple in Canton, Ohio. There, Peters inherently developed a solid, down-to-earth quality that would see her through various ups and downs during her adulthood. When her father died in 1936, the ten year-old girl found herself assisting her mother with a campground that was built upon their property to generate income for them. There was never any inkling that she would be anything but a midwestern wife or schoolteacher (a career path she pursued after high school.)

One day, during her studies at Ohio State University in Columbus, her roommate secretly mailed her picture and registration in to the Miss Ohio State beauty pageant. Peters had grown into a lovely dark-haired girl with beguiling green eyes. Called upon to appear, she did so reluctantly, but won! Part of the prize package was a screen test in Hollywood for 20th Century Fox studio. She and her mother flew west where, upon meeting studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, the striking girl was placed under contract without her even having filmed the test!
She dropped out of college (a decision she later regretted, but also one that she eventually rectified) and stepped into the heady, make-believe world of life at a Hollywood studio. She was made-up, tested, photographed, sent on publicity jaunts and basically given the treatment that so many hopefuls before her had dreamed of. This was not Peters' dream, though. If she were going to be an actress then she wanted to act, and not in just anything. She withdrew from the very first part she'd been assigned to, a musical called I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, that ultimately starred June Haver.

Her eventual first feature film was a big one and it came unexpectedly. Zanuck was producing Forever Amber, a potentially sizzling costume drama based on a notorious novel, and the lead actress (Peggy Cummins) was not living up to his expectations. He felt that she was reading too young and was incapable of living up to the demands of the part. In desperation, he took one of his favorite actresses under contract, Linda Darnell, and placed her in Amber, leaving Darnell's upcoming film without a leading lady. The 1947 film, Captain from Castille, was meant to reunite Darnell with her Blood and Sand costar Tyrone Power. Instead, Power was set to work with neophyte Peters (now known as Jean Peters.)
Despite her lack of training as an actress, she rose to the challenge of playing a feisty Spanish maiden. She was in awe of her handsome costar, referring to him later as being godlike. The Technicolor adventure film showed off Peters' gorgeous coloring; her silky brunette hair and dazzling eyes being paid tribute by the flattering film process. The chain of events behind the casting was a rare opportunity for any fledgling actress. That she succeeds in the role at all is remarkable since, apart from a couple of brief tests, she had never acted before.
Zanuck next chose to put her in the Gregory Peck western Yellow Sky, but she refused the role. Freshly twenty-one upon the release of Captain from Castille and still maintaining the moral code of her midwestern Christian upbringing, she felt that the part intended for her was “too sexy” (magazine covers and photos sittings to the contrary!) Anne Baxter was cast instead and Peters was placed on suspension. It was not the last time that the headstrong young lady would go up against her boss over the refusal of roles. Nevertheless, Peters was very interested in honing her craft and demonstrated a remarkable work ethic. Her farm upbringing meant that getting up early for calls to the set presented no difficulty. She also studied the talent of those around her, eager to absorb as much as she could from their example.

It wasn't long before she was put to work again, this time in 1948's Deep Waters, a black and white drama concerning lobster fisherman Dana Andrews (!), his fiancee Peters and a young orphan boy played by Dean Stockwell. The next year, she was cast with Ray Milland and Paul Douglas in It Happens Every Spring, a comedy about baseball (a sport which Peters enjoyed in real life) and what happens when a chemical fluid that repels wood is applied to balls that players are attempting to hit with a wooden bat! During downtime between roles and during periods of suspension, she went back to school and finally achieved her degree.

1950 brought Love That Brute, a comedy set in the 1920s about a gangster (Paul Douglas) who falls for pretty Peters and hires her as the governess for his children (even though he hasn't got any!) Her character wishes to be a nightclub singer, so he helps arrange for that, too. Her number is an interesting precursor to the later, and far more lavish and elaborate, “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” that Marilyn Monroe performed in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953. Peters is dripping in jewels and has four tuxedo-clad male dancers supporting her. For the song, she worked with Betty Grable's dance instructor for a few weeks in order to polish up her limited movement experience and wore a dress that was so tight she could not sit down while wearing it.
Peters and Monroe were cast in the same film with 1951's As Young as You Feel. The ensemble comedy starred Monty Woolley (of The Man Who Came to Dinner fame), Thelma Ritter, David Wayne and Constance Bennett (her latest film in three years.) Next was Take Care of My Little Girl. This one was rather unusual for the time in that it explored the cruelty of sorority hazing. Jeanne Crain was the star and the cast included such interesting names as Dale Robertson, Mitzi Gaynor, Jeffrey Hunter and Betty Lynn (later to play Don “Barney Fife” Knotts' faithful girlfriend Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show.) The director, Romanian-born Jean Negulesco, would utilize Peters in two other later films.

Peters had been toiling away in minor films ever since her auspicious start in Castille, but in 1951 was finally given a starring role in a film mostly concerning her. It was an adventure oddity called Anne of the Indies. In it, she portrayed a female pirate captain! Her ship is infiltrated by a former pirate now working as a British spy (played by Louis Jourdan.) She falls in love with him, but it turns out he is already married to beautiful Debra Paget. Complications ensue...

Peters hurled herself into the physically exacting part and did several of the swordplay moves herself. Always a tomboy at heart (and resistant to a lot of frills, makeup and the color pink and preferring to wear simple clothes when not working), she welcomed the chance to take on such a project. Though it was likely considered more of curiosity rather than a deliberate attempt at female empowerment, it was a chance for her to demonstrate some of her sex's strength on-screen.

I have always been averse to watching female swashbucklers for some reason. I avoid Maureen O'Hara's (who I otherwise adore) sojourns into that realm and, like everyone else on the planet, never saw Cutthroat Island. Still, I think I could be persuaded to sit through this if I thought that there were some decent views of Jourdan's (atypically) hairy chest as well as some shots of this burly, shirtless pirate (the one at the far right in this photo.) Perhaps it will run on Fox Movie Channel sometime and I'll get to check it out.

She played David Wayne's wife in the nostalgic period film Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, all about Wayne's life as a fledgling barber who goes through many trials and tribulations. She got to play opposite the beautiful Jeffrey Hunter again in Lure of the Wilderness, another lushly photographed Technicolor movie that highlighted her prettiness. It told the story of an innocent man (Walter Brennan) on the run from authorities and hiding out in the Georgia swamp with his daughter (Peters.) Hunter discovers them and attempts to help them to the dismay of Constance Smith who has her eye on him and won't stand for any attraction to the beautiful Peters.
Full House (also known as O' Henry's Full House) was an all-star 1952 film featuring five of the famous author's stories being acted out on film. Many of the studio's stars were utilized in the project and Peters was placed in the segment called The Last Leaf. It's the rather gripping story of her sister suffering from a very serious illness who looks outside their apartment at a nearby tree and feels herself dwindling away as the leaves take their turn falling. The sister, played by Anne Baxter, feels that when the last leaf falls, she will expire as well. There's a terrific payoff to the sequence, making it one of the better vignettes in the film.

Zanuck seemed to become more appreciative of the appeal Peters possessed and started thinking of her for some of the studio's more important films, albeit usually after the first choice didn't pan out. One of those movies was Viva Zapata!, also in 1952. The film had first been considered as a vehicle for Tyrone Power, but ultimately the starring role went to dazzling screen newcomer Marlon Brando. Likewise, the film's leading female role of Zapata's wife had originally been earmarked for another actress (Julie Harris – what??), but Peters won out. (Peters' friend Marilyn Monroe wanted the role, too, but Zanuck had no desire whatsoever to explore her desire to be taken seriously as an actress.)

Directed by Elia Kazan, considerable care was taken to recreate the look of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata's life and times. Black and white cinematography lent the makers the ability to draw upon the visuals from many photographs taken during the period of his activity. Costar Anthony Quinn wanted the lead role, but had to settle for portraying Brando's brother. Amends of a sort were made when Quinn took home an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor the following year! Early on, the two actors who had both played Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (Brando on Broadway and in the movie, Quinn on tour) attempted to settle their debate about who was more appropriate to play Emiliano by seeing who could pee the furthest into the Rio Grande! Brando won. (My God, the macho posturing some people feel the need to go through...) The two then bonded during filming like real brothers.

Next, in 1953, Peters was given the lead role in a mysterious story about adultery and mayhem at the honeymoon capitol of the world. Anne Baxter had first been slated for the part, but withdrew. Thing is, just as the story was being prepared and the preproduction aspects put into place, her costar in the movie, Marilyn Monroe, suddenly went from an attractive and appealing sexpot to a downright sensation. She was jettisoned to the top of the film's credits and featured heavily on all of the posters. She became the chief selling point of the movie, even though her role was not as sizeable or as primary as Peters'.

The film, Niagra, was about a honeymooning couple, Peters and Max Showalter, who come to rest at a motel run by Joseph Cotten and his sultry young wife Monroe. Monroe (who I personally don't think was ever quite as sexy or as beautiful anywhere else than she is here), brazenly taunts Cotten and is carrying on with a dark-haired stranger. As the story progresses, Peters is intrigued by the goings on she has witnessed and ultimately is placed in considerable danger with a small yacht she's in being broken up by rocks and headed over the falls!

It's a film noir type of story, but shot in vivid Technicolor. Monroe (whose stock actor salary here was less than that of her own makeup man!) is indisputably gorgeous, especially in that first scene, but Peters is lovely as well, her peaches and cream complexion and attractive coloring again being exploited to great effect by the filming process. She also plays an endearing, every day sort of character who curious audiences can identify with as she undergoes her adventure at the falls.
A more true-to-form film noir came next with Pickup on South Street. The story concerns a pickpocket (Richard Widmark) who nabs a purse that happens to contain some vital microfilm that was intended for a Communist agent. Gritty director Sam Fuller was preparing the film and having a tough time coming up with an actress to play the female lead, a down-on-her-luck prostitute whose stolen purse leads to immense complications. Betty Grable went on suspension rather that to take the part. One day while lunching in the studio commissary, he spied Peters and, feeling like her walk was slightly reminiscent of hookers he'd seen before (!), he decided to cast her in the part.
As was often the case, she rose to the occasion, her character being used, pummeled and generally abused by life while trying to find security in the wayward Widmark. The film has since become one of the most admired examples of its genre. Widmark and Peters had the combination good fortune/misfortune to have Thelma Ritter cast in a key role. Good because she added immeasurably to its success, but bad because she basically stole the movie and even copped an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (losing to Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity.) The movie was later remade as The Cape Town Affair with James Brolin and Jacqueline Bisset (with, again, a veteran, this time Claire Trevor, walking away with the acting acclaim.)

She got a great part in a brief, minor thriller called Blueprint for Murder. In it, she played the wife of a wealthy man whose will states that she will inherit his money only after he and both his children have died. He expires under fuzzy circumstances and then one of her stepchildren dies as well. That makes her an obvious suspect for murder and the dead husband's brother (Joseph Cotten) comes along to help figure it all out. I love this hooty publicity photo of Cotten and Peters struggling over the telephone.

She landed the title role (though not actually the lead) in 1953's Vicki, a remake of 1941's I Wake Up Screaming, that had Jeanne Crain playing the sister of a slain singer and model (Peters) who had managed to aggravate several people around her prior to her brutal murder. Owing more than a little to Laura as well, the film was not a major one, but gave Peters a chance to play a mouthy bitch in attractive clothes. She also got to work alongside Crain, who by now had become one of her very closest friends at Fox.

In what was meant to be Crain's next film, Peters was once again cast as a replacement when Crain departed the studio after nearly two-dozen movies, eager to expand her range. The picture Three Coins in the Fountain would be a staggering hit, spawning a smash title song by Frank Sinatra and inspiring countless people to head to Rome, where much of it was filmed. One can see why Crain was unexcited about it, however, because the role she vacated was not in any way special.

The story (one of many similar ones that director Jean Negulesco did during his career) concerned three ladies living in Rome and finding romance (and, at times, heartache) there. Dorothy McGuire had been carrying a fifteen year-long torch for her boss Clifton Webb (!), new arrival Maggie McNamara fell for Louis Jourdan and Peters risked breaking a company rule by cavorting with coworker Rossano Brazzi. Peters knew that her flimsy role was substandard, but with location filming amidst all sorts of historic and beautiful scenery and with handsome Brazzi as her love interest, how bad could it be?

She was loaned to another studio for the first time in 1954, cast incongruously as an Indian squaw in Apache. The only thing that helped diffuse the ridiculousness of this (although it was a common practice at the time to cast Caucasians in non-white roles) is the fact that the star, blue-eyed Burt Lancaster, was also playing an Indian (an Apache, as the title indicates.) Despite the now-strange sight of having an actress in a dark wig and makeup in order to play a Native American, her beauty remains and her eyes stand out even more vividly as a result.

Back home at Fox that same year, she was in another western, but this time as a white woman. She played the daughter of governor E.G. Marshall in Broken Lance, a major production that starred Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark and Robert Wagner. Tracy, playing a highly-established rancher, was the father of Widmark, Wagner, Hugh O'Brian and Earl Holliman, who is disappointed when a couple of his sons are involved in illegal activity. The widescreen production had Peters taking on the role of Wagner's love interest and there were rumors at the time of an affair between the two, but they appear to be unfounded. (Even Wagner, who claimed to have slept with practically everyone – everyone he didn't out as gay – in his autobiography, denied any such affair with her.)
In 1955, Peters filmed the movie that would be her last on the big screen. A Man Called Peter was the story of an Episcopal minister whose sermons proved inspiring to countless congregations, both in and outside of his church. Based on a book written by the man's wife, Peters played the woman in the beautifully-appointed widescreen production. Richard Todd played the Reverend Peter Marshall with supporting parts going to Marjorie Rambeau and Jill Esmond.

Here we take a moment to step away her career, even though we are close to the time at which it virtually ended, and turn the focus to her private life. After her costarring role in Captain from Castille in 1947, she had caught the eye of millionaire playboy Howard Hughes. Hughes, an aviation magnate and entrepreneur who also flew planes and dabbled in film production, was a dynamic and magnetic man who very few women could resist, especially if he set his sites on them. He'd once been a handsome young man (see left), but in the wake of a plane crash, had begun a slow decline in physical and mental health. Married once for four years in the 1920s (he was two decades Peters' senior), he had engaged in multitudinous affairs with many glamour girls in the meantime. Starlet Terry Moore claims to have been married to him from 1949 on, but the union is unrecognized legally, believed to be a ruse he used at the time in order to acquire the Morman for himself, temporarily.

At any rate, he soon became fixated with Miss Peters and the two began dating. Even though she was making her own way at 20th Century Fox, he set her and her mother up in a Bel Air house. Both of them generally private people, she resisted all attempts to have their relationship exploited by the press, the studio or anyone else. Always a complicated, complex man, he was more than a little controlling and possessive despite his own leanings toward infidelity. Their relationship continued for many years, all through her acting career, but he would never marry her. Tiring of this situation, she once issued him an ultimatum, which he refused to give in to, and married another man.

Stuart Cramer was a Texas oil man she met after filming Three Coins and her whirlwind courtship and subsequent marriage to him drove Hughes to distraction. Reportedly, his interference and pressure regarding it led to the couple's separation after only about a month as man and wife. They did eventually reconcile for a time, but the writing was on the wall. After her divorce from Cramer, which was in late 1956, Hughes finally relented with regards to marrying her, but it was on condition that she abandon her acting career.

She, after years of struggling with unwanted parts at Fox and having been suspended many times for her refusal of a lot of others, was only too happy to walk away from her career and become Mrs. Howard Hughes. Hughes was a billionaire at a time when even being a millionaire really meant something. They were wed in January of 1957 and she receded into the private world of one of the planet's wealthiest, most powerful and most reclusive men.

As the years wore on and Hughes slipped further and further into a state of germ-phobia and seclusion, their marriage became one of long distance conversation and infrequent time together. She attempted to take additional college classes as a means of self-improvement and to occupy herself, but once her real name was discovered and the hounds began to circle, she was forced to withdraw. She even toyed briefly with returning to Fox in 1959 for The Best of Everything (in the role Martha Hyer eventually essayed), but did not. She did various works of charity, as unpublicized as possible (she's shown at left in a rare shot with an autistic boy.) Hughes' undercover guards were always in evidence (this was in place well before their marriage even.) Though she enjoyed shopping and attending functions of the arts (and, as always, baseball), the union was not fulfilling for obvious reasons. Finally, by 1970, she had had it and the couple divorced.

Considering the amount of money that Hughes possessed and the fact that their nearly fifteen-year marriage (and more than twenty-year relationship) was clearly no flight of fancy, she took a surprisingly modest settlement of $70,000 annually (to be adjusted over the years for inflation.) Still, this was a decent chunk of change for that time. She agreed to waive any claim to Hughes' enormous estate. Seemingly unable to completely shake the specter of 20th Century Fox, she became reacquainted with a man she'd known as an assistant director during her time there, Stanley Hough, who had since risen to the title of vice-president in charge of operations. They married in 1971 and remained together until his death in 1990.

In 1973, he left the studio and began working as a film and (mostly) television producer. Strangely enough, this was also the year that Peters made a return to acting after a nearly two decade-long absence. She took a role in the TV-movie Winesburg, Ohio, based on a famous collection of short stories about life in her home state during the 19th century. Albert Salmi was her husband in the teleplay and real-life brothers Joseph and Timothy Bottoms played their sons. Her initial enthusiasm about the piece waned after she saw it on TV.

She was coaxed into another role by old acquaintance Ross Hunter, who was producing the star-laden miniseries Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers. She played the estranged wife of Christopher Plummer, who she admired greatly, and was pleased to be working with him in the cameo role. Hunter, aware of her place in the Hollywood canon, gave her prestige billing in the eight-hour project's opening credits.

It was 1981 before she acted on-screen again, this time in her husband's TV-movie Peter and Paul. The Biblical drama starred Robert Foxworth (as Peter) and Anthony Hopkins (as Paul) along with Eddie Albert, Jose Ferrer and Raymond Burr. She portrayed Priscilla, one of Paul's devoted followers.

Peters last set foot before the cameras in 1988 when she made what was by then a virtually mandatory appearance for old stars on Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote. She played, stretch that it was, a reclusive star caught up in a murder and a disappearing diamond-studded tiara. One of the episodes, novelties, in addition to having Peters onboard, is the pairing of Lucie Arnaz and Patty “The Bad Seed” McCormick as a pair of New York detectives called Chadwick and Stacey. (Get it? As in Cagney and Lacey. Oh, brother...)

Peters continued to enjoy married life until Hough's passing in 1990, all the while contributing time and money to charitable causes that interested her, a chief one being autism. Autism at the time was not as familiar as it seems to be now and she did much to raise awareness about it. Of her life with Howard Hughes, she stood by her pact to never discuss it publically. While Terry Moore milked her comparatively brief association with him for all it was worth in interviews, articles and books, Peters merely said (in 1972), “My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.”

Biographers have written reams about Hughes and there was even a book about Peters at the time of their divorce called Mrs. Howard Hughes, but all of them have have immense difficulty in finding anyone who worked with her who would say anything unkind about her. She was liked and respected by her costars and beloved by crew members who worked on her pictures. Known affectionately as “Pete” by many of her studio pals, she eschewed much of the pretense and affectation that so many of her peers possessed. Yes, she tangled with her boss over the roles he wished to assign to her, yet he kept her around and was distressed when she quit.

Her career could have and should have been a longer, better one, but it was not to be. Peters was diagnosed with leukemia later in her life and it claimed her on October 13th, 2000 when she was seventy-three. Even in the decade-plus since her death, there have been no sordid stories bubbling up, nor any revelations that would mar her character. She lived life on her terms, but in a way that positively influenced those around her. What else could a person hope for? Her work on screen stands as a testament to her inviting beauty and her ingratiating personality. See if you don't fall for her yourself the next time one of her movies rolls around.

Dipping Below the "Horizon"

2012-01-24T11:00:00.008-05:00

The notorious legend of the 1973 musical film Lost Horizon is almost as gauzy and mythical as the hidden Utopian city of Shangri-La depicted in it, thanks to the fact that the movie was practically hidden from view for many years, resurfacing at only the rarest of occasions, and not allowing a new audience to experience it for themselves. That has suddenly changed with the release of a stunning new DVD that not only makes the movie far more accessible, but also includes portions of it that have been unavailable to many viewers for almost four decades!

Lost Horizon disappeared from television around the early 1980s and was never released on VHS. While one could obtain a copy of the full version through a couple of sellers on eBay, a laser disc presentation had been the only legitimate format available commercially until October of 2011. I had the good fortune in the mid-'90s to accidentally stumble upon it one morning on AMC (when the cable guide actually said that the 1937 version was going to be aired) and frantically pop in a cassette in order to save it. I almost wore the tape out showing it to friends, their mouths hanging agape for half of it. Now, I can finally enjoy it in all its glory, in vivid, colorful widescreen and with all 149 minutes intact!

In 1933, James Hilton wrote the source novel, all about a foursome of Caucasians fleeing an Indian revolution whose plane crashes beyond the Himalayan mountains. There, they come upon Shangri-La, a temperate, beautiful lamasery in which the inhabitants live peacefully together and many live to be significantly older than normal. Two of the guests decide to live on there, but two leave, taking one of the inhabitants with them, to disastrous results. The book was not much of a success until readers of Hilton's next novel Goodbye, Mr Chips were so enamored of that that they went back to Lost Horizon and discovered it. In 1939, the book was released as the first mass-market paperback book (pocket-sized), becoming a sensational success. (It was not the very first paperback, just the first small, affordable one in this format.)

In 1936, Frank Capra, hot off the success of It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, directed a film version (released in 1937) that experienced tremendous trouble. Tweaking the plot slightly, it increased the plane's passengers to five and made two of them brothers. He wanted to shoot it in color, but that was still a new and expensive format and was at odds with some black and white Himalayan stock footage that he wished to utilize, so the movie was made in black & white.

Already, at a budget of $1.25 million, it was the most expensively-mounted film ever to that time, but with various technical delays and Capra's significant overshooting and inability to rein in the script, it swiftly rose to $1.6 million, ultimately costing a million more than that by the time promotional material and prints were made. It also ran 6 hours long! Whittled down to 3-1/2 hours for a disastrous preview, it was finally edited by Columbia studio head Harry Cohn himself to 2 hours and 12 minutes. Stars Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt are shown here. Though it won Oscars for Art Direction and Film Editing and was nominated for five others, it could not earn back its cost until a 1942 re-release. Now regarded as a classic, it put Columbia in a serious bind at the time.

In 1956, a Broadway musical production called Shangri-La was mounted with Dennis King, Jack Cassidy, Carol Lawrence and Alice Ghostley among its sprawling cast. Closing after just 21 performances, audiences went out humming the costumes (Irene Sharaff's outfits scoring the sole Tony nomination, understandably losing to Cecil Beaton's clothing for My Fair Lady.) Remarkably, the material was used for a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV presentation in 1960 with Ghostley reprising her role and working alongside Richard Basehart, Claude Rains, Gene Nelson and Marisa Pavan.

Cut to the early '70s. Producer Ross Hunter, the successful force behind 45 movies including Magnificent Obsession, Imitation of Life, Pillow Talk and Thoroughly Modern Millie, had just scored one of his biggest hits ever. Airport was the highest grossing film of 1970 and received ten Oscar nominations (winning one for Miss Helen Hayes as Best Supporting Actress.) At only fifty-two years of age, he still had plenty of energy and ideas left in him and came up with the plans to produce an all-new musical version of Lost Horizon.

Somehow overlooking the fact that the original film had caused an absolute crisis with its studio and the Broadway musical adaptation had emptied all the pockets of its investors, he trudged onward, hiring top-tier talent in all departments and shelling out money all over the place to make this his crowning glory.

Charles Jarrott (shown below), the director behind Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, was hired. Larry Kramer, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Women in Love (he lost to Ring Lardner Jr for MASH) was pegged to write the script. Oscar-winning art director (for An American in Paris and Gigi) and multiple nominee Preston Ames was hired to design the production. Jean Louis, glamorous costumer with thirteen prior nominations himself plus a win for The Solid Gold Cadillac, would create the clothing.

Three-time Academy Award winner (for King Solomon's Mines, The Bad and the Beautiful and Ben-Hur) and multiple nominee Robert Surtees would photograph the action. Even Maurey Wintrobe, the editor of Funny Girl, was brought on. Legendary dancer/choreographer Hermes Pan, known for all those Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, but also the choreographer behind Kiss Me Kate, Silk Stockings and My Fair Lady, was placed in charge of the dancing.

Then, to pen the all-important music, Hunter turned to the dynamic, highly-successful team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who had created a wave of popular songs for Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick and others and who had come up with the Broadway smash Promises, Promises in 1968. Promises was a musicalization of the film The Apartment, so there seemed no doubt that they were up to the task of transforming straight material into a musical.

Columbia Studios had just moved onto the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, creating Burbank Studios (a shared facility that would benefit them both.) This would be Columbia's first film shot there. The standing set for Warner's Camelot was refashioned, added to and elaborately landscaped in order to become the idyllic Shangri-La. A whole world was created at the ranch from waterfalls to lakes to flower-laced grassy groves in order to whip up the fabled locale. Hunter made every conceivable effort to ensure that this project would captivate audiences and exceed the dazzling success that The Sound of Music had enjoyed eight years prior.

Trouble is, there was a major league difference in the world between 1965 and 1973 and before it all was over, the $12 million film would barely bring in $3 million at the box office and Hunter's career as a big screen producer was finished... The film was dubbed "Lost Investment" by industry wags. Now, before we get to that, let's take a look at Lost Horizon (in the by-now familiar Underworld fashion.)

Grand orchestral music blares over shots of clouds, blue skies and majestic, snow-capped mountains, giving way quickly to the folksy voice of guitar-playing singer Shawn Phillips, crooning the title tune. The lyrics refer to the sounds of guns and bombs pounding in one's ears and the dream of finding a place that's warm, safe and green. It's a theme that ought to appeal to environmentally-conscious people today even more than it was meant to back in 1973.
Phillips has scarcely ended the last note when the viewer is assaulted with explosions and melee. An unnamed Asian country is experiencing a rebellion, with guerrillas en route to the small airport where evacuees are desperately trying to escape. Among them are Peter Finch, an author and political speaker, Michael York, his fiery younger brother (umm, by a quarter of a century!), Sally Kellerman, a despondent Newsweek photographer, Bobby Van, a down-on-his-luck comic song and dance man who's been “entertaining” in Vietnam, and George Kennedy, a businessman.
After frantically entering a plane they believe to be piloted by a friend of Finch's, they take off for Hong Kong. Only York eventually realizes that Hong Kong is one way and the plane is flying another! For some reason, they've been kidnapped by an armed Asian whose destination is so far away that they land in the middle of a desert in order to proceed with a prearranged refueling. As the journey continues (and in the uncut version of the film, this is about half an hour!), the terrain gets more and more dangerous looking. Eventually, the plane loses an engine and crashes into a fortunately-located snowdrift. The hijacker is killed in the crash.

Now truly cut off from all civilization and with little chance of survival, they are relieved to be discovered by a troupe of fur-clad explorers led by Sir John Gielgud (in Asian makeup and playing a character called Chang.) Thereafter, a lengthy, physically-oppressive journey takes them up the side of a massive mountain where they come upon a cavern. As they pass through the cavern, they are stunned to see that it lets out into a startlingly lush valley containing a splendid lamasery and plenty of green scenery.

Shangri-La is a placid, peaceful, climate-perfect civilization situated within the surrounding tundra. The airplane passengers are taken to private quarters and outfitted with drapey, silken caftans. Kellerman, who's been shown to have a prescription drug dependency, begins to fall apart at the seams when there are no more pills in her bottle. She steps up to the edge of her balcony to leap to her death, but is halted by Gielgud and his right-hand man James Shigeta. (In an odd bit of sound design, the bottle of Kellerman's, which had been depicted as being made of glass on the plane, is suddenly made of plastic when she desperately tosses it across her room!) Apart from Kellerman, the other guests convene in a private dining room for dinner and entertainment.

For many audiences (and virtually all critics of the day), this is when the film starts its unavoidable slide into the absurd. While the diners attempt to ingest their meal, Miss Olivia Hussey takes the stage and, garbed in an impossibly voluminous yellow robe (even more nuts than the one Joan Crawford wore to bed in Torch Song - if you've seen the movie then you know the one!), begins to sing “Share the Joy.” She twists and flails around with the aid of two female backup dancers. Fortunately, they seem to be done eating by the time she whirls around the table, thrashing her long hair to and fro near their plates. Attempts by composer Bacharach to incorporate unusual instrumentation, arrangement and melody are present from the start. The effect, while innovative and perhaps even appropriate, nevertheless didn't sit well with most viewers.

On two occasions, Finch has spied a pretty, blonde lady (who, for obvious reasons, is a standout amongst the other inhabitants of the city) played by Liv Ullmann. The first time he sees her, he trips up a step and gives her a slightly embarrassed glance. He does a similar move the second time he lays eyes on her, as if to say, “I know I'm a little awkward, but how 'bout it?” It doesn't cross his mind that he's probably more than two decades older than her! Then again, as it turns out, the age difference is more of an issue from the reverse perspective since the residents of Shangri-La are all far older than they appear to the naked eye. The same mountain air that preserves the beauty of the valley also preserves the flesh of the citizens there.

During a tour of the extensive grounds (with Gielgud sporting what appears to be Bette Davis's cap from the 1955 Oscar ceremony, upholstered with dark red fabric), Finch comes upon Ullmann and discovers that she is the schoolteacher. She presides over a passel of children (of varied ages) in a bamboo and rattan shelter with a chalkboard. Without prompting (or warning!), she begins belting out “The World is a Circle,” a ditty that just like its title seems to go round and round and with apt lyrics including “nobody knows where it really ends.”

The kids are shown playing onboard a makeshift merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel (!) before launching into what I call lumbersome choreography. (It is not only lumbering, but cumbersome, so I coined that word in order to save time!) Ullmann leads her pack of young'ns (who seem to multiply before our eyes) up a winding path, hysterically swaying her arms back and forth as if her costume was still wet when she put it on and she's hopelessly attempting to air dry it!! For whatever reason, Hermes Pan chose to enforce a style of “dance” onto these Terpsichorially-challenged youngsters that makes them look as if they have hip dysplasia and are floundering determinedly to the nearest healer for a shot of cortisone. Having given up on any sort of recognizable rhythm, they finally toss themselves down the side of a hill and roll to a stop.

In the famous theme music from Jaws, by John Williams, everyone knows the “dum dum, dum dum, dum dum” part, but there is also a wondrously frenetic string section at work that I love. The same thing is happening here. A very high and fast string accompaniment can be heard and I can just picture the exasperated violists breathlessly trying to saw their way through it. Sometimes, for fun, I pretend to be fiddling away myself, though I know longer attempt this with the CD in the car for reasons which will remain my own...

Of all the “LOL” moments in the movie, this segment makes me seriously chortle and giggle until I come close to choking. To think that anyone on the set of The Sound of Music questioned reshooting part of “Do Re Mi” because little six year-old Kym Karath missed one of the steps during that challenging stone stairs sequence and now we have a gaggle of 99 and 44/100ths percent talent-free children banging and clanking around as if the mere act of walking is a hurdle!
There's hardly time to recover from this when we are confronted with The Festival of the Family. The guests assemble (with York off to the side on his own) as a procession of celebrants (you'll find as you watch Lost Horizon that processions are really big in Shangri-La) meander through the outdoor pathways of the lamasery, carrying a pallet with a daddy, a mommy and a baby (actually just a bundle, thank God, since it is passed around like Christmas fruitcake that nobody wants!) Scantily-clad gentlemen (at least one of which looks like anyone's worst idea of a '70s porn star) in front of the couple swing brass balls filled with incense back and forth. (If you guess that this is sometimes done out of sync with one another, then you are very much in tune with the general feel of this movie!)

Priest Shigeta gets the song “Living Together, Growing Together” off to a rocky start. Since Bacharach has chosen to kick the sing-song number off with a very low note, Shigeta's first word of the phrase, “Start with a man...” resembles what can only be described as a vocal fart. It gets worse as jingle singers, whose voices bear no relation whatsoever to the folks lip-synching on screen begin chiming in. When you watch this song unfold, you will say to yourself that the female chorus has sung as high as they are going to and that they cannot and will not proceed to squeal even higher, but they can and they do...

The couple gets to sing a little bit of the song before winding up in tableau as it stops. For decades, that is all most of the world ever got to see of the festival, but now thanks to the uncut DVD, we can now see the subsequent dance number that was laughed off the preview movie screens in 1973 and hastily snipped out of the general release. Bursting forth from seemingly everywhere, a plethora of red-orange loincloth-wearing male dancers, wielding rhythmic gymnastic streamers on sticks, fling themselves across the screen in a flurry of thigh-baring, leg extending choreography. Mame thought she was so damned special down at Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside's plantation Peckerwood, with all the red-coated horseman galloping about. She's got nothing on Olivia Hussey, who is the sole female involved in this ritual. Sporting an elaborately-braided hairdo, she twirls and twizzles around with the men surrounding her and picking her up.

After they've hoisted her up and spun her around a bit, several of them hot-foot it over to the other side of the pavilion to join some others and start with the fabric, but in the meantime we're treated to a rooftop scene in which three nearly undressed men demonstrate over and over why they are amongst the most popular of the lamasery residents.
In truth, the visual splendor is quite impressive, the saturated streamers forming shapes in the air, all set against the burnished stone walls of the lamasery. It's just fun to pick at the much-maligned spectacle, the type of dance insert that was, for years, the duty of chiffon and bead-covered chorus girls to convey. Let's hear it, at least, for the progressive side of Shangri-La in getting the men shucked down and out on the dance floor!

Kennedy, an engineer by trade goes wading into one of the streams of the village and sees gold in the bottom of it. He also takes note of the fact that things could be made a bit easier there with his help. Though the lamasery has countless books of the world, no one there has ever come up with a better way of irrigating their rice paddies than making the heftier and hardier women of the land cart buckets of water uphill! Paradise indeed. Even in paradise, the blonde girl gets to waft around in silk, satin and chiffon while the grunts work like slaves in the mud! Hussey also gets to enjoy the good life (why, because she's such an amazing dancer?), lazing around wistfully or painting silkscreens of birds.

Finch finally gets up the gumption to take Ullmann on a date of sorts. They picnic by a lush waterfall and lake. Their innermost thoughts are revealed in the song “I Might Frighten Her Away,” which is performed only on the soundtrack, as inner thoughts, without them lip-synching. (Their singing voices are provided by ghost vocalists.) This being Utopia, she is able to plunk down into nearby mist-ridden grass in her snow white pantsuit and not have a single mark on them when she gets up.

Kellerman, who is blossoming under the sun of Shangri-La and amidst its simple pleasures, meets up with Hussey in the library. Hussey feels exactly the opposite of Kellerman and longs drop her paintbrushes and depart the valley for the excitement, noise and crowds of the big city. They launch into the song “The Things I Will Not Miss” which is yet another comic highlight. It's a cleverly conceived number with counterpoint lyrics and vocals that perfectly capture the mindsets of the ladies, but the delivery is something else again.
Kellerman has the unfortunate vocal attribute of never quite making it all the way onto her higher notes, singing (if that is the right word) right under the notes and without any sort of breath support. Hussey fares better on that score solely because she was dubbed (here and everywhere) by a professional singer. The ludicrous choreography has them continuously, repeatedly dusting off the library tables with their behinds as they spin and slide across them awkwardly. Someone should have pointed out that there is no need for a dance break when both people performing the number really aren't dancers. Here, the break serves mostly as underscoring for them to trot down a sizeable spiral staircase.

Characteristic of the haplessness of the number is the fact that both ladies, while back-to-back, turn and look into the camera, which is strange to say the least. However, later in the song, they hunker down under one of the tables and pop their heads up to face the camera again. This time, though, Hussey looks straight into the camera while Kellerman gazes off somewhere to her left instead! (She was probably looking for her agent.)

York, who has been a sour apple all along and has managed to fall in love with Hussey, wants to leave Shangri-La as soon as possible. His character is annoying for almost every moment of his screen time, but gets increasingly so as he pressures Finch about getting out of this place.

Finch is then given the rarest of opportunities. Gielgud fetches him and takes him to meet the High Lama, a wizened old man who seems to sit alone in a darkened room with a single candle, pondering life. He's played by former screen idol Charles Boyer. This photo, by the way, is not from one of those TCM Word of Mouth interviews with Boyer. Ha! It is him in character as the Lama. He relays the history of Shangri-La to Finch, explaining its mysterious attributes and its ultimate goal. He also makes it known to Finch that he is not long for this world and when he goes he wants Finch to take his place. (“Why sure, I'd love to sit in a dark room alone for years and years...”)
With this, Finch is utterly perplexed about what to do. Like most people faced with a dilemma of this sort might, he heads out into the square in the dark of night and starts singing “If I Could Go Back” at the absolute top of his lungs, mouth hanging open and arms extended! You sit and wait for someone who's trying to sleep to stick his head out the window and holler for him to knock it off. The only person who stirs, of course, is Ullmann. She comes out to the pavilion and sings a song of her own to him, “Where Knowledge Ends (Faith Begins.)”

The next day, Kennedy has successfully introduced the rudiments of irrigation to the people of the valley and he and Kellerman celebrate with a kiss. (A shot of the married couple from The Feast of the Family kissing under the flowing water was cut for some reason.) Kennedy then takes Kellerman to see the lode of gold he's discovered in the bottom of a creek, but she'll have none of it. Instead, she starts a song called “Reflections” which describes how doing something for someone else does twice as much for you as it does for the other person. Unable to escape any sort of strange setting for her numbers, this time instead of sprawling around on a library table, she's forced to hop on and recline upon a couple of large rocks!

Finch comes to Ullmann's school and whisks her away for an afternoon of romantic cooing and wooing. In her place, Van takes over the day's lesson plan. In a song that still makes Alex Trebek scratch his head and sometimes even throw things, Van proceeds with the ditty, “Question Me an Answer.” The children blurt out non-sequitur answers to questions that were never asked. Then Van responds with questions that are never answered! For example, “1492. What's the year that Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run?” or “Cleaning up the atmosphere. What's the reason London Bridge is always falling down?”

The subject matter (including Christopher Columbus and Paul Revere) seems fairly rooted in United States history and culture, though there is mention of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. That's nothing compared to the first set of lyrics that Bacharach “sang” on the demo recordings! Those were all about Greta Garbo and Don Ameche!! As if these children had ever seen a movie?! Even the final lyrics refer to The Good Ship Lollipop and I would like to know what good it is to be in paradise when all you can do it read about Shirley Temple rather than ever seeing her?!

During this insane number, which also features multiple quick-fire dance steps by a white buck-wearing Van, something becomes very clear. A viewer might have gotten a hint at it during “Living Together” and probably started to really suspect it during “Things I Will Not Miss,” but by now it is a surety. That is the fact that even though Shangri-La has no guns and no bombs, there is nevertheless a violent attack performed on listeners. The Bacharach-David songs seem to never end! Every time one listens to “Things I Will Not Miss” or “Question Me an Answer,” it looks like the number is going to end, but it's merely a false alarm. The song revs up again and pounds the listener in both ears with yet one more verse. “Question” is by far the worst offender with this and by the time it is over, one is likely hoping for a stray land mine located somewhere in the proximity of Van's tapping feet.

Cut to Finch and Ullmann who are strolling though the woods, coughing up one final song, “I Come to You.” Finch is torn between staying with Ullmann and taking on the mantle of High Lama (won't Gielgud or Shigeta be just a tad irritated by this?! They've been there a couple hundred years and then Finch just pops in!) Thanks to York's never-ending insistence, he decides to leave. What happens after that I will leave to those unfamiliar with the story, though it's pretty interesting (and, like much of the rest, unintentionally amusing.)

In the interest of space (this was a long one!), I will try to keep my profiles of the cast and crew to a minimum this time. As I said earlier, this film signaled the end of Ross Hunter's feature film producing career. Do take note, by the way, of how large his name is featured in the posters for the movie! He really branded himself this time out, to abject humiliation. He used Virginia Grey in virtually all of his 1960s films, considering her a good luck charm, but did not cast her this time. There must have been something to his belief in her! (I can think of one scene towards the very end where the thin and rather wrinkled character actress might have been utilized! LOL) He wasn't completely finished, though. He went on to produce (with his life partner Jacques Mapes) a string of TV movies and miniseries including the wonderful Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers. He died in 1996 at the age of seventy-five.

Director Jarrot went on to a steady, but mostly undistinguished, career though the campy gem The Other Side of Midnight (1977) was his as well. Writer Kramer went on to pen the play The Normal Heart and proceeded to become a major force in AIDS activism, citing Lost Horizon as the one thing he worked on for which he is ashamed (even though the money he earned from it gave him financial freedom for life.) Costumer Jean Louis did the clothes for Miss Ullmann's Forty Carats, also released in 1973, but then retired from the screen for good. He lived until 1997, dying at the age of eighty-nine!

The much-heralded song-writing team of Bacharach and David could not survive this debacle. They were already experiencing issues between them when Hunter hired them, but this huge embarrassment was more than the already tenuous teaming could withstand. They split up soon after, prompting a lawsuit from Dionne Warwick who felt that her career would be jeopardized by the loss of her primary song suppliers. He later found success with Carole Bayer Sager, who became his wife for about a decade as well.

The singing voices of Finch and Ullmann were provided by a married couple named Jerry Whitman and Diana Lee. (A lot of their contributions were snipped from the final cut when a couple of the numbers weren't well received by preview audiences and the film was running long. They are back now on the DVD.) Whitman has long been accused of sounding nothing like Finch, but I completely disagree! I can almost believe that it's Finch singing. It's Lee who, to me, sounds nothing like Ullmann. She has a clear-as-a-bell soprano voice which Bacharach cruelly exploits with garishly ear-splitting melodies (especially “Where Knowledge Ends”) which start high and go higher. She had previously provided the singing voice of Samantha Eggar in 1968's Doctor Dolittle. Hussey's vocals came courtesy of Andra Willis. If that name is at all familiar, it may be from her two-year stint on The Lawrence Welk Show. Miss Willis was probably stimied in her onscreen career by a rather strangely shaped mouth, a feature which became further emphasized whenever she sang.

Just as James Hilton's novel of Lost Horizon was discovered by the public after Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the musicalization of it came four years after the (equally disastrous) musicalization of Chips! That one starred Peter O'Toole and was creamed by critics and avoided by the public as well.

Finch and York had just costarred in the British film England Made Me before coming onboard Horizon. Thanks to some of his dated, unflattering costumes here, he occasionally looks like the love child of Sonny Bono and Maude Findlay! Finch would make five more movies (one for TV), including his final feature film Network, released in 1977, before dropping dead of a heart attack at only sixty years of age. He is the first person in an acting category, and the only Best Actor winner, to be honored with a statuette posthumously.
When I tell you this next bit, you will not believe it. I used to OWN the hat shown here that Peter Finch is wearing. Once, years ago at a job I had at a country club, the food & beverage director (who'd once been an actor briefly) gave me the hat, thinking I was someone who might like it. It was real fox and had a "Western Costume Company" label sewn in it. It was in so-so condition, but was already by that time over twenty years old. I kept it for the longest time, through several moves, and then in 2003, I discarded it because I was trying to "downsize." How stupid!!!!! I can never figure out what got into me that I would throw out a piece of Hollywood history. I, who live for old movies and TV shows...

Norwegian Ullmann was best known for her work with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (including Scenes from a Marriage, released in the U.S. the year after Horizon.) She was wooed to the U.S. in the early '70s, amazed at the sumptuous living arrangements she was given, to make several films, but ultimately returned to Europe where she still works today at seventy-three. She was nominated twice for Best Actress Oscars, once for 1971's The Emigrants (losing to Liza Minnelli for Cabaret) and again for 1976's Face to Face (when the statue went to Faye Dunaway in Network.) Amazingly, considering her lack of musicality, she was cast in a Broadway musical version of I Remember Mama in 1979 with music by Richard Rogers. Considered old-fashioned and unspectacular, it closed after about a hundred performances. Astonishingly, both Jean Arthur and Barbara Stanwyck were considered for her role in Horizon after first-choice Julie Andrews turned it down.

Throaty Kellerman (an Oscar nominee for 1970's MASH, losing to Airport's Helen Hayes) had sung on an Academy Awards telecast a couple of years before this, but after Horizon, she pretty much hung up her singing hat, onscreen anyway, and concentrated on acting. Now seventy-four, she continues to do so regularly, mostly on TV. The always prolific Kennedy won the Oscar in 1968 for Cool Hand Luke and would continue to figure into many films after that. He appeared in last year's Another Happy Day with Ellen Barkin and Ellen Burstyn and is currently eighty-six.
Lean York is, along with Kennedy and Gielgud, one of the few actors who had no songs in Horizon. (Kennedy originally had a brief, slightly faster, reprise of “Living Together, Growing Together” with Kellerman, but it was cut and only an audio version of it appears to exist now.) In 1968, York had played Hussey's cousin in Romeo and Juliet. His film just before this was Cabaret (!) and the one directly after it was The Three Musketeers. He went on to other audience favorites like Murder on the Orient Express and Logan's Run before falling out of the movie-going public's favor. He has, however, sustained a busy acting career and continues now at age sixty-nine.

Half-Argentine Hussey had soared to worldwide fame with 1968's Romeo and Juliet, but led a strangely unspectacular career afterwards, the cult fave Black Christmas and Death on the Nile being minor highlights. Later, she had a pretty significant role in Stephen King's It. During Horizon (in which she was carted around in the air and did various bits of choreography!), she was pregnant with then-husband Dean Paul Martin's child! She also worked in the arduously snowy conditions of Mt. Hood, Oregon, so simply must be given the golden trouper award. The child, born in February of 1973, is Alexander Martin, an actor who can be seen in movies like Can't Hardly Wait and Josie and the Pussycats. Hussey is sixty today and still acts. As can be seen here, though there were no movies or TV in Shangri-La and presumably no magazines, her character was still able to order a “Bump-It.”
Van had been singing and hoofing since the age of four and had success on Broadway and in some MGM films (notably Kiss Me Kate), but the end of the studio era and that brand of musicals forced him back to the stage, where he continued to work steadily and to acclaim. When he landed his role in Horizon, he'd not been in a feature film for two decades except for something called The Navy vs the Night Monsters. He took his stage name from a photo of Van Johnson spied on his sister's wall. (He later joked how fortuitous it was that she didn't have a photo of Maria Ouspenskaya on the wall instead! Sadly, he died of brain cancer in 1980 at only fifty-one, leaving widow Elaine Joyce behind.

Shigeta, a Hawaiian born actor of Japanese descent, had starred in the 1961 musical Flower Drum Song and would later play Bonnie Bedelia's employer in Die Hard. Now seventy-eight, he worked in movies as recently as 2009. Sir John Gielgud (whose role had initially been offered to Toshiro Mifune) was a spectacularly successful Shakespearean actor who enjoyed a terrific film career as well (most often in supporting roles.) He was nominated for an Oscar in 1964 for Becket (losing to Peter Ustinov for Topkapi), but won the statuette in 1982 for Arthur. Always in heavy demand, he worked right up until his death from natural causes in 2000 at the age of ninety-six!
Boyer, who'd once been one of the screen's most revered lovers in films like Back Street, Hold Back the Dawn and All This, and Heaven Too, was granted an honorary Oscar in 1943 in addition to four Best Actor nominations throughout his career. His nominations were for Conquest, Algiers, Gaslight and Fanny. The winners were, in order, Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous, Spencer Tracy in Boys Town, Bing Crosby in Going My Way and Maximilian Schell for Judgement at Nuremberg. (I'm a completist. Shoot me!) He made two more films after Horizon, but in 1978, at the age of seventy-eight, a romantic to the end, he committed suicide by overdose two days after his wife of forty-four years died of cancer.

Also making brief appearances in the film are Kent Smith, a very familiar face on TV and in movies from the early 1940s through the late '70s. Also popping up near the end of the movie is Dutch actor John Van Dreelen who'd had a featured role in Hunter's 1966 film Madame X. Here, he plays a doctor with quite possibly the worst “comb-over” that I have ever witnessed in the history of cinema. Smith is shown at lower left in this montage of Van Dreelen and his coiffure.

Please do not believe that just because I have raked Lost Horizon over the coals that I do not completely adore it. I do! I am also known for my devotion to all things of bad taste, however. I had, of course, heard about the film's legendary badness years before I actually got to see it. I was in a used bookstore once in 1996 and found a cassette recording of the songs. I was over the moon. It was the best fifty cents I ever spent. I played the (often ghastly) songs for my roommate at the time in my car and she was agog at their horror. What surprised me was that the more I played the songs, the more they grew on me, like mold. Aural earwigs, I call them. I played that cassette until it literally fell apart. I already mentioned above how I accidentally got a VHS recording of the truncated, pan and scan version of the movie itself. Then, years later, there was a CD released of the songs and I bought that. The fact that this movie is out on DVD now is an absolute godsend. Hilariously, one critic reviewing the movie upon release said that at one point the characters sing "Happy Birthday" and that that is the song viewers will hum on the way out. It didn't work out that way for me, however.

The storyline of Lost Horizon is not very viable, since paradise can't really be paradise if some of the people are still working like dogs to make life comfortable for the select few. And who wants to go to school for five times longer than usual as one ages so slowly?! However, the property's messages of peace, brotherhood, kindness, cooperation and so forth are all still quite valid, every bit as much today as before. All music is subject to taste. For every song that is a major hit, there will be a percentage of people who loathe it. Likewise, many songs which barely scratch out airplay or don't chart are beloved by someone. A person needs to experience Lost Horizon for his or her self to see whether they like it, love it or hate it and for what reasons. I, for one, love any movie that costs a lot of money and looks terrific and yet is filled with unintentional absurdity and lunacy. This is why I have seen Lost Horizon at least 6 or 7 times and have only seen Cabaret once...

Beau Derek

2012-01-18T13:19:00.057-05:00

Today's featured actor is not without controversy. In fact, depending on one's point of view, he was quite out of line on occasion. We'll get to that, but all in good time. We celebrate him mostly for his earlier life and work anyway so let's begin there.

Born under the sign of Leo on August 12th, 1926 to former silent movie director Lawson Harris and silent movie actress Dolores Johnson, little Derek Develan Harris was a pretty baby who would grow up into a pretty man. I say pretty because he really did have large liquid eyes and chiseled, yet delicate, features that rendered him beautiful rather than ruggedly handsome. In time, he would bulk up a little bit more and weather his soft features, becoming quite a virile-looking specimen, but in those very early days, he retained an unmistakably tender and youthful quality.

Raised in Hollywood and looking the way he did, it was probably inevitable that he would turn to acting as a profession. In 1943, at the age of seventeen, he had the primary role in a short film by outre independent director Kenneth Anger (later to be the author of those Hollywood Babylon books.) He also caught the eye of predatory talent agent Henry Willson, who grabbed him for use in David O. Selznick's 1944 wartime film Since You Went Away. Willson, in a practice was practically mandatory at the time for his clients, renamed him Dare Harris. As Dare Harris, he also played the soldier boyfriend of Shirley Temple in I'll Be Seeing You, also in 1944.

By now, he was of age to be drafted into the military for WWII and off he went just as he was beginning to make inroads with his acting career. When he was free of that service, he came back to Hollywood and landed a small role in George Cukor's film A Double Life (1947.) Next, he secured a contract with Columbia Pictures and began to use a (less gimmicky) screen name that would stick with him for the rest of his life, John Derek. (Was Derek Harris all that hideous to begin with?!)

Now things really began to look up as he was twenty-three years of age. His career on film began in earnest (with an “Introducing” credit) in 1949's Knock on Any Door. The ostensible star of the film was Humphrey Bogart, but the primary role was Derek's. He played a career criminal called “Pretty Boy” Romano, who is accused of viciously murdering a policeman. Bogart portrayed his defense attorney, who feels to blame for the way Derek has turned out. He'd been Derek's father's lawyer and lazily allowed the man to become convicted, his death coming not long after. Thus, Derek was thrust into being the provider for his family and turned to a life of crime in order to do so.

This was the first, but certainly not the last, time that the handsome young Derek would be effectively placed opposite an older, far more mature star. Bogart said to Derek one day, “You look great, but kid, that's not enough.” It was a prophetic statement, though Derek still had several years of work before the cameras in front of him. Also in this film was Mickey Knox, an actor six years Derek's senior who would remain a friend of his and later be put to use in some of his 1980's films.

Knock on Any Door was the first film directed by Nicholas Ray, who would later go on to helm Rebel Without a Cause and many others. Derek's character, a good boy turned rebel by the unjust circumstances around him, utters a line of dialogue that would remain an oft-quoted credo of brash young men, including the ill-fated James Dean: “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”

Derek's next film was even more prestigious and successful than Knock, though his role was not quite as significant. All the King's Men concerned the rise (and eventual corruption) of a rural politician who rises to the position of governor of the state. (The role and story were inspired by real-life Louisiana governor Huey Long.) Broderick Crawford starred as the politician and Derek played his son, a reckless boy who becomes involved in a deadly drunk-driving accident and pays a hefty price for it.

The film was voted Best Picture at the Oscars that year and also took home statuettes for Crawford and for supporting actress Mercedes McCambridge. Derek is seen in this photo with Anne Seymour, who played his mother, and Crawford and costar John Ireland (who was also Oscar-nominated, losing to Dean Jagger in Twelve O'Clock High.)

Next, in 1950, the studio exploited his exuberant energy and striking looks by placing him in a Robin Hood retread called Rogues of Sherwood Forest. It was the first time fans got to see him in color (vibrant Technicolor, natch!) He played the son of Robin Hood, this time going up against craggy George Macready as King John and with a love interest named Marianne (only slightly augmented from Maid Marian of the original) played by Diana Lynn. Interestingly, Alan Hale, who had played Little John in Errol Flynn's sparkling 1936 rendition The Adventures of Robin Hood, was back again as Little John here, fourteen years hence!

Derek, by now a matinee idol and beloved by teen girls (as well as more than a few boys, probably!) everywhere, had a big year in 1951. Not only did he have three films released in which he was the star of each, but he married for the first time.

His first film of that year was Mask of the Avenger, a colorful, but minor, swashbuckler in the style of Zorro. Set in Italy, it had the villainous Anthony Quinn killing Derek's father and imprisoning him under house arrest. Derek dons a mask in order to secretly right the wrongs of his captor, with both of the men vying for the attentions of countess Jody Lawrence, seen here with Derek and Quinn. Later, Quinn would emerge as a major movie star, far eclipsing Derek.

Saturday's Hero was the story of a great high school football player (Derek) who becomes embroiled in all the roller coaster aspects of college level athletics. He grapples with trying to earn an education while keeping up the performance expected of him on the field, with politics and a sinister benefactor always hovering as well. His love interest here was played by Miss Donna Reed. Also appearing as a fellow football player, in his screen debut, was Aldo Ray, who would later work for Derek when he became a director. One hopes that there were plenty of scenes like this one in which a shirtless Derek suits up in the locker room!

His third film of the year was called The Family Secret. God knows I wish that the secret could be something other than what it was! As it is, Derek plays another troubled young man who is accused of murdering his best friend. He claims it was self defense because the friend was drunk and attacking him while out of control. Lee J. Cobb played Derek's attorney father while Jody Lawrence was back, again playing a sort of love interest for him (but with competition. He is depicted as having a swarm of girls after him.)

The real life swarms of girls who had his picture pinned to their bedroom wall were about to be dealt a blow. Derek married Pati Behrs in 1951. Behrs, about four years his senior, was a ballerina of royal Russian descent (her father was a prince and her great uncle was Leo Tolstoy!) The family left Russia when her father refused to take part in pogroms. She had lived in Paris during Nazi occupation, dancing in nightclubs to earn income while secretly aiding as many Russian Jews as she could. After the war, she was offered a 20th Century Fox contract, which is what brought her to Hollywood. She had small parts in movies like The Razor's Edge, Forever Amber and Come to the Stable, but retired from the screen after beginning her relationship with Derek.

Familiar costars Broderick Crawford and Donna Reed were featured in Derek's next film, 1952's Scandal Sheet. Tellingly, both had billing over him. In this one, Broderick played the editor of a tabloid rag who kills his secret wife in anger. He then has to watch as eager reporter Derek investigates and reports on the story until coming closer and closer to finding out who her killer is! The picture was directed by the gutsy Samuel Fuller, who came to specialize in gritty war films.

He was back in the starring spot (on a loan out) with that same year's Thunderbirds, a drama about young flyers called into action at the start of WWII. John Drew Barrymore and Mona Freeman costarred. The Republic Pictures film has been scarcely seen in recent years, having seemingly slipped out of most viewers' consciousness.

1953 brought five films starring Derek, so he was busy if not taking part in sterling examples of moviemaking. Prince of Pirates had him paired with Barbara Rush as a prince in The Netherlands at odds with his brother the king over loyalties with Spain versus France. After a stretch of imprisonment, Derek escapes and stages a revolt against his sibling.

A western, Ambush at Tomahawk Gap, came next. It concerned four escaped prisoners in a search for the money they'd stolen beforehand. John Hodiak was the lead (playing a man who'd accidentally been arrested in error to start with, but who now feels entitled to the money after serving time!) Derek played a character called “Kid” who is injured soon after the escape and begins to grow up as the story proceeds. Another western, The Last Posse, followed with him once again playing in support to Broderick Crawford.

He reunited with John Hodiak for Mission Over Korea, a wartime actioner that also starred Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane of Tarzan fame), Audrey Totter, Harvey Lembeck and Rex Reason (himself reason enough to seek it out I should think!) Finally for 1953 came Sea of Lost Ships, in which he was the son of a deceased coast guard hero who is raised by fellow officer Walter Brennan alongside Brennan's son Richard Jaeckel. Both young men enter the coast guard themselves, but one is ousted in disgrace only to later redeem himself.
At this point, Derek was distressed at the way his career was going and was about to leave Columbia Pictures in order to freelance. As far as his home life was concerned, he was still married to Pati and they now had two children, a son Russell and a daughter Sean. Their seemingly idyllic home life was the subject of several magazine layouts and feature stories. He made his television debut in 1953 on Ford Television Theatre and then appeared on Lux Video Theatre, playing the Montgomery Clift part in a rendition of A Place in the Sun. Ann Blyth took on Elizabeth Taylor's part while Raymond Burr recreated his fiery prosecuting attorney role from the original film.

In what is almost another retelling of the Robin Hood legend, albeit in western drag, he went to work on The Outcast, playing a young man returning to his family's ranch after an eight-year absence in order to wrest it from his uncle Jim Davis (later Jock Ewing of Dallas.) He even has a band of men in tow to help him.

Next came The Adventures of Hajji Baba, a colorful (and cardboard) Arabian adventure which is more notable for having Amanda “Miss Kitty” Blake as an audacious and exotic Amazon warrior on horseback, than for displaying him in turban and cloaks.

His 1955 film Prince of Players is probably representative of the type of roles and movies he was seeking when he left Columbia in that it was a chance to play a real life assassin and notorious historical figure. Richard Burton was the star of the 20th Century Fox production, playing actor Edwin Booth, a noted 19th century stage actor. Derek plays his younger brother, also an actor, named John Wilkes Booth. That name would eventually go down in history as that of the man who shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln. The men's father was played by Raymond Massey.

That same year he played in An Annapolis Story, a more routine affair that had him enrolled at the famous naval academy alongside his brother (Kevin McCarthy) with both of them setting their eyes on Diana Lynn. I can't imagine what sort of gene pool would produce siblings such as Derek and McCarthy! (By the way, one hooty moment has the boxing coach hollering at the warring brothers, “Go cool off in the showers, both of you!” If only we'd gotten to see that...)

In what might be the last of his young-man-under-the-tutelage-of-a-mentor roles, he went back to work for his Knock on Any Door director Nicholas Ray in Run For Cover. He costarred with James Cagney as they played two drifters mistaken for outlaws who are shot at, with Derek seriously injured. He's cared for by farmer Jean Hersholt and his daughter Viveca Lindfors, who nurses Derek and falls in love with him in the process. In time, Cagney is elevated to town sheriff with Derek as his deputy, but they are tested by bank robbers and Derek doesn't hold up as well as Cagney had hoped.

1956 marked the year that Derek's wife to Pati ended. It also signaled a bit of an upswing in the activity of his career, providing him with, perhaps, his signature role, though it was clearly a supporting part. First, though, was a bit of an oddity. The Leather Saint had Derek portraying an Episcopal minister who works out at the gym of an old friend. He boxes as he once did in college and is good. However, he declines offers to do it professionally. When he discovers that his community needs money for an iron lung and a swimming pool, though, he takes on a bout while concealing his true identity.
He konks out his opponent handily with just one punch and thus is catapulted to fame! He wants to abandon the sport, but the down payment on the iron lung has been made and more dough is needed. Thus, he becomes a pastoral pugilist, punching his way forward for his congregation's benefit. The upswing is that he is frequently shown shirtless in boxing trunks. There's also a love interest in his old costar Jody Lawrence, who plays an alcoholic ex-singer whose prior boyfriend died in the ring. Paul Douglas is his manager and Cesar Romero appears as well.

Another revealing role that same year came when Cecil B. DeMille cast Derek in his colossal epic The Ten Commandments. At the time The Ten Commandments was shot, only six films in history had ever MADE what it was COSTING. It was a gargantuan undertaking (and lives on as an enduring masterpiece of eye-popping, colorful camp even now while somehow retaining an undercurrent of real feeling, at least in its first half.) Already featuring the combined, bare-chested manliness of Charlton Heston (as Moses) and a regal Yul Brynner (as Rameses), further hunk appeal came in the form of Derek.
He played the earnest, passionate stone-cutter Joshua who loves fellow slave Debra Paget. When slavemaster Vincent Price takes Paget for himself, Derek tries to do something about it, resulting in him being tied spread-eagled to posts and whipped by a practically salivating Price. DeMille made all of the blue-eyed supporting actors wear brown contacts in order to aid with authenticity (though Yvonne De Carlo begged for and was granted permission not to do this.) Thus, both Derek and Paget were outfitted with the then-unusual devices which caused them difficulty seeing. It's a wonder the half-blind couple could even focus on each other in their scenes together! (He isn't wearing his in this publicity photo of the two, but she is.)

Rarely in the cinema (or anywhere else!) has there been an actor as darkly tan as Derek is in this film. Though his skin tone is augmented by makeup, he was still very dark to begin with. Rigged out in a raggedy little calfskin skirt, he hardly ever seems to have a shirt on in the movie. Devoted to Heston and determined to save his beloved maiden, even after she's been despoiled by Robinson, he gives a memorably heroic performance and it is probably his best known.

He's shown here with Heston practicing his archery skills (and perfecting that tan in the meantime!) prior to the start of filming. Though his acting career would continue on for another decade, this is perhaps the last part of any true significance that he would deliver (a part he only received because Cornel Wilde turned it down.)

Derek had met a young Swiss actress who'd been brought to the States to work at Columbia Pictures, though nothing came of it. She'd been previously involved with Marlon Brando and also dated James Dean (she was slated to be in his car the day he died, but wasn't because Dean realized she'd fallen for Derek!) The actress was Ursula Andress and she and Derek married in Las Vegas in 1957 during an awkwardly impromptu ceremony with a cab driver as best man. Like Pati before her, her career went on hold (but not forever.)

Also in 1957, he made another western Fury at Showdown, playing the fiery, ex-prisoner, older brother of Nick Adams (how many times did Derek play men who were imprisoned?!) He and John Smith have a lengthy barroom brawl in the film. (Adams is to Derek's left with Smith behind Adams in this shot.) The low-budget western, which enjoys a pretty healthy reputation despite being all but forgotten by much of the world, was filmed in an amazing five days.

He went to England to film what was a real change of pace, a movie all about a pimp who coerces young ladies into prostitution! The Flesh is Weak, despite reasonably tasteful handling of its subject matter, could never have been made in the U.S. at the time. Next it was back to turbans and swords as he took a supporting role in Omar Khayyam, loosely based on the life of the great Persian poet. Cornel Wilde was the star of this one, which meant that Derek was working with the same actor who'd first been offered the role of Joshua in Commandments. Furthering the Commandments connection was the casting of Debra Paget as Wilde's love interest. Derek's previous costar Raymond Massey (shown at left) played the Shah, Michael Rennie was the villain of the piece and cult exotic vocalist Yma Sumac, in one of her rare acting appearances, was on hand as well.
In 1959, he made two films in Europe, Pirate of the Half Moon and Prisoner of the Volga, with wife Andress in tow. It's possible that his proximity to the filming locations of Israel and Cyprus made his next role in Otto Preminger's epic Exodus a more likely prospect. There, he played an Arab leader and friend of the film's star Paul Newman, who assists him in his efforts to found the state of Israel.

Back in Hollywood, Derek sought to create a steady home life and took on a regular role in the TV series Frontier Circus. The unusual (and now quite obscure) show centered on a traveling one-ring circus troupe headed by Chill Wills and including Derek and Richard Jaeckel among its crew. The traveling attraction came up on all sorts of old west incidents and obstacles during the one-season run of 26 episodes. The little-known series has been released on DVD, however, allowing a new generation of viewers to see it.

Upon Frontier Circus' cancellation in 1962, Andress began to reignite her own acting career. First up was her mind-blowing appearance as Honey Ryder in the very first James Bond feature Dr. No. As the curvaceous beauty emerging from the surf in a white bikini, she set the standard high for all subsequent Bond girls (though her lines were all dubbed in order to obscure her thick accent.) Next, she worked with Elvis Presley in Fun in Acapulco and with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 4 for Texas. This new resurgence in her career was likely due to the influence Derek had commanded over her. When they met, she barely spoke English and he proceeded to change her hair, her eyebrows and her weight, refashioning her into his ideal, which happened to also be the ideal of many moviegoers.
Derek longed to leave the acting profession behind. He recognized his own limitations as an actor and, now nearing forty, he decided to turn his attention to directing and to still photography. His first directorial effort was a co-effort between himself and fellow actor Marc Lawrence, who'd directed some television. The 1965 film Nightmare in the Sun starred Derek as a drifter who becomes involved with a sexy woman (Andress) who is married to a much-older man (Arthur O'Connell.) The very interesting cast included Aldo Ray, Sammy Davis Jr, Keenan Wynn, Lurene Tuttle and, apparently playing homosexual bikers, Richard Jaeckel and Robert Duvall!
He directed Andress and himself again the next year in Once Before I Die. The setting was a very familiar one for this era, The Philippines during WWII, but the story did have a different bent to it. The hook is that while Derek, Andress, Ron Ely, Richard Jaeckel and young Rod Lauren are struggling to make it to Manila, Lauren confesses to Andress that he is a virgin and would like to be with a woman just “once before I die!” How convenient that the only woman handy is the dazzlingly beautiful and curvaceous Andress. Not every young man can get that lucky the first time he gets lucky!

Though still very handsome, Derek would never again act to any degree in front of the cameras again. He instead began to work as a photographer and director. For him, the canvas of Andress' body was the perfect subject matter to explore with his camera and he shot a Playboy spread of her that was eagerly accepted by the magazine. For her part, Andress reportedly responded to the question, “Why did you appear nude in Playboy magazine?” with the delightfully blunt response, “Because I am beautiful.”

Trouble was, not only Derek found Andress beautiful and she had trouble fending off admirers. She began to give in to some of the men who pursued her and eventually became embroiled in an affair with Jean Paul Belmondo. By 1966, Derek and Andress were divorced.

Derek swiftly found another object of affection in pretty, blonde TV actress Linda Evans, who was then costarring on The Big Valley and had been one of the little girls of the '50s who had his photo taped to her bedroom wall. Again, though he liked what he saw, he began to shape and mold her into his ideal. Her clothes were overhauled and she became slimmer, more blonde and had her nose tweaked. To watch Evans from the first season of The Big Valley in 1965 through its final episodes of 1969 is to see a work in progress, with each passing year demonstrating Evans' transformation into virtually a living, breathing Barbie doll. He also didn't want her working all the time on the show and encouraged her to quit the series. (A compromise was reached in which her character Audra was off visiting friends or relatives in several episodes per season.) It must be said that this Svengali-like attention was not resisted by Andress, Evans or his later wife Kathleen “Bo” Collins.

Evans described her life with John as utterly idyllic, with herself the center of his universe. She said he made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world (and truly, despite his own good looks and deep interest in sensuality, he was reputed to be faithful to his wives during the primary breadth of their unions.) It was a sort of worship. As with Andress, he reveled in photographing Evans and again shot this wife for a layout in Playboy magazine.

In 1969, he had two films in (limited) release. First came A Boy... A Girl, which starred Dean Paul Martin and also featured Kerwin Matthews and Peggy Lipton. The second was Childish Things, co-directed by David Nelson. Written by Don Murray, who also starred, it concerned a ne'er do well alcoholic who forces himself on a young girl (Evans) and is involved in various crimes before undergoing a transformation in which he starts to help others. The movie was redubbed “Confessions of Tom Harris” at one time and then, ludicrously, “Tale of the Cock” for another release. Derek's friend from Once Before I Die Rod Lauren also appeared in the film.

Tragedy struck in 1969 when Derek's son Russell was severely injured in a motorcycle crash. The young man would be paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his life. Otherwise, things between Derek and Evans went on swimmingly until he was filming his next opus in 1973 and came upon Kathleen Collins, a mere sixteen year-old who resembled Evans more than a little and whose face, body and persona enraptured him beyond all reason. She was the daughter of a boat company executive and hairdresser (who counted Ann-Margret among her clients) who had dropped out of high school to pursue a career in films.

Derek placed her in the starring role of a Greek Island-set film called Fantasies that was complete in 1973, but didn't see release until years later. To Evans' near total devastation, Derek found that he could not live without this young girl and divorced her. Due to the fact that Collins was underage, she and Derek moved to Germany to avoid statutory rape charges and in 1976, a bit shy of her eighteenth birthday, they were married. She would henceforth be known as Bo Derek. Side-by-side comparisons of certain photos show the basic resemblance between Derek's last two wives.

After filming a smallish role in the killer whale film Orca, she landed a part that would send her shooting into the celebrity stratosphere. With her blonde hair woven into cornrows, she jogged down the beach in a wet, tan swimsuit to the strains of Ravel's Bolero and boggled Dudley Moore's mind (and the world's) in 10. Upon the release of 10, Bo Derek attained the very highest heights of sex symbol status. Again, John Derek's ideal was the world's and he photographed her for Playboy (this time on several occasions.)

Her follow up film A Change of Seasons with Anthony Hopkins and Shirley MacLaine was being filmed when 10 hit screens and the makers decided to capitalize on her notoriety by adding extra love scenes to the plot. John, always a presence in Bo's career, clashed with the director Noel Black and Black was fired, replaced by Richard Lang. In the wake of the ugliness involved with this production, Bo would not work for any other director than John for years, thus hamstringing her burgeoning film career.

It wasn't completely trashed yet, however. First, in 1981 John would direct and photograph a film in which Bo would star called Tarzan, the Ape Man. Bo was not just putty in John's hands, however. She was the producer of the MGM film. As such, she wielded even more control than her husband. She started by hiring her mother to do the hairstyles, then fired the 6'5” boxer-turned-actor (Lee Canalito) who had been cast as the title vine-swinger for not being in good enough shape! His replacement, newcomer Miles O'Keeffe, had no such concerns, emerging as quite possibly the most muscularly defined Tarzan ever seen to that point.

The production (which costarred Richard Harris as Bo's father) was troubled to say the least, with fifteen of the twenty-three crew members on location in Sri Lanka either being fired or otherwise sent home by Bo as it went along. The finished film, dotted with topless scenes of her, was absolutely leveled by critics. Nevertheless, audiences attended, desperate to see more of their favorite new sex goddess. (Despite the title, the movie was really all about her, with Tarzan not even appearing until halfway into it. Her picture, swinging on a vine, was on the movie's poster, with O'Keeffe nowhere to be found.) The Edgar Rice Burroughs estate sued the Dereks over the content of the movie.

Hot on the heels of Tarzan, Fantasies (by now eight years old!) was finally put into release. John's life was put under close scrutiny when his now-grown daughter Sean Derek wrote a tell-all book entitled Cast of Characters in 1982. With Andress a famous star, Evans now a huge success in her own right with Dynasty and Bo a worldwide sensation, the story of Derek and his triad of famous blonde wives proved to be a hot seller. This book would lead to estrangement between John and his daughter which was eventually healed.

Derek continued to create films that starred Bo, each one seemingly worse than the one before. Bolero, all about Bo's character searching for the right man with which to lose her virginity (!) and Ghosts Can't Do It, about her dead husband trying to find the right host body to use in order to again service his wife, had little to no impact on the world. That last one featured John's long ago costars Anthony Quinn and Don Murray amongst its cast. (Miss Julie Newmar is in it, too!) They always seemed to be about showing off Bo Derek's nude body rather than making any attempt to develop her acting. On Bolero, rumors spread that one of her sex scenes wasn't simulated (and, in fact John did direct a full-on porno movie – albeit an artsy one – called Love You in 1980.) Sticking to what he felt worked, he had Bo sporting a hat similar to the one Evans had worn in her Big Valley days. In between films (and after that last one), he and Bo spent time on their sprawling, 46-acre California ranch.

In 1998, the always-fit Derek, who took care to work out regularly in his home gym, collapsed with a heart issue (an aneurysm or something similar) and was rushed to the hospital where doctors fought to save him, but couldn't. A crestfallen Bo, who had been married to him for two decades and was about to begin filming a new TV series called Wind on the Water, was at his side, as was Sean. He was seventy-one.

John Derek had emerged as a confrontational, controlling personality in interviews and was known to be quite uncompromising. Despite his obsessive attention to the women in his life, he was sometimes perceived as misogynistic. His personal magnetism, however, was such that both Ursula Andress and Linda Evans remained friends with him long after their divorces and even befriended Bo, forming a bizarre sort of sisterhood. Each of them had nothing but good to say about life with him. When he turned fifty-three in 1979, all four of his wives were in attendance, wearing t-shirts with his picture on the back! So unique was his appeal to them that they remained a significant part of his life even when they went on with their own (and Andress and Evans convened with Bo and lent support after John's death.) Certainly, based on the way several actors were eager to come and work for him several times over, he engendered loyal friendships as well. Derek is beloved in The Underworld for his handsome looks and his mostly unsung body of acting work, notably his Joshua in The Ten Commandments, but for other films as well.

Oh, What a Character! Part Eight: Diving for Some Coral

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The name Coral Browne is not one that you hear bandied about much these days outside of certain circles, but the world might be more fun if it were. Part of this could be due to the fact that Ms. Browne passed away in 1991, but if you frequent this site then you know that we would never let such a pesky detail stand in the way of our celebration of someone's life and career.

Coral Edith Brown was born in Melbourne, Australia on July 23rd, 1913, to a restaurant owner. She and her two brothers were raised in a suburb of the city and she studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. An early success at stage acting, she was already working professionally at age seventeen. Her debut as a pro was at the then still-new Comedy Theatre in Melbourne. I can't deny that she's showing off a rather sizeable lower arm in this early glamor shot to the right!

A few years later, at the age of twenty-one, based primarily on the strength of her still-burgeoning talent and the contact made with British acting legend Marie Tempest though Brown's current theatre director, she moved to England to attempt work there. With only 50 pounds in her pocket (a gift from her father – she was supposed to come home when it ran out!), she managed to establish herself and eventually became a frequent performer at The Savoy Theatre. In an odd twist of fate, the British touring company of The Man Who Came to Dinner ran into financial difficulty and Brown (slated to star in it opposite the amusingly plump Robert Morley) borrowed money from her dentist to secure the rights to the play. For the rest of her life, she received royalties from the various stagings of the famed Kaufman-Hart work.

Brown started working in British films in 1935 (having made on Australian movie, Waltzing Matilda, in 1933.) Her first one was Charing Cross Road, playing a supporting role to the film's star John Mills. Similar small roles followed as she lent support to Douglas Fairbanks Jr in 1936's The Amateur Gentleman, Gracie Fields and Victor McLaglen in 1938's We're Going to Be Rich and her initial contact Marie Tempest in Yellow Sands (also 1938.) It was 1936 when she added the “e” to her last name in order to lend it distinction. She had another small part in Raymond Massey's 1939 murder mystery Footsteps in the Sand.

Browne as shown above, had a less than perfect nose in profile. She would eventually have that streamlined out (See pic at right) and, in time, develop a fondness for cosmetic surgery. Stage continued to be her chief milieu, where all the better parts were, even though she still made movies. 1940's Let George Do It! (later retitled To Hell With Hitler) marked the last one for a while until she returned to the screen in 1946's Piccadilly Incident, this time in support of Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding. She worked with this same duo the following year in Kathy's Love Affair (none of these movies ever approaching classic status.)

In 1950, she married actor (later turned talent agent) Philip Pearman, a man she knew was homosexual. Letters discovered years later revealed plenty of humor, passion and sexual playfulness between them. Whatever the story, they had a divine time togethe and he was occasionally the willing target of her razor sharp wit. Once, when he was having difficulty finding the right role in which to act, she cattily remarked to him, while thumbing through her script for King Lear, that she'd found the perfect one, “a camp near Dover!”

There was another break before she made her next film. It was one scene in 1954's Twist of Fate. It's probably more notable as the screen debut of the star Ginger Rogers' then-husband Jacques Bergerac in a key role and as the chance to see them acting together. That marriage would be all washed up in just a couple of years afterward, though. All during this cinematic downtime, Browne was working onstage, be it in The Last of Mrs. Cheney or W. Somerset Maugham's Lady Frederick or Affairs of State.

She also had done Shakespearean work from The Taming of the Shrew to Othello to the aforementioned King Lear. In 1956, she was brought to New York' Winter Garden Theatre to play the role of Zabina in Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, starring Anthony Quayle. Amazingly, the sprawling cast of this short-lived production also included Colleen Dewhurst, Lloyd Bochner and William Shatner! Sir Alec Guinness, who was in attendance at the first dress rehearsal, witnessed a resplendently savage-looking Miss Browne coming onto the set prior to curtain regarding some detail, whereupon the director asked her if she was pleased with her (voluminous) wig. Her (hilarious) alleged response was, “If you really fucking want to know, I feel as if I'm looking out of a yak's asshole.”

Later that year, she returned to The Winter Garden to alternately perform Macbeth (as Lady Macbeth) and Troilus and Cressida (as Helen) in repertory until early 1957. What followed was one of her most notable (and enduring) performances on film. She was selected to play Vera Charles in the film Auntie Mame, a piece that had been a terrific hit on Broadway for its star Rosalind Russell. Actress Polly Rowles had originated the role of Vera, but was not included in the movie version.

Vera Charles was a sharply-dressed, haughty, tippling actress who is the title character's best friend, but with a bit of an edge (what might today be called a “frenemy.”) Sporting platinum hair (a drastic change from her typical dark locks, which prompts Russell to exclaim, “If I kept my hair natural like yours, I'd be bald”), she is given several amusingly cutting lines (though nothing any playwright came up with could ever match the real verbal devastation of Browne's own knife-like tongue.)

Reportedly, Browne's hair started falling out due to the studio hairdressers' over-bleaching and Miss Russell came to the rescue by sending her a variety of snazzy hats to wear in the meantime until her locks grew back in correctly.

Perhaps Browne's most memorable sequence is when she arranges for the financially-strapped Russell to be given a small part in her most recent play and is rewarded for her efforts by having Russell blunder through it, wearing exceedingly loud jingle bell charms on her wrists that make a clatter before she has even entered. Browne finally can't take the sound any more and hollers backstage, “What the hell have you got back there, reindeer?!” Later, this show would be musicalized as Mame and Bea Arthur would make the part her own in both the Broadway version with Angela Lansbury and the execrable film opposite Lucille Ball.
In 1961, she joined Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, playing a concerned, vaguely lesbian, friend of Leigh's. No one involved in the production had a chance of outshining the delectably slimy presence of Lotte Lenya as a crafty procurer of hot, young Italian men, who she then farms out to lonely people like Leigh. At least Browne got to look nice and wear some stylish clothes, something that always meant quite a lot to her.
The following year, she reteamed with Robert Morley for the zany comedy Go to Blazes, about three crooks who use a fire engine as their getaway vehicle. Also in the cast were Daniel Massey (son of her previous costar Raymond) and a young Maggie Smith. 1963 had her playing a wealthy matron/mentor in the now-forgotten comedy film Tamahine. (I no sooner wrote that this film was forgotten than TCM put it on their schedule today for a Nancy Kwan tribute! God love them.) The title role referred to a Polynesian girl played by Nancy Kwan who is brought to England to live with her uncle and must adjust to big city life (with all its complications and misunderstandings.) Disappointingly, fourth-billed Browne's screen time was under two minutes!
1963 also marked a return to Broadway in The Rehearsal, with Keith Michell, Alan Badel and Adrienne Corri, who would remain a lifelong friend. Here, the two resplendently dressed ladies (with Coral looking for all the world like the test tube love child of Judy Garland and Joan Crawford!) greet astronaut Scott Carpenter after a performance. The man seems in danger of being swallowed up by their heaving breasts.

In 1964, Browne played the wife of Dr. Crippen, a real-life physician believed to have killed his spouse, dismembered her, buried her under their house and then fled America with his younger lover (disguised as a boy!) to London. The role called for a brow-beating, sexually promiscuous quality which Browne delivered. Donald Pleasance played the title role while Samantha Eggar was his new love. This same year, Browne's husband of fourteen years, stricken with cancer, reportedly killed himself as some other folks have when confronted with debilitating terminal illness (though not all sources note his death as suicide.)
She went back to Broadway in '65, appearing in The Right Honourable Gentleman with Alan Badel and Charles Gray, then filmed a supporting role in The Night of the Generals, which came out in 1967. Here, she was one of the few captivating presences in what should have been an engrossing murder mystery, but instead turned out to be a fairly static and numbing viewing experience. A solid cast included Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif (reunited after their Laurence of Arabia triumph), Donald Pleasance (her Dr. Crippen costar), Tom Courtenay, Christopher Plummer and Joanna Pettet.

She played the mother of Pettet and the wife of Charles Gray, who she'd just appeared on stage with, and perhaps it was he who suggested her for the part. By now, elegantly snobby characters were easy for her, but she was nevertheless interesting. It was mostly O'Toole's waxen, bizarre characterization (which manages the impossible in that he overacts tremendously while barely moving his face!) that sank the film and robbed it of any potential mystery. (Some reports say this was intentional due to his dislike of the director Anatole Litvak.) This film ran into a tad of difficulty with the soon-to-be-extinct Motion Picture Code over implied cunnilingus performed on Pettet by Courtenay, but one would need opera glasses and a good imagination to make out anything much from the finished product.

Browne would really delve into the salacious with her next film, The Killing of Sister George. What sounds like a murder mystery is, in fact, a searing drama (adapted from the stage play) about a trio of lesbians. Beryl Reid starred as a beloved soap opera star (her character is Sister George, a nun and nurse) who is loud and brash in real life and has a live-in, childlike lover played by Susannah York. York tends to get the brunt of Reid's career frustrations as she fears her character may be getting killed off, hence the title. Browne plays a refined television producer who is not only an adversary of Reid, due to her destructive behavior, but who also sets her sites on York since she is a lesbian herself.

Browne was purportedly bisexual in real life, so the idea of an all-female love scene should not have, perhaps, been the most challenging thing in the world to take on, but her costar York's discomfort with it made for much on-set tension. York reportedly fled the set in tears at times. (Somehow, she eventually got over this apprehension and did another lesbian scene with Elizabeth Taylor a few years later in X, Y & Zee...) At any rate, naysayers made fun of Browne's seductive approach. One British critic wrote that “she twiddled with Susannah York's nipple as if trying to find Radio Three.” The controversial scene got the movie slapped with an X rating (this was at the onset of the ratings system when X was similar to the current NC-17, though whatever its called, that rating tends to crush most films' chances at the box office.) Ironically, Polly Bowles, who Browne replaced for the film version of Auntie Mame, had worked in the stage version of Sister George, albeit in a role that doesn't appear in the movie.

Her own stage career continued all along, with a production of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan another highlight. Her costumes (which she didn't care for) were by Cecil Beaton. Wilfred Hyde White was her costar in this rendition of the famous, four-act, Oscar Wilde play. They would later provide heavenly voices together in Xanadu and die in the same month as one another.

George's director, Robert Aldrich (whose success with The Dirty Dozen the year before made it possible for him to do this picture with less broad appeal) counted it as his favorite work. He liked Browne, too, and used her in his next movie (which happened to be released first as it turned out!) The movie was The Legend of Lylah Clare, a hooty, campy, gothic mystery drama about a film director turning an unknown actress into a recreation of a previous, wildly famous, earlier one who had died. Kim Novak, who knew a thing or two about playing this sort of dual role from Vertigo, was cast as Lylah Clare and her mousy imitator. Peter Finch played the director. Browne was cast as a brittle gossip columnist, a skeptical, imposing monster with a cane and metal braces on her legs!

Another round of stage work at this time included the Joe Orton play What the Butler Saw, which was considered very provocative at the time. Ralph Richardson costarred with her in this production, which was not successful and was, in fact, attacked by critics and audiences, though the script was better appreciated with the passage of some time.

Browne found herself working with Peter O'Toole once more in the outrageous 1972 comedy The Ruling Class. The plot concerned the death of a member of the House of Lords and his estate being left to his son, O'Toole, who is insane and thinks he is Jesus Christ. Browne plays one of several people attempting to manipulate him into handling things her way and eventually tries to seduce the younger man, with dangerous results.

She began to take on interesting roles in the British series BBC Play of the Month. She'd appeared on the program once in 1969 for Charley's Aunt (as Donna Lucia), but in 1972 recreated her role of Mrs. Erlynne in Lady Windemere's Fan and was the title character in Mrs. Warren's Profession (as shown here.) A fourth appearance later had her playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.

In 1973, Browne took a role rather outside her comfort zone. Vincent Price was making another in a long string of horror films, this one called Theatre of Blood, and the script called for a gallery of theatre critics who are paid back in spades for denying Price their approval and an important acting award. Price sets out to kill each one of them in ways that mirror his beloved Shakespearean characters. Her pals Charles Gray, Robert Morley and Michael Hordern were signed on to play a few of the critics/victims and Diana Rigg (cast as Price's daughter) was keen to introduce Browne to Price. Browne played the sole female critic, shown here getting more than she bargained for in the beauty chair (with Price in gay hairdresser drag and a cohort whose identity I won't give away!), but, more importantly, she found herself completely enamored of Price.

Trouble is (and Rigg apparently didn't know this), Price already had a wife! He'd been married to his second wife Mary Grant, a stage and film costumer designer, since 1949. The mutual admiration between Price and Browne was not to be denied and before long, he was getting a divorce in order to be free to marry Browne. Both actors were over sixty, but presumably were averse to simply living as a couple out of wedlock in 1973. When they went to buy a bed that was backordered three months, Browne reportedly looked at the salesman and exclaimed, "Look at us! Do you think we have that long?" Price, an avid collector of many priceless paintings, was forced to part with quite a few of his treasures during the dissolving of his marriage.

Browne and Price emerged, nonetheless, as a devoted and complimentary couple, even though she was once quoted as having said, “I married Vincent Price very late in both our lives. It was chiefly because, even if Vincent can be a bit moody and frightening at times, loneliness is even more frightful. Without a husband, even an actress doesn't get invited out much.” In truth, she became rather territorial about him, causing some distance between him and his children (particularly his son.) They had many common interests and enjoyed their home life together. They even took to filming Nestle instant soup commercials, amusingly depicting their personal life puttering around in the kitchen. (The “soup” they peddled, however, looked more like something out of one of Vincent's gory movies!)

She had a small (too small!) part in Paul Newman's 1975 film The Drowning Pool as the infirm, but commandeering, mother-in-law of Joanne Woodward. Her precocious granddaughter in the film was played by teenaged Melanie Griffith. Over the course of the following year, she toured in a production of Charley's Aunt. Browne had a cancerous tumor removed from her calf around this time and began to wear slacks (or long gowns) for virtually every occasion rather than allow her legs to be seen as less attractive than they had previously been.

The opportunity to act regularly with husband Price came in 1979 when the pair were asked to star in a TV series called Time Express. This was a hybrid of The Twilight Zone and Fantasy Island in that Price and Browne ran a train service that allowed chosen customers to step back in time in order to either discover facts they cannot otherwise obtain or to right a wrong that they have done. Most stories included some sort of twist. The program was yanked after only four episodes, a disappointment for the couple.

Browne was approached to play Gertrude in a prestigious televised rendition of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, opposite Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart, but opted instead to do voice-over work on the kitschy musical Xanadu! Claire Bloom took the role in the well-received teleplay instead. Browne had not, however, given up on acting. She drew upon her own experience in order to come up with another interesting part for herself, this time as herself!

In 1958, she had been part of a cultural exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. She traveled to Moscow to perform Hamlet and during one intermission was startled by a disheveled, vomiting man in her dressing room. He turned out to be a notorious English traitor, Guy Burgess, who had given classified info to the USSR and had then fled there to live. The two struck up a tenuous acquaintance with her acknowledging his charm despite the deeds he'd done and eventually arranging for him to receive a new, tailored suit. Now twenty-five years later, the story was turned into a one-hour TV special called An Englishman Abroad with Alan Bates as Burgess and Browne portraying herself! Longtime pal Charles Gray costarred. As it was set in Russia, the actress was decked out in fur coat and hat and took pains to try to turn back the hands of time in her appearance. Both actors were given British Academy of Film and Television Awards for their work. During this project, she discovered a cancerous lump in her breast.

In 1984, she worked with JoBeth Williams and Tom Conti in the whimsical comedy American Dreamer, all about Williams, ghost writer for a series of spy novels, who is injured in an accident while visiting Paris and wakes up believing she is the female character she's been writing of, an international spy. Browne plays the somewhat eccentric author whose name typically appears on the novels that Williams writes.
What would turn out to be her final feature film, Dreamchild, was released in 1985. She played the elderly Alice Liddell Hargreaves, a woman who, as a child, served as the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Her memories of the man (played by Ian Holm in the movie) are bittersweet to say the least and she struggles with the idea of honoring him. Through recollections on her way to the tribute (and representations of the Wonderland characters supplied by Jim Henson), she begins to shift her point of view towards the man who found her to be his literary inspiration. Peter Gallagher, shown here, also starred as a reporter who is covering her arrival to the event. The work she did in this film garnered her some of the best notices of her film career, with even Pauline Kael expressing admiration for her acting.

Sadly, Miss Browne was about to enter the final stages of a battle with breast cancer. She and Price continued to enjoy themselves at home and socially, shown here at an Oscar ceremony, but her acting days were over. She died on May 29th, 1991 at the age of seventy-seven, after a period of being bedridden.. Revered as much for her acid wit as for her formidable acting talents, there are many examples of her hilarious sarcasm. During a mid-'60s presentation of Oedipus, the set included an enormous golden phallus, prompting her to remark, not softly, to her male companion, “Well, it's no one we know, darling.”

Once, she described a disappointing leading man as being “ten stone of condemned veal.” On the subject of Godfrey Tearle, an actor who spent his last years in the company of Jill Bennett who was nearly fifty years his junior, she said she never understood what he saw in her until she saw Bennett eating an ear of corn on the cob once! After Betsy Bloomingdale had been the indirect subject of a scandal involving her husband's lenghty, S&M-tinged affair with a younger woman, she spotted her and said, “There goes Betsy, thin as a whip!” Her salty language meant that many of her zestiest quotes couldn't be printed in the mainstream media.

A fiercely loyal friend, she was of particular comfort to Joan Rivers in 1987 when her husband Edgar killed himself. The always impeccably-dressed Browne flew to Rivers' side in only a bathrobe and slippers. (My God, someone should have had a tape recorder on when those two were together!) When one Hollywood writer sniffed that the screenplay for her beloved An Englishman Abroad wasn't particularly great, she spat back, “Listen, dear, you couldn't write fuck on a dusty venetian blind.”

Some of her sexual conquests are startling, from black singer-actor Paul Robeson to primarily-gay designer Cecil Beaton. She pragmatically described her intimate times with Beaton as akin to being taken for a sailor! Her life and career have been covered in two books, published within a year of one another, The Coral Browne Story by Barbara Angell and Coral Browne: This Effing Lady by Rose Collis. She is also prominently covered in Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography, written by her step-daughter Victoria who felt resentment towards her while having no choice but to admit to Browne's talent, wit and charisma. As a sophisticated, elegant persona who could also deal out delicious barbs, Coral Browne was a type that is in short supply nowadays. Like most captivating people, she left us wanting more. We think The Underworld is a perfect place to display a little “Coral!”

Fun Finds: Vintage Programs

2012-01-09T08:40:00.007-05:00

Last fall, one of my most popular posts among those who come here for the older stars was put forth. It was a collection of rare, regional theatre programs from the early-’70s that contained it-could-only-happen-at-The-Burt-Reynolds-Dinner-Theatre-style pairings such as Don Ameche, Karen Valentine and John Saxon in The Moon is Blue, John Gavin and Karen Lynn Gorney in Dracula or Joe Namath in Picnic! I had purchased a box full of the programs at a local estate auction and couldn’t wait to share their campy qualities with my devoted divers at The Underworld. (As an example of what I'm talking about, can you determine from this cover who it is that is enacting the role of Dolly Levi in Hello Dolly!? Answer in a moment...)

Imagine my surprise when, recently, one of my longtime friends, a theatre enthusiast who had helmed a local company for close to a decade, who has conceived and/or adapted a couple of locally-produced plays and even authored a book on musicals, came to me to announce that the mother of one of his other friends had been at a sale of some sort and had purchased a box of programs for him (again for a dollar!) Joe and I met for lunch and howled together as we perused the stack of programs, most of which, astonishingly, were from the very same theatre company as my own were (Kenley Players), but with not one duplication! There were other items in his stack that went beyond what I had bought, but which were equally fun. I instantly asked if he would be kind enough to lend me the stack of programs so that I might scan in some highlights to share with my readers at The Underworld and he graciously complied. So, here we go!

One aspect of Joe’s programs, by the way, which is as annoying as it is fascinating, is that the original owner for some reason felt the need to write not only the date of the day she saw the production in question, but also the name(s) of whoever she attended with! Thus, you will see this scribbling occasionally on some of the covers. The upside is that it usually pinpoints the exact year of a production, something that isn’t always completely obvious. (Theatre programs very often list the days of the month of a production, but hardly ever bother to denote the year!) As I will demonstrate below, though, even this isn’t always reliable. Unfortunately, thanks to the new blog photo viewer, in order to properly see and read the scans on this page you will likely have to right-click the images and choose “Open Link in a New Window.”

Kenley Players was founded by John Kenley, a peculiar, but very successful, producer of a Midwestern summer stock theatre circuit that began in 1950 and proceeded for three decades or so after. Kenley made it a point early on to bring name brand (if, perhaps, a trifle dusty) stars to his company, knowing that audiences who were typically deprived the chance to see such people would patronize the performances. Here is the billing info for the Hello Dolly! cover portrait from the top of this post. Yes, it was Miss Betty White!

Kenley was a most androgynous person, reportedly spending summers in Ohio as John Kenley and winters in Florida as Joan Kenley! (This in spite of his WWII stint as a Merchant Marine!) Merv Griffin stated outright in his biography that Kenley was a hermaphrodite! A longstanding tradition of his productions was that at the opening night party, the leading man of the show was required to dance the first number of the night with Kenley. Presumably, the gentlemen good-naturedly complied. In any case, he lived until the ripe age of one hundred three, passing away in 2009.

For his first show in 1950, he ingeniously used dynamic actress Susan Peters (tragically paralyzed in a hunting accident) in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, shifting the position of her sofa occasionally to suggest variety of movement. (She's seen here after her accident with close friend Cesar Romero and prior to her accident in a lovely portrait.) Peters remained under contract to MGM for a short time after her paralysis, but ran into understandable limitations when it came to parts. Though she put forth a valiant effort, even attempting a TV series called Miss Susan, she was dead by age thirty-one of illness and the effects of anorexia nervosa.

Some of the later Kenley combinations (which, sadly, I do not have programs for) included Joey Heatherton in Can Can, Florence Henderson in Annie Get Your Gun, Barbara Eden in Finian's Rainbow, Dirk Benedict in Oklahoma! and Robbie Benson in Evita (again in this post, I must employ the abused exclamation point!) I mean, you can't make this shit up! From here on, though, I’ll concentrate more on what I do have evidence of. The 1961 Broadway flop Everybody Loves Opal had starred Eileen Heckart, Stubby Kaye, James Coco and Brenda Vaccaro, but two key unfavorable reviews led to its premature closure. It later became a vehicle and potential comedic showcase for actresses of a certain age and is done in community theatre still today. In ‘72, Kenley’s production starred Phyllis Diller, depicted on the front and back cover (and inside) in ways that had nothing whatsoever to do with her eccentric, raggedy sort of character (a shabby hermit who is suspected of hoarding money and who is infiltrated by a gaggle of would-be murderers.)
The 1964 Broadway hit Luv had starred Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach and (his real life wife) Anne Jackson. It focused on two old college pals who discover that they are both miserable with one trying to offload his wife on the other in order to improve both of their lives. Ten years later at Kenley, the stars were Dom DeLuise, Joyce Van Patten and Bill McCutcheon. (Fans of Steel Magnolias will recall McCutcheon as Ouiser’s love interest Owen Jenkins.)

In 1934, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes had been a hit vehicle for Ethel Merman (who made an augmented film version two years later) and costarred William Gaxton and Victor Moore. It was revived Off-Broadway in 1962 with Hal Linden, Kenneth Mars and Eileen Rogers. Later, The Kenley Players production featured Frankie Avalon, Karen Morrow and Joe Flynn. Morrow was a veteran of quite a few Broadway flops who later worked on a lot of ‘70s television including the Bewitched spin-off Tabitha. In a strange interlude within his lengthy career, Avalon had determined to be billed as Frank Avalon versus the more familiar Frankie. The owner of this program had scrawled 1979 on the cover as the date she saw this, but that isn’t possible. For one thing, Avalon’s bio makes no mention of the gargantuan hit Grease in 1978, in which he played Teen Angel. It is unlikely that such a thing would be left out. More importantly, though, is the fact that costar Flynn could not possibly have performed in a 1979 production of Anything Goes (Weekend at Bernie’s, maybe…) Flynn, the star of McHale’s Navy from 1962-1966 and of several Disney movies, was found dead (and nude) in the family swimming pool on July 19th, 1974! He had apparently either drowned or had a heart attack that lead to drowning. He was forty-nine years old. This production was most likely done in the very early ‘70s as one of the costars, Leland Palmer, was nominated for a Tony for Pippin in 1973 and at the time of this show, such a thing had not yet occurred (though her earlier nomination for 1967’s A Joyful Noise is listed.)

High Button Shoes had been a George Abbott-directed/Jerome Robbins-choreographed musical, running for over 700 performances on Broadway in 1947. It concerned a con-man trying to fleece a New Jersey couple in a land deal, cheating people of the town in other ways all along, eventually being chased through Atlantic City in an elaborate number. The star then was Phil Silvers. In this 1983 production, Gavin McLeod was the headliner. For whatever reason, McLeod’s head shot in the program was merely one from his hit series The Love Boat, complete with captains hat! Perhaps they wanted there to be no doubt about the fact that a popular TV star was being put before the audiences.

Some of the programs that were in this bunch that I didn’t scan, but which I will mention for the curious, include: operatic tenor Jan Peerce in a July, 1971 performance of Fiddler on the Roof, a dry-run for his eventual stint as a Broadway replacement in December of that year, John Raitt in Camelot, The Smothers Brothers in I Love My Wife, Sally Ann Howes in The Great Waltz, Gary Sandy in Barnum (there were no revealing photos!) and McLean Stevenson in Under the Yum Yum Tree. We're also sorry that we don't have one for the hystercial productions advertised here to the left of a highly '80s-ized Morgan Fairchild and James Farentino starring in Goodbye Charlie!
A bit more interesting, to me anyway, is the 1983 production of Pal Joey starring Joel Grey and Alexis Smith, two people I do not associate together at all ordinarily. The Rodgers and Hart musical was done on Broadway in 1940 with Gene Kelly and Vivienne Segal (and June Havoc.) At the time of this production, Grey had already appeared in Kenley shows Cabaret (for which he’d won a Tony and, later, an Oscar), George M!, and 1776. Smith had performed with Kenley Players way back in the 1950s and had, by now, enjoyed her triumphant, Tony-winning stage success in Follies. She followed that up with The Women (as Sylvia), Summer Brave and Platinum, eventually touring as Miss Mona (!) in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She also did Kenley versions of Mary, Mary and Applause. One of the cast members of this production would soon go on to greater fame. With Quest for Fire under his belt and The Ice Pirates about to be released, young, unusual-looking Ron Perlman would just a few years later become a cult favorite in the romantic fantasy TV series Beauty and the Beast, which ran from 1987 - 1990. He is still a busy actor today, a recent success being the biker-themed FX series Sons of Anarchy. Check out that ‘80s hair and stache!

Speaking of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, there was a program mixed in with the rest from a 1982 tour of the show that didn’t really star anyone of note. It did have a photo of some shirtless cowboys, which I am including not because they are particularly good-looking, but more as a way of pointing out how much the standards have changed since then with regards to the age and physical condition of shirtless chorus men! Lord, I could have done this next to these chaps without too much undue embarrassment…

Another one-shot oddity in the stack was a program from the concert group called The New 4 Girls. Initially called 4 Girls 4 with its inception in 1977, it was a quartet consisting of Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting, Barbara McNair and Rose Marie. McNair, who truly was not of the same era as the rest, quickly departed, replaced by Helen O’Connell. The old gals enjoyed staggering success in this venture among those folks longing for the nostalgic music they’d helped make famous. The ladies had occasional squabbles amongst themselves, most often involving Helen O’Connell, who somehow managed to aggravate virtually everyone despite the success were enjoying together. She was a woman apart, including, at first, her clothing. In a coincidence with regards to this post, it was reportedly John Kenley who said to her, “You look like you’re wearing pajamas next to the other girls.” O’Connell allegedly replied that she was wearing a designer dress herself, but he stated, “I don’t care… They’re all sequined and beaded and theatrical and you look like you just came out of the bathroom.” Eventually, Rose Marie grew tired of the stress and left, replaced by Martha Raye (who also couldn‘t bear O‘Connell.) Then, Whiting departed as well. When Kay Starr took her spot is when The New Girls 4 re-christening came about. In time, Raye was forced to reduce her time with the group and Kaye Ballard would fill in. Before it was over, Rose Marie was back briefly, as was Whiting, but without Clooney, and the whole thing eventually consisted of O’Connell, Whiting and Starr and was called 3 Girls 3! It petered out for good in the late ‘80s after considerable success. Today, Ballard is eighty-six, Rose Marie is eighty-eight and Kay Starr is eighty-nine. O’Connell died back in ‘93 at seventy-three, Raye died in ‘94 at seventy-eight, Clooney passed away in 2002 at seventy-four and Whiting died in 2011 at eighty-six.
While we're on Martha Raye, we have here a program from one of her own Kenley Players productions in 1983. In a rather interesting stroke of casting, she was given the role of Miss Hannigan in hit musical Annie. The original production had run for six years on Broadway starting in 1977. Dorothy Loudon was the first Mrs. H., followed by Alice Ghostly, Betty Hutton, Marcia Lewis and June Havoc. For some reason, the young lady playing Grace Farrell made no attempt to alter her name (Norma Jean Baker) even though (or maybe because) it was the real name of the legendary movie star Marilyn Monroe.

Next, we have a 1983 presentation of No, No Nanette, another old chestnut that was being revived. The 1925 three-act musical concerned marital confusion amongst three couples. After being adapted into a few movies, sometimes with significant alteration to its plot (such as with 1950’s Tea for Two starring Doris Day), the property was dormant for a while. Then, in 1971, a nostalgic revival starred Ruby Keeler along with Patsy Kelly, Jack Gilford and Bobby Van. The version at Kenley starred Van Johnson and Gloria DeHaven. Considering the allegation that Johnson’s already-controversial marriage came to an end when he fell for a chorus boy performing with him in a production of The Music Man in the late ‘60s, one parlor game might be to print off this shot of the chorus of No, No Nanette and guess which fellows either kissed up to or caught the eye of or had to fend off the advances of (or all three!) the leading man.

There was a collection of programs from another local company that I had never heard of, but which also had its share of stars come forth to perform in their shows. The James Alex Summer Theatre was founded in the early 1960s (and, sadly, I don’t know how long it lasted) by a former dancer and choreographer named James Alex. One thing is certain. For at least one summer, he managed to align a jaw-dropping selection of shows and stars. See the photo here for more evidence. It’s from inside the program of Damn Yankees, starring Rita Moreno as Lola (this right on the heels of her Oscar-winning 1961 turn as Anita in West Side Story!) and lists eight more shows in the series, each one with someone famous in the lead. Most mind-boggling of all is the order form at the bottom of the page for tickets. The price range for seats, from best to worst, was $2.85 to $1.50 (with $2.25 resting in the middle!!) Unbelievable.

The cover for Damn Yankees has Miss Rita in a scenario I’ll have to remember the next time I feel too fat to be featured in publicity photos. Her disembodied noggin, cut out of an old head shot, has been adhered to artwork showing a reed thin body in a one-piece costume and heels, brandishing a decidedly unrealistic looking baseball cap in one hand! She’s poised atop her “victim,” a ball player lying on his belly on the playing field.

A closer look at another James Alex Production reveals the musical Flower Drum Song, an Asian-populated Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that had run on Broadway from 1958 to 1960. (Do note that on this and the other James Alex programs, there is mention of the fact that Dayton, Ohio’s Memorial Hall is air conditioned, not an entirely commonplace thing at that time still!) Admirably, considering the date of this production and the geographic location of it, the vast majority of Asian characters were portrayed by true Asian performers.
There’s a more than exotic looking leading lady named Yin Sun. That’s quite a head shot! More interestingly, though, was my spotting of the name of one Chao Li. Playing the character Master Wong, I wondered, could this possibly be the same Chao Li I was thinking about?? I’m referring to Chao-Li Chi, faithful servant to Jane Wyman’s Angela Channing during nearly decade of Falcon Crest. Sure enough, thanks to a photo inside I was able to easily recognize the actor’s familiar gaze. It’s a lesser known fact that Chao-Li Chi (whose character on Crest was also named Chao-Li!) continued to work on TV in guest roles for close to two more decades after the soap’s 1990 cancellation. He died in 2010 at the age of eighty-three.

Dorothy Collins, a Canadian-born singer, had been popular in the 1950s on a series called Your Hit Parade, which highlighted through lavish production numbers the top seven songs in the U.S. each week. She appeared in the 1962 James Alex Production of Brigadoon (alongside someone with the highly unfortunate name of Jean Betty Weiner…) Collins would later take part in 1971’s Broadway smash Follies (as Sally, who sings Losing My Mind), scoring a Tony nomination, but losing to costar Alexis Smith. She died in 1994 of asthma-related illness at the age of sixty-seven.

These programs often feature hysterical advertising and this one is no exception. This page has an ad for an Academy of Dramatic Art run by a Norma Sharkey. Their big claim to fame is that someone called Sandra Sturdivant is now working in summer theatre. Wow… You, too, can be fifth shrub on the right in a splashy chorus. Sign me up!

This one cracked me up, too. Mam’selle Model Agency, owned and operated by Bette Jeane Shively, a Donna Reed-ish lady who is only too happy to straighten out and finish off career girls, teenagers and homemakers who are currently lacking in the proper social and physical graces. Don’t miss the ad at the bottom for Mike Longo’s in which $5.00 will get you a choice seat at the show plus dinner!

Looking at the next page, I thought poor Jack Carson (in town at the time to headline Bye Bye Birdie) had been arrested!! Luckily, he was just checking out the latest in a new fleet of local taxis, the officious-looking driver standing near. Look at some of the phone numbers in these ads. They are still using the old two-letter, five-number ones that are immortalized for many of us by the film BUtterfield 8.

There’s a program from a tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats that doesn’t really contain anything of interest, but which does have a couple of very “80s” ads. I chose to share this one with you for Dodge cars because it features a good-looking man in a revealing Speedo! (I’m always looking out for you folks. Truly!)

This next program is from a tour that came to Dayton (with my best guess of the date being 1977) and starred a very notable leading lady. Lillian Roth was a singer and actress whose career on stage began way back in 1917 when she was but seven years old. What followed was an up and down career, filled with alcohol and tumultuous relationships, that were ultimately recounted in a vivid autobiography called I’ll Cry Tomorrow. That tome was eventually made into a movie starring Susan Hayward, the part earning her a nomination for a Best Actress Oscar (losing to Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo.)

The costar here was Gretchen Wyler. Wyler was a Broadway veteran who I had never heard of prior to about 2006 when I saw her in the terrific documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There. To be honest, I found her to be self-aggrandizing and more than a little devious, though she must be congratulated for her candor in any case. Breast cancer claimed her in 2007 when she was seventy-five years old.

I’m hopping back to Kenly now, trying to space some of the more interesting programs out a bit. This next one is 1983’s Artists and Models and Madness (which I believe is different from the other works that are simply titled Artists and Models, though I can’t be sure. The creators, Michael Sartor and David Sinkler, are unknown to me at any rate.) This one featured several known folks, not the least of which was its leading lady Mamie Van Doren (!), once a 1950s sexpot in the vein of Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe, she had trouble sustaining a legitimate acting career, especially after the 1960s. By the ‘70s, she was doing stage shows that the other blondes, Jayne and Marilyn, had enjoyed success with in their movie renditions (such as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.) Does she not resemble a platinum blonde Marie Osmond in the shot at the far left?? A sizzling 1987 autobiography shed an all-new light on the blonder and less-covered-up than ever actress and she has continued to capitalize on this new level of notoriety, at varying levels of success, ever since. She is currently eighty.

Also in the show was ventriloquist Jay Johnson, who’d been a cast member of the TV sitcom Soap. Then there were Phil Ford and Mimi Hines, a comedy pairing who’d been together for many years (since at least 1958) and enjoyed considerable success. One of Hines’ most notable achievements was ably doing what was considered the impossible, replacing Barbra Streisand in the original Broadway production of Funny Girl in 1964. (She performed it for 18 more months.) Ford passed away in 2005 at age eighty-five while Hines is still with us at age seventy-eight.

Now, when the show The Unsinkable Molly Brown comes up, such a name as Tammy Grimes (who originated the role on Broadway from 1960 - 1962) or Debbie Reynolds (who portrayed her in the 1964 film adaptation) might come to mind. (Debbie had to practically ask Shirley MacLaine to turn the part down in order to land it, however.) What other names might come to mind as Molly when you look at this Kenley Players program cover from 1982?
How about Miss Connie Stevens?! We’ve remarked here before about her dead-serious desire to play Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady and the frustration she felt towards Jack Warner for not considering her. I guess she was still working out some of her thwarted musical theatre yearnings even by this time. There are several very UN-Molly Brown-ish photos of Miss Stevens in the program, but none more so than the one of her draped in fur with one long, pantyhosed limb jutting out from her pelvic bone onward. (This shot is from her 1976 undercover policewoman opus Scorchy, a film I’ve yet to see, but will celebrate with a display of fireworks when I finally get to do so!) Miss Connie is seventy-three today and is still lookin’ good (thanks, likely, to her Forever Spring line of beauty products.)
The final Kenley Players program is from Promises, Promises. That musicalization of The Apartment was a substantial hit on Broadway from 1968 - 1972, starring Jerry Orbach. Until recently, the show had never enjoyed a revival there, but in 2010, Kristin Chenowith and Will and Grace’s Sean Hayes headlined one that played for about three-quarters of a year. For this 1973 production, the big name was Rich Little, who I must say I never thought of as a singer. He is still alive today at age seventy-three. David Doyle also had a role in this one.

The fascinating thing about this production for me was the actress playing the role of Vivien Della Hoya (originated on Broadway by Donna McKechnie.) Vivien is one of the three ladies who perform the vivacious song “Turkey Lurkey Time.” In this production, nineteen year-old Pia Zadora had the part!! Zadora had one crazy, up-and-down career. Chosen by Burgess Meredith at the tender age of six to play against Tallulah Bankhead in Broadway’s Midgie Purvis, she soon thereafter was featured in the notoriously ghastly film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. She worked a couple more times on Broadway in short stints or small roles before taking to the road in various theatrical tours (meeting her first husband while working on Applause! with Alexis Smith.) In 1982, she reignited her film career with a string of splashy, sexy, trashy films like Butterfly and The Lonely Lady. She won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, but also landed three Razzies! Steve Allen made a wisecrack about her one year at the Night of 100 Stars benefit, resulting in her getting the chance to wow the crowd the year after with a startlingly good vocal performance. Having retired in 1999 and now with her third husband, she is fifty-seven today.

I don’t know for certain that I have “saved the best for last” this time out, but I have to put this next batch of photos last because it was really the only way I could work out the formatting. They are hilarious, though. These are pages from a 1975, 30th anniversary tour of Holiday on Ice. Do enjoy the funky costumes, the goofy poses and just the overall campiness of it all. See who is inside the giant, purple, skating cow. See what costume designer Helen Colvig was up to after having worked three times with Clint Eastwood. Find out why I think Jimmy Crockett was always a hit at closing night parties… I hope you had fun with these. It took quite a while to sort through them, gather info and scan them in, which is why it’s been a few days since my last post! I’ll be back soon with more Hollywood fun and frolic.

"Chap"py New Year!

2012-01-03T12:05:00.003-05:00

Lord, how I waited... No one understands what it has been like to know about the existence of a movie that features Chad Everett, Ty Hardin, Corey Allen and Ray Danton, whose focus happens to be on sex (!), and not get to see it! The movie is from 1962 and is called The Chapman Report. I first discovered its existence more than two decades ago and have never once, in all that time, come upon it in any way, be it broadcast or home video. FINALLY, thanks to Jane Fonda's birthday (she is one of the female stars), it was run on TCM late one night recently. The jigsaw puzzle of my bad movie life has one more piece in place and it feels terrific!

Author Irving Wallace released the original novel in 1961, all about a team of sex researchers, led by a Dr. Chapman, who descend on a ritzy Los Angeles suburb in order to interview a large contingent of ladies. Their identities kept secret as they are only known by their case number, answering questions from behind a screen, the women are encouraged to answer detailed, potentially embarrassing questions for the purpose of collecting data. The novel (allegedly not inspired by the famous Kinsey Report, but rather by a collage of various researchers who'd been in business for many decades and the author's own imagination) was considered explosive and scandalous at the time. Early versions of the paperback had a very clinical, official look to them, often citing prestigious reviews on the cover while other, later copies were more to the point, as shown here!

Darryl F. Zanuck, of 20th Century Fox fame, acquired the rights to the book with his son Richard as producer. The studio had been able to turn the scorching page-turner Peyton Place into a lustrous, highly-acclaimed film just a few years prior. They sought that film's director, Mark Robson, to direct The Chapman Report. Unfortunately, production issues with The Longest Day and Cleopatra meant that Zanuck (now independent and no longer the head of 20th) was forced to offer the property to his rival Jack Warner of Warner Brothers. Richard Zanuck and his quartet of leading ladies headed there where all of the primary leading male roles were soon filled with actors from Warner's stable of popular television stars. Veteran “women's picture” director George Cukor was enlisted to helm the film, which was officially a “DFZ Production,” despite being made at Warner Brothers. By the way, I don't think there is another female “look” I adore more than the snug pencil skirt paired with spike heels, as depicted on this lobby card!

Many writers (too many!) worked on the story and screenplay, which pared the focus down to four primary study participants. One of the screenplay writers was Don Mankiewicz, of the famous writing family, and another was Wyatt Cooper, the part-time actor whose son Anderson grew up to be a famous tele-journalist. Costumes for the movie came courtesy of legendary designer Orry-Kelly, who by then had spent three decades clothing the stars on film. Someone (uncredited) supplied a raft of fun and funky jewelry pieces. Music was provided by Leonard Rosenman (best known at the time for having scored both East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, but who would later win Oscars for Barry Lyndon in 1975 and Bound for Glory in 1976)

As the movie opens, credits are shown on top of multitudes of computer punch cards, designed to tabulate all the answers from the sexually-oriented questions into usable data. Amusingly, the punch cards shown have the names of the cast, not their characters, on them! Rosenman's opening music sounds like something more akin to a Peter Gunn-style detective series than a film devoted to the dissection of physical love!

We soon meet the ladies of the suburb The Briars, a well-to-do neighborhood of sleek and glamorous homes containing no small amount of problems beneath their facades. Shelley Winters is a wife and mother, shuttling her child off to school and her devoted, but dull, husband off to work so that she can call her lover and arrange a tryst. As revealed in flashback, her secret man is the hunky Ray Danton, director of the local community theatre, a place that has always been a fertile breeding ground for adultery (at least I've seen a fair share of it in my own experience!) He's trapped in a loveless marriage and is only too happy to bring some spice to the otherwise humdrum existence of Winters. Their most frequent meetings take place on his boat or at an ocean-side cafe nearby.
There is also Jane Fonda, in one of her very earliest screen roles. She plays the young widow of a popular test pilot who crashed to his death, leaving a legacy of honor which she feels compelled to perpetuate. A daddy's girl (with whom she lives) at heart, she is revealed in flashback to have had enormous difficulties with intimacy between her and her husband. The word used is frigid and we see that her now-dead husband was none too patient about it either. (Interestingly, her dead husband's nickname was “Boy!”) Because she is the resident ice queen, sexually, she is dressed at all times in white and her hair is pulled back tautly, frequently twirled up on top like the tip of a soft-serve ice cream cone!
Glynis Johns portrays the flighty wife of John Dehner, an art gallery owner who encourages her own creative endeavors. The latest one involves her recording an album of poetry reading. They share a most unique relationship which, though devoted, could almost be read as pansexual, particularly on his part. He sends her to the beach to practice into a tape recorder, the loud surf demanding that she enunciate loudly and clearly. Alas, her studies are interrupted by a foursome of rowdy football players who happen to be in that exact spot of beach every single time she goes there! One of them, the gloriously beautiful Ty Hardin, winds up diving right in front of her and they strike up an acquaintance. As he is diametrically opposite of Dehner in every way, she soon becomes fascinated with him and decides to pursue him.

Finally, there is Claire Bloom, a fashion designer and divorcee who is overly reliant on booze and pills and who tends to wallow around in her bedroom with the curtains drawn. It doesn't take long at all to realize that Bloom is what we might call today a sex addict, but what was then referred to as a nymphomaniac. In a classic porn set-up (which nonetheless came straight out of the novel), she has a fresh bottle of drinking water brought to her by a new delivery man (the edible Chad Everett) who she decides to pay with nature's credit card in addition to petty cash. Slinking to the kitchen to greet him in her loose, virtually transparent negligee, she invites him further and further into her house where he, in a blessedly snug khaki uniform, follows tentatively. With passion palpable, she coerces him into making out with her, the promise of ecstasy more than evident. However, she suddenly shifts into the reality of what she's doing and calls the whole deal off (WHAT??), sending young Everett out of her house and, sadly, out of the movie. Bloom's clothes throughout the film are all brown (because she's “dirty?”)
Andrew Duggan plays Dr. Chapman and he's assisted by colleague Efrem Zimbalist Jr. The local women convene at their club for a lecture and an explanation of what Duggan's visit and resultant interviews will entail. Incidentally, this photo of the leading ladies all in a row at the lecture never occurs in the actual film. In actuality, the women are scattered somewhat throughout the audience and Bloom, in fact, arrives in time only to hear the last few bits of the presentation (delayed as she was by water boy Everett!)

There is an opponent to the work of Duggan in the form of curmudgeonly old doctor Henry Daniell (a terrific character actor who is profiled here elsewhere.) In an extended cameo, an exchange with Duggan's helpmate Zimbalist, he puts forth a warning about the after-effects of a study such as this which is actually rather prescient.

As the ladies brace themselves for the upcoming investigative research into their sex lives, they continue to practice (or, in Fonda's case, not!) Winters hooks up with Danton, even having a close call with his wife who is on the way from his boat as Winters is on her way to it! This chance encounter leads to a bit of a speed bump for the illicit lovers as Winters starts to demonstrate her ever-deepening feelings for him and feels a misplaced sense of jealously regarding Danton's own wife. Their affair is never depicted graphically, though scenes of a more undressed nature were shot as seen in this still photo of a moment that (excruciatingly) doesn't appear in the finished product.

Fonda wrestles anxiously with the idea of confessing her frigid feelings to Zimbalist. On the big day, she wears a hysterically oversized hat (one whose shadow she can hide beneath?) - that I nonetheless adore - to the appointment and is fraught with nervousness, avoidance and, ultimately, frantic despair, causing her to spill the contents of her purse onto the floor. Unable to verbalize her conflicted feelings, she darts from the room, causing Zimbalist to worry if he's pushed too far. She has left her billfold on the floor under her chair which is discovered by his prim assistant (played by Cloris Leachman of all people!), but eventually he, in a controversial move, decides to return it to Fonda in person.
Bloom answers her door (which is not unlike that old game Mystery Date, in that there's almost certainly a man behind it each time, but which type?) and finds neighbor Corey Allen, a seedy, but ruggedly sexy, cad who makes his attitude towards her known. His name is, no kidding, Wash Dillon! He pushes his way in and declares that he's seen the parade of men who've been to her house and wouldn't mind joining their ranks. He is interrupted before getting to score, but mentions to her that he plays in a band at a downtown joint. It isn't long before Bloom is there, in sunglasses despite the already darkened surroundings in the establishment!

Allen has already placed a bet with his jazz band cronies as to whether or not he'll land the sultry Bloom. As she sits percolating in the seat of her booth, he gives her the eye and then demonstrates, via his instrument, just what it is she's doing to him by being there, ready, willing and able! It's a hysterical bit of suggestive symbolism, but effective nonetheless.

Johns is elated to get to explore her personal life with researcher Duggan. Dehner is all for it, too, and is happy when she decides to take along her portable tape recorder and put everything down for Dehner to listen to afterwards. (By the way, I love her over-the-top bracelet in this scene on the lower left!) Despite the relative bliss of her personal life compared to the others, she wonders how the other half lives and soon sets her mind to conquering Hardin. She tracks him down at his amusement park job (where he's in charge of wiping down the windows of a bubble car/ski lift contraption) and convinces him that he would make an excellent subject for one of her figure paintings. He's not very interested until she declares that he'll be paid for his poses.
The day she arrives at his pad, with an unmistakably phallic oil well next to it dipping up and down and in and out with regular rhythm, she finds him prone on a chaise grappling the handle of his guitar. As they make preparations for his first sitting, she places him in the position of an Olympic discus thrower, then explains that such an athlete would, in order to preserve authenticity, be nude during the act! With this, Hardin removes his shirt and then steps behind a wicker chair to shuck off his pants. Unfortunately, he's wearing his ever-present swim trunks under them, but what trunks they are. The abbreviated shorts, of a very thin, green material, hug every contour of his manhood, leaving precious little to the imagination. His chiseled, perfect profile isn't bad, either. He's breathtaking to behold and, in fact, Johns soon becomes a bit breathless herself. This being a deliberately comic segment in contrast to the other three more angst-ridden stories, Johns is soon in over her head as the strong lunk starts making out with her and clinging to her until she's in danger of suffocation. During all the thrashing melee, with Johns writhing on top of Hardin, she manages to get out this howler of a double entendre: “...as much as I appreciate your strength and erectness...” We think she means the kind relating to a person's character, or perhaps not!

While something of a romantic relationship (inappropriate as it is!) begins to develop between Zimbalist and Fonda, Winters and Bloom begin to approach some hurdles. Winters is totally under Danton's spell and resolves to leave her clueless husband (played sturdily by Harold J. Stone), but Danton remains more than a little dicey on the subject. Far worse off is Bloom who finally winds up with Allen, but when he's done with her, he introduces her to his band mates/poker buddies who waste no time in trying to find out what Allen sees in her. (By the way, the man on the right is Alex Cord in his film debut, but people-even at imdb.com-keep thinking it's Richard Mulligan!) The result is a fairly harrowing encounter that is capped off by a ragged and bruised Bloom being tossed into the street at the foot of her driveway where she is discovered by alarmed neighbor Fonda. The two have a scene together that brings to light something that's not particularly common in this movie: the lead actresses tend mostly to act their vignettes apart and enjoy precious little interaction together. It's really at the initial lecture and at a later party that any of them really share the screen and these connections are exceedingly brief! Seeing these ladies interact and reflect more on each other's lives might have made the stories more poignant and meaningful while also capitalizing on the chance to put such notable actresses together. Those looking for a lot of byplay between the lead actresses of The Chapman Report are in for a disappointment.
As Fonda's stringent resistance to love lessens (in one of the film's more blatantly symbolic aspects), her hair begins to unwind as well. Soon she's wearing it completely down with merely a headband holding it back (that one last impediment standing in the way of full-on release.) Later, when she's finally relented and accepted love into her heart, when her blood is really pumping, her all-white wardrobe gets a shot of red in it. Her white evening gown has vein-like red threads coursing through it, concentrations of them surrounding her breasts! The hair is back up again, but this time it's just for looks.
By the time the film has reached it 125th minute, one lady is on the threshold of happiness, two have learned to embrace what they already had and one has been destroyed by the events in her life. A studio-imposed ending, hastily written and then shot by someone other than George Cukor, has Duggan and Zimbalist expressing how most women are happily normal, something at odds with what the viewer has just witnessed over the prior two hours. It turns out that the Legion of Decency (any spicy film's mortal enemy until about the 1970s) was up in arms over the film's content and Jack Warner, in an effort to appease them, trimmed some of the scenes and tacked on the faux feel-good ending, severely hamstringing its effectiveness.
I sometimes like to take a look at the advertising campaigns of U.S. films aiming for a foreign market. Almost invariably, the artwork is more dramatic and/or passionate. Certainly the Spanish (or is it Mexican) poster above leaves little doubt about the content of the film, or at least the content that the exhibitors wanted to stress anyway. Even more interesting, though, is this French poster on the left which takes Ty Hardin's legs (from a still photo done with Johns situated between them), paints pants on them and makes it seem as if it's Bloom who's doing the ogling! Both of these posters demonstrate changes in the title that have less to do with Chapman and his report, but are more vividly about the confessions and/or the relationships of the women, a more obviously sexy angle than the U.S. posters projected.

Director Cukor, who'd been so successful in working with famous actresses including Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and others, had been floundering a bit with stalled projects from The Lady L to Goodbye, Charlie (which were later made by other directors) when he was called upon to direct Chapman. He still owed 20th Century Fox one picture (even though this wound up released by Warners, as I described above.) A discreet, but nevertheless active, homosexual, he allegedly infuriated Jack Warner with dailies that were overloaded with shots of Ty Hardin and his pals playing football on the beach. Warner remarked that there was more film coverage of this incidental material than that of several real college teams! Aside from things like that, though, he was distraught to find that between 20 and 25 minutes of material that he felt was superior had been snipped down or cut out by Warner. As far as I can tell, Jack Cassidy's entire role (as one of Fonda's dates early in the movie) is missing entirely. Cukor considered removing his name from the film but didn't, always considering it a wounded movie. (This had happened with 1954's A Star is Born, too, also a Warner Brothers film.) He had better luck with his next picture, 1964's Oscar-winning musical My Fair Lady, which Warner allowed to run longer and which was a big success and finally won him an Oscar his fifth time out. His fifty-one year career as a director ended with Rich and Famous (a contemporary “women's picture”) in 1981 and he died in 1983 at the age of eighty-three of heart failure.

As mentioned earlier, all of the men in The Chapman Report were Warner contract players who received no extra payment beyond their existing contracts in order to film their roles. It was presumed that they would be happy to act in something other than their usual parts and in the milieu of a feature film versus the small screen. Zimbalist was working on 77 Sunset Strip at the time, but had also starred in 1960's The Crowded Sky and 1961's By Love Possessed. He would continue to work steadily in both mediums, with Wait Until Dark and Airport 1975 among his later movies. Today, Mr. Z. is ninety-three years old and he worked up through the mid-2000s before retiring.
Danton (shown above) had been acting on the big and small screen since the mid-'50s. He'd just finished a series called The Alaskans and had done the all-star Ice Palace in 1960 and A Majority of One (with Alec Guinness and Rosalind Russell) in 1961. Like Everett and Hardin, he has an individual tribute all his own here (well, okay, his is shared with one-time wife Julie Adams, but nevertheless...) Everett (at left) had just gotten started acting in 1961, but already had amassed a slew of TV credits. He'd also had roles in 1961's Claudelle Inglish and 1962's Rome Adventure. He would go from Chapman into his own series The Dakotas, but, of course, is best known for Medical Center, which ran from 1969 – 1976. he is seventy-six now, but still works on TV.

Hardin was also a relative newcomer at this point, having debuted in a trio of low-budget 1958 films under his real last name of Hungerford. He shot to fame in 1960 when he was cast as Bronco in order to fill the space left on Cheyenne when Clint Walker had had enough grief from the studio and walked out for a while. After Chapman, he was featured in quite a few movies, though few of them were of a particularly high quality (Berserk with Joan Crawford anyone?!) Now eighty-one, he occasionally makes an acting appearance when not concentrating on his more-than-a-little-extreme political viewpoints.
Duggan (shown above) was a mighty prolific actor, having begun on TV as early as 1949. Prior to Chapman, he'd been in The Bravados and Splendor in the Grass as well as starring on Bourbon Street Beat. His incredibly familiar face dotted many, many projects, primarily on television, until the mid-'80s. He died in 1988 of throat cancer at only the age of sixty-four. Harold J. Stone (at left) was one of those men you saw in films and TV countless times, yet likely didn't know his name. A TV actor from the late '40s on, he segued to movies in the mid-'50s. By 1960, he was part of the large cast of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. He also was a favorite of Jerry Lewis who cast him in three movies of his. Though he only appeared as a regular on one series (1973's Bridget Loves Bernie), he guest-starred more than 150 times on plenty of others! He continued to act until 1986 when he retired, ultimately passing away from natural causes in 2005 at the age of ninety-two.
Dehner (shown above) was an extremely familiar and prolific character actor from the early 1940s through the late '80s. Capable of playing virtually anything from a steely, heartless villain to a shifty con man, this part of an erudite, somewhat effeminate artist was something of a switch for him, but he's entertaining in it. At the time of filming, he was a regular on the Warner Brothers TV series The Roaring 20's (sic.) He died in 1992 at the age of seventy-six from emphysema and diabetes. Allen (at the left) is likely best known for his role as Buzz Gunderson in Rebel Without a Cause, the tall, dark antagonist to James Dean in the classic film. As the 1960s began to give way to the next decade, he left acting behind, for the most part, and became a very successful TV director (with an occasional movie tossed in.) He retired in 1994 and passed away from the effects of Parkinson's Disease in 2010 at the age of seventy-five.

Enjoying a small, but colorful, role in the movie is Jennifer Howard. She plays Fonda's friend and neighbor who is in strong support of the Chapman research. Howard was the daughter of screenwriter Sidney Howard (who was a key writer on Gone with the Wind) and married Samuel Goldwyn Jr, resulting in a son – Tony Goldwyn – who is a working actor today! Fans of Return to Peyton Place might recall her as Jeff Chandler's wife in that film. She died in 1993 of lung cancer at the age of sixty-eight.

Leachman had, by this time, been steadily acting on TV since 1948, but this was only her fourth movie appearance. In about a decade, she would win an Oscar for The Last Picture Show, thrusting her into a far more high-profile type of career. Not only would she establish a successful collaboration with Mel Brooks in films like Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety, but she would also steal scenes on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which lead to Phyllis, her own sitcom. Now eighty-five, she remains busily working on TV and in movies, continuing with her staggering sixty-five year career!

By this time, Winters had one Oscar under her belt for 1959's The Diary of Anne Frank and would earn another on in 1965 for A Patch of Blue. Having begun working in movies in 1943, she would continue to do so up until 1999, making her career a fifty-three year one. Her other film of 1962 was also notorious. Lolita concerned a seductive teen (with Winters starring as her mother) who carries on with an older man. She continued to appear in many, many movies, quite a few of which were beneath her, though 1972's The Poseidon Adventure was a highlight. Just prior to Chapman, Winters had been working on an Arthur Laurents play with Jane Fonda and Eileen Heckart and walked out before it opened after having several concerns go unheeded. This was her only film with Fonda and she never did one with Heckart, though Heckart won an Oscar for Butterflies Are Free the year Winters was nominated for Poseidon. Chapman marked a joyous reunion for director Cukor and Winters as he had given her her first important role back in 1947's A Double Life, thus kick-starting her fledgling career. She died of heart failure in 2006 at the age of eighty-five.

Fonda was right near the start of a big career. She'd debuted in Tall Story opposite Anthony Perkins in 1960, then had three films released in 1962. Apart from this one, she also starred in Walk on the Wild Side, a camp screamer destined to be profiled here, and Period of Adjustment, a marital comedy with Tony Franciosa (who had recently been divorced from Shelley Winters.) Films of varying types continued, some good, some deliciously bad, until Barbarella in 1968 made her a household name and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? in '69 increased her credibility. She was Academy Award nominated for Horses, but lost to Maggie Smith for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her Oscar-winning role in Klute (1971) made her an actress to be reckoned with and she was nominated five additional times, winning once more in 1979 for Coming Home. Frequently a lady who sublimated herself to her high-profile husbands, she went sexy for Roger Vadim, got serious with Tom Hayden and retired completely as Mrs. Ted Turner, but sixteen year hiatus in 2005 when she did Monster-in-Law (having divorced Turner in 2001.) Now seventy-four, she continues to act in movies that draw her fancy.

Bloom (who is palpably sensual and sensitive here) began working in films with a supporting role in the 1948 British drama The Blind Goddess, but really gleaned the most amount of early fame for 1952's Charlie Chaplin film Limelight. From there, she mostly became a go-to girl for historical epics and other serious fare, though she did do The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm the same year as Chapman. Enamored of Cukor and respectful of his abilities, she stated that not only was she willing to go braless for him in Chapman, but that if he'd asked to to, she'd have also removed her “knickers!” In 1963, she was cast in The Haunting, a chiller that remains famous as a great example of the haunted house genre. In a very ironic twist, both she and Jane Fonda played the exact same character of Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, in competing films released the very same year (1973)! Bloom starred with Anthony Hopkins while Fonda's version placed her opposite Edward Fox. Though Fonda's was screened at that year's Cannes Film Festival, it went directly to television in the U.S. while Bloom's played theaters. Despite a considerable body of work in many well-known films, Miss Bloom was never nominated for an Oscar. Now eighty, she continues to work, one recent example being her portrayal of Queen Mary in 2010's The King's Speech.

South African born Johns acted in British films from the late-'30s until the early-'50s when she transferred to Hollywood, notably working opposite Danny Kaye in 1956's The Court Jester. Her work here is refreshingly bright and amusing. Just her body language alone is award-worthy. The same year she did Chapman, she starred in the oddball, low-budget chiller The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Two years later, she was portraying the mother of the house in Mary Poppins. Johns continued to work, becoming quite adept at playing feisty little old ladies (see The Ref, for a great example!), her last credit to date being cast as Grandma in Superstar in 1999 (about that crazy klutz Mary Katherine Gallagher.) Miss Johns has retired since that, but is still with us at eighty-eight!

The Chapman Report didn't get any love from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but the less-discriminating Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave it four nominations! It was listed as a contender for Best Picture-Drama, Best Director, Best Actress (Glynis Johns) and Best Supporting Actor (Harold J. Stone.) It lost in all of its categories with Golden Globes going instead to Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean for Lawrence of Arabia, Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth and Omar Shariff in Lawrence of Arabia. I'm ashamed to say, but it's completely true, that I'd rather watch The Chapman Report again before attempting Lawrence once more!

"Wild Things," I Think I Love You...

2011-12-29T08:52:00.001-05:00

If you frequent this site, then you know that running into anything close to a contemporary movie (or movie star!) here is a rare event indeed. With a release year of 1998, today's film is probably one of the newest ever to get a turn in the spotlight, though 1998 was, by now, fourteen years ago! Released at a time when I lived near two cinemas (a big, first-run behemoth and a $1.00 admission, second-run joint) and saw probably 60% of all releases, it was a movie I witnessed right upon its debut. I wasn't about to miss it since the advance publicity made it clear that one of the two leading men had a rather shocking nude scene (though I greedily would have liked for both of them do have done one!) The movie was Wild Things and its innate squalor and tawdriness made me a fan from the start.
Wild Things kicks off with atmospheric George S. Clinton music played over shots of swampy Florida Everglades scenery, with carnivorous alligators slithering around in the water. Soon, we come upon a high school situated near the (fictional), ritzy community of Blue Bay. Combination guidance counselor and sailing instructor (!) Matt Dillon is addressing the student body in preparation for a seminar on sex crimes, also preparing the audience for what will be in store in the process. In attendance as guest speakers are local police detectives Kevin Bacon and Daphne Rubin-Vega. In the audience are students Neve Campbell (a “goth” with dark lips and plenty of body art, tough clothing and colorized hair) and Denise Richards (a curvy, pert, ripe blonde who gets easily aroused.) For reasons beyond our understanding, she takes no attention whatsoever in the cute, preppie guy who has obvious interest in her, giving him a quick and nasty, "Fuck OFF!," the first real bit of dialogue in the movie.

After the seminar, Richards requests a ride home from Dillon who obliges (in addition to taking home a male student, Cory Pendergrast - shown below left, as well.) Though all the students seem to like and/or be attracted to Dillon, Pendergrast is perhaps closest to him, suggesting that there might eventually be more to his character than there ultimately is. Richards mocks this relationship somewhat when she looks at Dillon and says, "Can I play, too? Or is it just for boys?" She is revealed to be living in a stunning, waterfront, gated community with her mother Theresa Russell. Ever one to bat her eyes and get her way, she convinces Dillon that she and a friend should come to his house on the upcoming Sunday to wash his Jeep which will be splattered from mud after a fishing trip.

Richards and one of her pals show up to give the Jeep a detailed and very sudsy going over, not unlike the scrubbing that Joy Harmon gave her vehicle in Cool Hand Luke, getting herself all wet while a gaggle of horny chain gang prisoners looked on. She actually looks Dillon in the face and utters the line, “So, where's your hose, Mr. Lombardo?” By the time the Jeep is dried off, Richards is dripping wet herself and she sends her friend away, entering Dillon's house and standing there seductively like the tarty little Lolita she aspires to be. Thing is, she's soon after seen running down the street in distress and then misses school the following day.

Russell gets a call from the school while she happens to be midway through a ravaging sexual encounter with one of her hunky employees. Her limited concern is halted when she spies Richards out on the edge of the ocean skeet-shooting determinedly. Before long, Richards confesses to Russell that she was raped by Dillon and the community is soon up in arms.
What's more, before Dillon can even be interrogated in the matter, Campbell comes forward and announces that she, too, was raped by Dillon and with circumstances similar to Richards' involved in the incident. Dillon hires low-rung attorney Bill Murray and braces himself for the end of his teaching career, all the while serving time in jail with a rather imposing cell mate who greets him with the line, “So you're the new chicken licker...” Shifty Murray wears a neck brace whenever he's in public for fear that an insurance investigator will discover that he's actually quite healthy!

Detective Bacon seems to have it in for Dillon (and the two create a sort of homoerotic, one-upsmanship battle of wills that is, at times, palpable.) They square off, with macho posturing, on a couple of occasions in stare-downs that almost suggest the age-old solution “Come on, guys... Just whip 'em out and let's see who's the bigger man!” Before the movie is over, one of them does just that, but that's later!
Russell has a high-powered, well-connected lawyer on her side (played by none other than Robert Wagner!) and cannot wait to nail Dillon to the wall for his alleged crimes. It turns out that the two of them had once enjoyed a fling of their own, which he refused to reignite despite her pleading. Trouble is, in the heat of the court case, something goes terribly wrong and Dillon is acquitted of all charges. Now the tables have turned and he is in a position to exact his own brand of revenge against the privileged “haves” who treated him like so much pond scum (even Wagner's daughter had been dating Dillon until Wagner put a stop to it.) With Murray's aid, he sues Russell for damages.

This is only a fraction of the story and to go into it more would surely spoil it for those who have yet to see it. Suffice it to say that the script is absolutely riddled with plot twists, steamy sexual encounters, audacious situations and a passel of hooty dialogue. Where else are you going to hear Robert “Jonathan Hart” Wagner say, “It'll be all I can do to keep her fucking little ass out of jail!”?? Russell gets a healthy share of the instantly campy dialogue, too, shouting, “My daughter does NOT get raped in Blue Bay!”
The viewer tries to piece together the virtually incomprehensible plot (which is “explained” in a sequence of scenes shown during the closing credits, filling some of the holes that had remained in the body of the movie in order to retain the element of surprise.) The characters keep folding in on one another (to what is, honestly, a preposterous degree, but we don't particularly care because the performers are attractive to look at, as is the local scenery, and there's a sexual tension resting over everything that keeps us on our toes.)

In a rather startling example of the change in technology over the last decade and a half, there are no cell phones (as we know them) in use, but rather corded landlines and a couple of cordless monstrosities that are hysterically amusing to behold now. Richards, who no doubt would be owning a state-of-the-art phone at her mansion, uses a ginormous cordless phone with a massive circular antenna on it!

There are also a few scenes involving phallic imagery. Dillon takes a free-wheeling ride across the swamps of the Everglades, steering his vehicle with a long, hard staff that he grips boldly (and which is featured in at least one close up.) Also, he later grabs hold of a bubbly bottle of champagne, it's foaming, unable-to-stay-restrained contents constantly threatening to explode, much like the simmering sexual passions of his character. (But, you know, once it begins to come out, there's precious little chance of stopping it! I mean the champagne - or do I?!)

In any case, the film trots along until, finally, the promised moment arrives, Bacon is shown taking a scalding hot shower, enveloped in steam, which clears in time to reveal a rear shot, followed by a side view of the full monty. Kevin's bacon (appropriately finagled with in order to not appear completely flaccid) makes its screen debut. Bacon, an executive producer on the film, had a no-nudity clause in his contract and claimed at the time that he believed the shot would be filmed closer and from the waist up, not back so far that everything would be visible. (Why then didn't he, like 99% of movie actors generally do, cover himself up with moleskin or wear shorts pulled way down during the shooting? I'm a touch skeptical about this story and think that more likely the promise of his nudity ensured that the movie would make back its investment at the box office, thanks to all of his curious fans. The movie did return its cost in ticket sales by over 50%.)

Anyway, on purpose or not, the onscreen moment swiftly became a hot topic. What would have been even hotter was a proposed scene which would have had Dillon JOINING Bacon in said shower for a little bit of interplay! The director finally nixed this idea as being “gratuitous.” Like the entire movie isn't gratuitous in the extreme?! It's just a big, trashy puzzle box, never meant to be taken seriously, so why stop there? We wish the scene had been filmed nevertheless and included as a DVD extra (the “deleted scenes” on the DVD happen to be very lame for the most part.) Like many movies, there were several scenes trimmed down or eliminated prior to the final cut. This shot from Richards' high school graduation is from a scene that doesn't appear in the film as released (nor is it among the DVD's deleted scenes section.)

By this time, Bacon had done much to expand his range as an actor. Having started as a film actor in the hit smash Animal House in 1978, he had trouble capitalizing on its success and retreated to the world of daytime soap operas and exploitation fare like the original Friday the 13th. Thankfully, Diner (in 1982) and the enormous success of Footloose (in 1984) helped to springboard him to bigger things. Some of his major hits before Wild Things included Flatliners, A Few Good Men, The River Wild and Apollo 13 (and of course he had also taken a zesty supporting role in JFK.) Always one with an eye towards avoiding typecasting, he went on to My Dog Skip and The Hollow Man (which included some CGI-augmented frontal nudity from him as well.) He continues to turn in dynamic performances today.

Dillon, having made an impression as a young actor in Little Darlings and My Bodyguard (both 1980) could easily have become just another teen star who later fell out of the limelight, but he also strove to play a variety of parts and, more importantly, sought work with strong directors whenever possible in order to build up his career. Just prior to Wild Things, he'd been part of the comedic ensemble of In & Out, but it was his film after this that gave him a big boost (and further proved his variety as an actor.) There's Something About Mary was a monster smash. Note how this Entertainment Weekly cover publicizing Wild Things has Dillon in his Mary mustache! He later won an Oscar nomination for his supporting work in 2004's Crash (losing to George Clooney in Syriana.) He and Bacon reunited in 2005 when Bacon made his directorial debut with Loverboy. Dillon's Wild Things role had initially belonged to Robert Downey Jr (then in the midst of a serious battle with drugs), but he dropped out, proceeding to film The Gingerbread Man and U.S. Marshalls, the sequel to The Fugitive, instead.

In any event, this is quite possibly the most handsome, for me, that Mr. Dillon has ever been as I have a fondness for chest hair, even if it's clipped down as his is here, and also love men with neatly cropped hair. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that he's sensuously carnal through many of his scenes.

Campbell had made a name for herself on the rather sticky family series Party of Five (1994 – 2000), but was also featured in the Scream movies, playing a nice girl. 1998 was the year she decided to mix things up with a one-two punch of roles that were far removed from her goody two shoes reputation. Wild Things, with its boatload of foul language, racy scenes and bits of violence, certainly fit that bill, but her other film, 54, was plagued by reshoots and extensive cutting in the editing room, removing a large amount of the sordidness and debauchery from it. She has continued to work steadily, one notable role being in The Company in 2003, while returning to the Scream well earlier this year for the fourth installment of the horror franchise.

One actress who was never shy about approaching racy material is Russell. In a part that was initially intended for Cynthia Nixon (who had to give it up in order to return to the shooting of Sex and the City), she has fun enacting her character's outrageous dialogue. She began her film career in 1976 with a supporting part in Elia Kazan's star-filled The Last Tycoon. In 1984, she inherited Anne Baxter's Oscar-winning role in The Razor's Edge, starring Bill Murray (a notorious bust that ensured that her decent work in the film would be seen by few.) In 1985, she won acclaim for Insignificance and two years later scored her first real triumph as an actress, playing the title figure in the Debra Winger thriller Black Widow. That film's success catapulted her into several starring parts, but in films that were less than stellar. She most often worked in her then-husband Nicholas Roeg's films, for better or worse. Still active today, she had a part in 2007's Spider-Man 3 and has acted steadily since.

Though a significant part of Wild Things' success hinges on her performance (which is exceedingly good, actually), Richards was so little-known at the time that she is fifth-billed. As a teen, she had done television guest roles on shows like Life Goes On, Saved by the Bell, Doogie Houser, M.D. and Beverly Hills, 90210. She continued to work on TV, with the occasional movie role until she was selected to costar in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi extravaganza Starship Troopers. That was the film of hers prior to Wild Things. By this time, she was twenty-seven years old (!), but was not nearly as unbelievable as a high school student as many others have been through the years. She went on to the beauty pageant spoof Drop Dead Gorgeous and then to the James Bond film The World is Not Enough, where her role as a nuclear physicist had many a critic's tongue wagging. Since then, though she has continued to act, most of the attention given her has been due to her marriage to and divorce from Charlie Sheen and the never-ending carousel of lunacy which that has entailed.

This was quite a big step for stage actress Rubin-Vega in terms of visibility and role size in the movies. Most of her prior onscreen parts had been bits. She saunters around in a series of inappropriately snug skirts and high heels, as if she's gunning for the lead in a revamped rendition of the old cable detective series Silk Stalkings! She was one of the original cast members of Broadway's smash hit Rent, but her pregnancy at the time of filming prevented her from appearing in the film version that came out in 2005 (Rosario Dawson landing her part instead.) Though she has continued to make film appearances, her primary focus has remained on her music and stage career.

Wagner, who had been a busy and popular 20th Century Fox actor in the 1950s before turning to television where he remained successful, had been making only the most brief and sporadic appearances in movies since the early '80s. 1997 marked the year he worked in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, which helped lead to other things, including today's film. Since then, he's been a more frequent actor in features, though, apart from the Austin Powers flicks, not in anything of too much note.

Murray, legendary in the field of comedy for his work on Saturday Night Live (from 1977 – 1980) and a string of hit movies (including Meatballs, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day) was just about to enter a new realm of success as a quirky leading man in films like 1998's Rushmore and 2003's Lost in Translation (for which he was given and Oscar nomination as Best Actor, the winner being Sean Penn for Mystic River.) In Wild Things, he brings a sly, understated sense of the absurd to his role that is most welcome. Many laugh-out-loud moments crop up simply at the way he handles the simplest of moments.

Also popping up in Wild Things is Carrie Snodgress, a woman who earned an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for only her second real movie role (she'd been an uncredited bit player beforehand in Easy Rider and had played in Rabbit, Run with James Caan.) 1971's showcase Diary of a Mad Housewife then put her on the Hollywood map (though the Academy Award went that year to Glenda Jackson for Women in Love), but afterwards, she gave it all up to live with musician Neil Young and have their son. She returned in 1978 with Brian De Palma's The Fury, but to little fanfare. Though she did manage to act steadily in movies and on TV from then on, she was dead of heart and liver failure in 2004 at the age of fifty-eight. Her role in Wild Things, of a smoky, tacky sideshow proprietress, provides a fun dollop of camp to the proceedings. (In an alternate ending, she was to have an even more prominent presence.)

While the movie was a success at the box office, it really took flight on home video, where viewers could salivate over his or her object of desire in the privacy of home and with the freeze-frame button of the remote control handy. This success led to a series of straight-to-video sequels, none of which had any of the original stars in them, though they were all set in the same fictional south Florida locale. Though Wild Things director John McNaughton had previously helmed Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Mad Dog and Glory, his career went more towards television after this. There was talk in 2006 of a new film with Campbell and Richards (not a sequel) to be called “Backstabbers,” but it never materialized.

One must approach Wild Things with the right attitude, expecting nothing of substance and just absorbing the sensual and lascivious atmosphere along with the sometimes uproarious dialogue delivered by a game cast. The music, believe it or not, sometimes evokes Bernard Hermann's classic score from Vertigo! This is especially true in some of the courtroom scenes. I am certainly not known for finding women sexually attractive, but I must say that Denise Richards comes about as close as one could get here. Then there's Matt Dillon, looking about as good as he ever has. For a good/bad night at the movies, I can heartily recommend this.

Festive Holiday Greetings from The Underworld!

2011-12-25T01:00:00.001-05:00

I'll be back soon to go on (and on!) about something related to classic TV and the movies, but in the meantime, here are a random collection of shots relating to the holidays that I thought you might like to see. Some are routine, some are quite unusual, a couple are a tad bizarre! Best wishes to all, no matter what it is, if anything, you are celebrating!

Have Yourself a "Mary" Little Christmas...

2011-12-22T11:10:00.001-05:00

Christmas is nearly upon us and that means I will be away from The Underworld for just a bit. Things are still chugging along furiously as I finish up the baking, wrapping and, more importantly, partying! My initial thought for this post was to throw out a bunch of gay men ("Mary!"), but then I decided to run with a different theme. There are a lot of Marys (the kind actually named that!) in the TV, movie, music and other celebrity world and I probably forgot some, but this is a healthy collection! See how many you know and if there are some you don't but who seem intriguing to you, look 'em up! I'm sure they would love to be excavated and thought about once more (though even I don't necessarily adore every single one of these gals myself! I just try to be a completist as much as possible...)

Christmas Comes Early to The Underworld!

2011-12-20T14:45:00.002-05:00

I mentioned at the start of my last post that I had a “tremendous” weekend in store, though, at the time, I couldn't be completely sure that that would be an apt description of it. It certainly was, however! You know, living out here in “flyover country,” the opportunities to rub elbows with people of any sort of note run slim. I've been fortunate, mostly thanks to my efforts in the theatre, to bump into a few celebrities, but not too many. Thus, whenever a chance comes by to meet with anyone famous, I'm usually in there churning with the rest of the crowd! As has sometimes occurred here in the past, this will be a more personal posting than usual, but you know that I would never waste your time unless there was also a celebrity presence as well.

I'm already busy, working full time from 7:30 – 4:30 (okay, 7:33 – 4:28) and filling in at the Zoo several nights a week for seasonal work, so I've been pulled every which way as I try to shop, decorate the abode, make holiday cookies and so on. I never read the paper, but a friend alerted me to an article heralding the arrival of an Oscar-winning actor and a former Miss America to our city. What's more, the event in question was to take place barely a mile from my house!

As it turns out, Norwood, Ohio, the town I've been living in for about 8 years, is the birthplace of dancer-turned-actor George Chakiris, legendary for his Oscar-winning work as Bernardo, leader of The Sharks, in West Side Story. That film having recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, there have been several events to mark the occasion, including a feet-and-hands-in-cement photo op at Graumann's Chinese Theater involving Chakiris, Rita Moreno (who likewise won an Oscar for the film) and Russ Tamblyn. Now, the place of Chakiris' birth was extending a welcome home to its famous offspring. Knowing my affection for the stars whose time in the sun has dimmed, you understand there was no way I was going to miss it!
On Friday, December 16th, the local middle school was home to a program designed to honor him. As it was held in the middle of the day, I had to arrange to get off work in order to attend. I will always be happy that I did so. I was able to slither into a third row seat as the emcee for the event, Miss America 1955 Miss Lee Meriwether, proceeded to screen clips of his work, ask questions of him (posed by the students) and helped to bring several of his qualities and achievements to light. He was presented with not only a plaque and a certificate, but also a statuette, along with having the day officially declared George Chakiris Homecoming Day by the mayor.

In the course of the presentation (the school stage bedecked by students for the Christmas season), it was revealed that Chakiris was born in Norwood, to parents of Turkish descent, on September 16th of 1934. His family owned and operated a combination confectionery and beer garden which they also lived above. He revealed a funny story about himself that had often been told amongst his family members: that once, at only one-and-a-half years of age and in the care of his older sister, he wanted to get dressed, but as his mother was already downstairs working at the store, he simply gathered up his clothes and trotted down there completely naked!

His family moved in the wake of the 1937 flood (a serious event that put Cincinnati partially underwater for a time!), fleeing to Arizona, where it was plenty dry. Thus, he did not reside in the town long and had only fleeting memories. It had been more than seven decades since his last visit. Coming back to the place of his birth was a touching experience for him.

Mr. Chakiris is seventy-seven years old at present! Time marches on, but regardless of that fact, he is in terrific shape. (When he visited his parents' old store after the ceremony, he was able to effortlessly put his leg up on the outside railing in an amusing, impromptu exercise! He also lifted Miss Moreno up off her feet during that cement ceremony in Tinseltown.) He offered many insightful and encouraging answers to the sometimes interesting-sometimes dull questions. His appearance as a dancer in White Christmas was highlighted and he explained that when the film came out, people kept writing to Paramount wanting to see more of “the boy Rosemary Clooney leans on” during “Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me.” So great was the fan mail that he was able to gain further film work, leading eventually to his signature role in West Side.
Other clips shown were from Flight from Ashiya, The Young Girls of Rochefort, a live Cole Porter tribute with terrific singing and dancing and a hysterical, mid-'70s, British variety show performance with a disco duded-out Chakiris swizzling around a bevy of dancing girls while singing (if I remember right, I was catatonic during it) "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

Though he worked with Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Lana Turner and many others, he cites Jerome Robbins as by far the most memorable, influential and meaningful person with whom he ever worked. The taxing standards that Robbins held the performers to in West Side Story are legendary. (In fact, the exacting choreographer was fired after about 60% of the filming had been done because of production delays, reshooting and re-imagining of choreography that had been rehearsed for three months prior!)

Later in the day, he went to see his first house above the aforementioned store and also the birth home of fellow White Christmas performer Vera-Ellen, who, remarkably, was also born in Norwood, about two blocks from my current residence! Interestingly, both Chakiris and Vera-Ellen (sixteen years his senior) were born in the same neighborhood while Clooney was born just 60 miles away in Maysville, Kentucky, yet they all found themselves working together in White Christmas in 1954. (Miss Doris Day is from Evanston, Ohio, a scant mile or two down the road from Norwood. In fact, she and Vera-Ellen used to carpool to dance class together as youths, making this quite a fertile breeding ground for musical performers!)

Miss Meriwether, the first Miss America ever to be crowned on television, worked with Chakiris in two productions of The King and I, which helps to explain her connection to the event. (Actually, since this was a dual event, the second half of which I will get to in a moment, there was another connection involving another Miss America, making the weekend a triangle of criss-crossing connections!) Meriwether is seventy-six and looks positively marvelous, a fact that sadly isn't done justice in my photos. Wisely sporting chic, silver hair and still maintaining a trim, attractive figure, she wore makeup in a makeupless way that just gave her a fresh, clean appearance. Her eyes are bluer than blue. A true lady, in an era when ladies are not so easy to come by any more, she nevertheless has a healthy sense of humor as well.

Following the ceremony, I was able to hob-nob with Meriwether and, lacking any sense of shame or pretense, went directly into explaining my love of Barnaby Jones, the TV series she costarred in from 1973 to 1980. I told of sitting on my grandfather's knee, watching the show, and being petrified during the time she was kidnapped (she was able to recall three such incidents: one involving Gary Lockwood and another with Alan Fudge, but not the third culprit.) I told her how my grandmother commented, “Well, of course, she has to fall down!” as Meriwether attempted an escape, followed by “They have to rescue her soon, there are only five minutes left!”

I then revealed how I'd seen Meriwether in so many projects, including the (screaming) 1978 TV-movie Cruise Into Terror, in which she played John Forsythe's wife on a yacht that is carrying a mysterious sarcophagus. Allow me to list some of the other cast members: Dirk Benedict, Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Ray Milland, Hugh O'Brian and Stella Stevens! She wryly replied that some things might be better off forgotten to which I said, “Not this one, honey! I have it on VHS and would never part with it!” She seemed startled that such a tape would exist, but used copies of it sell on eBay from $20 to $40 depending on the day!!

Not finished toying with her yet, I explained that I had brought a photo to sign, but left it in the car because I didn't realize I would have the chance to meet her this way. As I described it, a stunning portrait from a Sarah Coventry jewelry ad of the 1960s, she said, “Ah... yes, I lost that in the earthquake.” I said, “Your jewelry?!” and she replied, “No... my mother had taken that picture and decopaged it for me, but during the earthquake, it was crushed when a shelf fell down.” Well, I decided right then and there that I was going to find a way to get that picture for her somehow (the one I brought was merely a color-printing on office paper!)

The other guest of honor at this shindig was Miss America 2000, Heather French Henry, a stunning young lady whose chic looks and solid talent would not be denied the year of the millennium and who remains Kentucky's only winner of the crown in the pageant's long history. With her atypical short, brown hair and wearing gowns that bucked the trends of the day back then, Henry was a completely fresh take on the title and remains a popular figure within the organization. Not one to come up with a socially relevant platform just for the pageant only to abandon it thereafter, Henry has long been a tireless advocate for wounded U.S. veterans and still travels the country today to further that cause. She also aids her husband in keeping the memory of that sterling vocalist Rosemary Clooney alive with the ownership and operation of The Rosemary Clooney Museum in Augusta, Kentucky, a riverfront town where Clooney resided for a couple of decades.

Henry was present at the Chakiris ceremony as well and was forced to chit-chat with me once more for what was by now our third time meeting. I had made something of an impression on her years ago when, at the opening of the museum, I sang, “There she is...” to her on the back patio and proceeded to describe how Mary Ann Mobley did a striptease variant to “There'll Be Some Changes Made” during her talent competition in 1958, causing her to soar to the winning spot, leaving poor third-place Anita Bryant in the dust, peeling an orange. (The rules were changed the next year, prohibiting the ladies from removing parts of their costume during the talent segment!)

Henry and I were reminiscing about this as I was preparing to have my picture taken with Miss Meriwether and I pointed out to Meriwether that she had been a color-commentator on that night in '58. Again, she was startled at my knowledge and I mindlessly began crooning the song and carelessly did “the bump” from the bump and grind right onto Meriwether's hip!! It was only later that I realized I might have injured this woman nearing eighty (who looks more like sixty!)

Getting to Chakiris was more difficult because he was swarmed with cougars (just how old do you have to be to play cougar to a seventy-seven year-old man?!) and with out-of-the-woodwork relatives, real and false. Some of them were bearing armloads of photos, videos, yearbooks, you name it... I did finally grapple onto him, though it was rather brief. I told him that I hoped he took it as a compliment that I expected him to look much older than he did!

This portion done, I wondered if I was going to be able to take part in the second scheduled event of the weekend. Miss Henry was about to unveil a new costume from White Christmas down at The Rosemary Clooney Museum (Vera-Ellen's sequined get-up from the “Mandy” number) and Chakiris and Meriwether were invited to join. They would be signing autographs from 3:00 – 5:00, taking part in the annual holiday parade and enjoying a VIP dinner at a local restaurant. Thing was, I was scheduled to work at the Zoo from 5:00 – 9:00 and couldn't risk driving to Augusta and not getting back home in time!

It was Saturday morning around 10:15 when I found out I had my Zoo shift covered and I immediately started planning to head to the museum by about 1:30. I located the picture of Lee Meriwether I wanted to give her and intended to print it off at a local store, frame it, and give it to her for Christmas. I transferred it to my camera's memory card and zipped off to the copy store. I was horrified to learn that somehow it didn't work out and so I had to race back home and try it again. AGAIN it didn't translate (I have done this at least ten other times without issue. I still don't know what went wrong...) so that plan went down the drain.

I then packed my shoes, pants, t-shirt, sweater, etc... and tore off to the gym, where I planned to walk on the treadmill for a while and then get ready. Not wanting to have to park in the lot, a block away, which would mean a lot of wind and so on when coming out, I used a meter, something I never do. I was stunned that a quarter only got me 8 minutes! (We are used to cheaper parking in these here parts.) I finally loaded the damn thing and went inside. As I was finishing up and getting dressed, I knew I didn't want to put the sweater on just then because I was hot and the place was steamy. I draped it over my gym bag and headed out to the car.

Only - SURPRISE – the meter was flashing red and a police car was less than a block away, preparing to land on me! I darted to the car, threw my stuff inside and tore away as soon as possible to avoid getting a ticket. About 20 minutes into my trip to Augusta, I realized I had enough time to stop for an iced tea, so I swerved into a drive-thru. It was then that I realized the disaster of the morning... In my haste to get into the car, I'd DROPPED my brand-new, worn-once-at-Thanksgiving, rust, cream and brown ski sweater into the street!!!!!!!! I was too far away to go back and see what had become of it and, worst of all, had NOTHING to wear to the museum!

On the way, I spotted a discount store. Let's talk about impulse purchases. At 2:06, I parked my car in the busy, Christmas-shopper-filled lot. At 2:13, I pulled out of the lot wearing a new (passable) sweater! I was finally off again, determined to be there for another encounter with the stars.

The Rosemary Clooney Museum is located in her former residence, a 19th century brick home right on the Ohio River. The small town of Augusta is dotted with wondrous old homes (such as the one shown here - NOT the museum, but just another residence) that are decked out splendidly for the holidays. The riverfront I refer to was used during the filming of the mammoth 1978 miniseries Centennial and Augusta was done over as old St. Louis, Missouri. This is the place where George Clooney's parents and sister have made their home and he is an occasional visitor there. (It is common to find portraits and framed magazine covers of this other George in many of the town's antique shops and restaurants as he is generally quite beloved by the citizens there.) In fact, George Clooney was an uncredited extra in Centennial, one of many citizens recruited to help fill in the bustling scenes taking place in the faux city.

The museum houses hordes of memorabilia from Rosemary's career from albums to posters to programs to photographs. Then, there is an ever-expanding collection of costumes from the handful of movies in which she starred. Dresses from The Stars Are Singing, Here Come the Girls and Red Garters are on display alongside both of the gowns from the “Sisters” number of White Christmas. There is even one of the ostrich-feather fans framed and mounted above them. Her sequined gloves from “Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me” are there as are painstakingly-recreated renditions of the red and white finale gowns (the originals deteriorated beyond salvaging) that Heather French Henry and her mother made by watching the film frame-by-frame countless times. Other movie costar costumes for people such as Bob Hope, Anna Maria Alberghetti and Mary Wickes are also onhand. Some of Vera-Ellen's obviously tiny movie clothes are there as well, though it must be said that Rosie's are very trim, too, as she was quite slender in the 1950s. The overflowing house also has a room devoted to George Clooney and one with many pieces of Henry's Miss America publicity and memorabilia. This was the site of round two of my weekend adventure and it would prove to be the most memorable of all.

When I arrived, the limo with Chakiris and Meriwether had not yet made it to the museum, so I was able to share my parking meter/sweater disaster with Henry and a gaggle of bemused onlookers. When the guests of honor arrived, they were greeted by Rosemary's brother (and George's father) Nick Clooney along with other relatives and close friends. Then the “Mandy” costume was unveiled, housed in a cabinet next to one from a chorus girl in the same number.

Following this, there was a stream of autograph seekers, ready to meet Chakiris and Meriwether up close and personal. You get only one guess as to who was first in line! I was crestfallen at not being able to present Meriwether with the picture I had tried to frame, but I had my original one on paper to show her and have her sign, which she happily did. When I turned it around, I exclaimed, “Look how beautiful!” and Chakiris agreed, then I said, “...but she wasn't the only one” whereupon I sprung the photo of him that I had selected, a shot from Kings of the Sun, in which he was wearing a skimpy Incan warrior costume! This produced healthy laughter from both of them. They are shown below simultaneously signing my pictures.
Not wanting to take up too much time, I segued into the other room where I happened upon Debbi Bush Whiting. Name ring a bell at all? It turns out that she is the daughter of ragtime and honky-tonk pianist and composer Lou Busch (the c was added to his name by him for distinction) and '40s and '50s vocalist Margaret Whiting! Again, never failing to humiliate myself for a laugh, I proceeded to remark that Margaret had appeared in the finale of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (which Debbi says she was hornswaggled into as a favor during a shopping spree) and had provided Susan Hayward's vocals in Valley of the Dolls (I even tossed out a bit of “I'll Plant My Own Tree” for good measure!)

We had fun hanging out, chit-chatting and so forth and you just know that after a while I couldn't help but ask her about her infamous step-father of fifteen years (and her mother's companion for far longer than that) Jack Wrangler! I won't betray that confidence (not that anything bad was said) but I can tell you that she appears in the documentary on him called Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, so perhaps some of her reflections are revealed within that movie. She is a vivacious, savvy, funny lady who bears a degree of resemblance around the mouth to her mother.

When the long, long line of fans had dwindled, I went back for another serving of Chakiris and Meriwether. I just HAD to have more conversations with them at the expense of any of my own pride. Meriwether looked at me with a resigned, “oh dear” glance that was followed by a bemused smile. This time, I got down on one knee, to be close to eye-level, and asked a few burning questions. I quizzed Chakiris on the decision to make “America,” one of the most exhilarating musical numbers of West Side Story (or of ANY film!) a battle of the sexes rather than the all-girl version that had been originated on the stage. He said that such an idea came from the screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who later took the limited and two-dimensional book of another Broadway success and helped turn it into the phenomenal smash The Sound of Music, also directed by West Side's Robert Wise.) This sparked a conversation about the dynamics of the number that somehow led to my revealing the story of how Doris Day and Vera-Ellen used to attend dance class together until a fateful car accident led Day to pursue singing instead.

I turned to Meriwether and asked if she had ever had the opportunity to meet George Clooney. (I, myself, have only been about ten feet from him, unable to penetrate the teeming crowds of fans who were swarming him, though I did get lucky enough to secure 2 of only 200 awarded tickets to attend the premiere of one of his films, which he personally introduced beforehand. This picture of him from that day at least signifies that he looked at me! How's that for the name of a book or a movie? "George Clooney Looked at Me!") She said that, no, she hadn't had the pleasure, to which I responded, “Well, you got to meet William Shatner, so there's that anyway....” Ha!

From there, the event was over and the participants retired to a local cafe where they could enjoy some warm drinks before appearing in the annual parade and heading to the $75/plate dinner. (Shown here is the exterior of the museum.) Seeing as how I had already missed half a day of work, skipped a shift at the Zoo, spent gas money to drive an hour or more round trip AND purchased a brand new sweater for the occasion, I figured I had better quit while I was ahead!

As I told these people in person, it is so special to meet someone whose work has meant something to you over the years (and not be disappointed!) George Chakiris was a startling dancer and remarkable actor in one of the most beloved movie musicals ever. He was an eye-poppingly handsome star in several movies thereafter as well, all of which I have seen. In person, he couldn't have been more considerate, patient, humble or kind. Almost completely retired from acting now, with a burgeoning silversmith jewelry business, he is enjoying the quiet life. Miss Meriwether, despite an Emmy nomination and two Golden Globe nominations, is an underrated performer who possesses so much warmth, grace and elegance. Having worked on The Time Tunnel, Star Trek, the Batman movie (in which she was Catwoman) and other cult projects, one would think that she'd be more heavily utilized in guest appearances on sci-fi series. I'm told that she does have a small role in an episode of the upcoming season of Desperate Housewives (a show I've never seen except to briefly check out Shirley Knight once) in the can. Santa can skip my house this year as I already got the best Christmas present I could ever have hoped for when I spent part of the weekend with these two lovely stars.

Pop Quiz: Sibling Revelry

2011-12-16T09:10:00.002-05:00

Back by popular demand (not!), we have another edition of Pop Quiz. (It's really coming about because I am facing down a tremendous weekend and want to leave a little something more simple here before I dive in so that The Underworld isn't dormant again for a long stretch! Perhaps if nothing else, you may like some of the pictures or the trivia.)

In this edition, you will be given the photograph of a person who has acted in TV or movies, maybe a lot, maybe a very little, and then be asked to name his or her famous sibling (who will also be an actor or actress of note.) Some of the celebs in the clue are less famous than their brother or sister, some are about the same in notability, some are more famous that their relative, though in most of them I have attempted to hold back the slightly more famous persons. Answers are at the bottom of the post!

1. Lord, this one should be a gimme for anyone with even a passing interest in classic films. This lady is the younger sister (by just over a year) to a two-time Oscar-winning actress. She has one herself, though, and won hers first! This event seemed to enflame an already simmering resentment between the two that eventually snowballed into many years of estrangment and discord. The ladies are still plugging along today at ages ninety-five and ninety-six!

2. This leading man of films of the '40s and mid-'50s, some quite classic, dealing with lynching, murder and post-war adjustment, eventually had to face up to a serious drinking problem. His first wife, and the mother of two of his children, died after just three years together, but his second marriage lasted fifthy-three years until his death. A brother fifteen years his junior later became a film and (mostly) TV actor, especially hitting his stride in the '70s as the lead in a popular police show. The actor shown died in 1992 at age eighty-three. The brother is eighty-seven at present.

3. This gentleman worked in films from 1940 to 1964, though he is primarily known for a run of mid-'40s films about a spy with an aviary name. His Oscar-winning brother, about two years younger than he, was better known than him and worked in more (and more better known) and more enduring films. The brother actually originated the role that the man shown here was known for, but, once he grew tired of the part, he passed it along to his sibling! The actor shown here died in 1967 at the age of sixty-two. The brother committed suicide in 1972 at the age of sixty-five.

4. This gentleman worked in films for a while in the late '40s and mid-'50s, but is chiefly known for headlining one of television's all-time popular and long-running shows. In fact, he appeared in 635 episodes of the show! His brother, less than three years younger, had a very busy, if unremarkable, 1950s film career of his own, but is also chiefly known as the lead actor of a popular TV show. He only filmed a comparatively less impressive 143 episodes of his, though. That number is 178 if you count his work in the updated rendition of the show that premiered fifteen years after the original series' cancellation. The actor pictured died earlier this year at eighty-eight while the brother died last year at eighty-three.

5. This lady began working in films at the tender age of seven, though her film career proper mostly took place in the 1920s and '30s. A 1935 marriage signaled the beginning of the end of her career aspirations, though it must have been worth it since they remained wed until the man's death forty-one years later. She occasionally appeared in a movie after that and also guest-starred a few times on her younger sister's (by under three years) highly popular anthology series. The Oscar-winning sister was a major movie star from the '30s through the early '50s before segueing highly successfully into TV. The ladies actually appeared together once as sisters (along with their own two other sisters as well!) in a 1939 biographical film starring Don Ameche. The lady shown died in 1997 at the age of eighty-seven while the more famous actress died at the very same age in 2000.

6. The man shown here worked as a young boy in several films before embarking on a 1950s film career. He then costarred in a very popular television western show from 1957 to 1962, trading off story lines with a fellow actor who went on to even greater fame. After that, he mostly stuck to guest roles, even showing up twice on his famous ex-costar's private eye series in 1977. He had a sister six years his senior who had enjoyed a very healthy stage career and had also worked in filmd throughout the early to mid-'40s. In 1956, she was Oscar-nominated for the (now somewhat campy!) film adaptation of one of her big stage hits, though strangely this simultaneously marked the end of her movie career. (There were close to a dozen TV appearances acattered over the years afterwards, though.) He died in 1992 at age sixty-five while she lived to be seventy-three, passing away in 1995.

7. This actress made her mark on the Broadway stage and proceeded to act in 1950s films and a healthy amount of television. When her opportunities as an actress in feature films dwindled, she worked in supporting roles in films of her far more famous brother in 1963 and 1966. Though she never became truly famous in her own right, she figures into one of the all-time camp classics of the cinema, playing the shocked witness to a bout of serious mother-daughter fighting. She died in 2005 at the age of eighty-six, out-living her five years younger brother by about a year and a half. The brother is one of the most heralded actors in the history of cinema, a twice Oscar-winning gent who sat at the top of Hollywood before social issues led him to hold the entire place in disdain. Though he continued to act, sometimes to great acclaim, his one handsome looks were buried under a serious weight gain.

8. You would likely have to have seen one particular bad/good horror film (starring Vincent Price) to know this actress. It was also her final credited screen role. She had appeared briefly in The High and the Mighty in 1954 and also as an uncredited slave girl in Cecil B. DeMille's classic The Ten Commandments in 1956, but was never able to get a foothold in the business the way her far more famous brother did. The brother, three years her junior, had a staggering, lengthy career with many memorable parts including soldiers, sheriffs, deranged killers and private detectives, to mention just a few. Famous for his rebellious attitude, he was popular, but only received one Oscar nomination in his career. He died in 1997 at the age of seventy-nine. She lived on to 2003, dying at age eighty-eight.

9. This curvaceous cutie is practically unknown to most of the world at hand, though she did costar on a television comedy series for a span of six years. In a more than unique twist, the show actually ran from 1982 to 1983, but was then revamped and reinstated from 1986 to 1988. She made 85 episodes in all. The series marks her sole list of credits as an on-camera actress. Just as unique is the fact that she won the job in the first place because her sister (a woman twelve years older than she) had originated the role in the big-screen movie that inspired the series. The sister was and is a multi-talented superstar who has worked in close to every form of entertainment. Both ladies are still alive today.

10. The young lady strutting her stuff here tried her hand at acting in the late-'50s and early-'60s, mostly in smaller roles. Her big sister (four and a half years her senior) had already broken into the movies and was becoming a successful star on their home turf. Though she was signed to a major studio and worked steadily, big time movie stardom eluded her. It was later in her life that she became a household name and an internationally-recognized celebrity. As for the girl pictured, she tried a different approach to her career and (partly thanks to the premature death of one of that field's leading lights, whose working style was very similar) found massive success. Both of these ladies are still with us.

~~ Don't scroll further if you're still in guessing mode! ~~

The answers to these quiz questions are below. Below the answers are side-by-side shots of the siblings in question, in the order they were described above! Thanks for playing and have a great weekend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Miss Joan Fontaine and Miss Olivia de Havilland

2. Dana Andrews (of The Ox-Box Incident, Laura and The Best Years of Our Lives) and Steve Forrest (of S.W.A.T. and other TV shows.)

3. Tom Conway (best known as The Falcon) and George Sanders (from All About Eve and many other classic films.)

4. James Arness (of Gunsmoke) and Peter Graves of (Mission: Impossible.)

5. Sally Blane and Loretta Young (who worked with their other sisters in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell.)

6. Jack Kelly of Maverick (costarring James Garner, later of The Rockford Files) and Nancy Kelly of The Bad Seed.

7. Jocelyn Brando (Redbook magazine reporter Barbara Bennett in Mommie Dearest) and Marlon Brando.

8. Julie Mitchum (of The House on Haunted Hill) and Robert Mitchum (Oscar nominee for The Story of G.I. Joe and star of Cape Fear and many other movies.)

9. Rachel Dennison of Nine to Five and Dolly Parton of Nine to Five.

10. Jackie Collins (successful novelist in the vein of Jacqueline Susann) and Joan Collins (20th Century Fox starlet who later played Alexis on Dynasty.)

I'll Give You Two Good Reasons...

2011-12-14T16:32:00.001-05:00

Good grief, we've been busy in The Underworld! Lots of last minute preparations for the upcoming holidays. Everything is rush, rush, rush! And I'm working a seasonal job for additional Christmas cash, so my nights have been full, too. But I know you don't want to hear me continue to grouse about all that.

Today, in the spirit of holiday shopping, we're having a “2-for-1 Sale” in The Underworld. I'm going to take a look at two actors, very often mistaken as twins, who enjoyed a spurt of popularity in the 1950s and '60s. I'm also going to do my very best to always tell them apart, something I'm getting better at, but have always had trouble with previously, so if I accidentally misidentify one, it's unintentional of course!

On November 30, 1928, an American couple staying in Berlin, Germany on business, gave birth to a son. Little Rex George Reason Jr. (shown here) was named after his father. The family soon returned to their home in Glendale, California and on April 19, 1930, a little brother, Rhodes Reason, was born. Both boys would grow up to be 6'2”, virile, manly men with warm, resonant voices (in Rex's case, it was also extremely deep!)

Centered as they were in the movie capital of the world, their mother recognized their potential as handsome actors from an early age and encouraged them to pursue the craft. Rex (I'll be using their first names in this post for obvious reasons!) played the lead in his high school production of "Seventh Heaven," but when he turned seventeen, he enlisted in the army to take part in WWII. The war soon over, he came back home and began to take further interest in acting. He worked at the Pasadena Playhouse, where his good looks won him leading man roles and, in time, gained the attention of movie producers.

He began to land some bit roles with various studios in films such as Scaramouche (1952) and Salome (1953.) Already in 1952, he had the lead in the minor movie Storm Over Tibet, playing a supply plane pilot whose friend takes his place on one trip only to wind up missing and presumed dead. He and the man's widow Diana Douglas (Kirk's ex-wife and the mother of Michael Douglas) return to the scene of the disappearance and delve into what happened to him. The next year, he had a supporting part in Mission Over Korea, which starred John Hodiak and John Derek. Rex married in 1952 for the first time, a union that would last until 1960 and produce two children.
Rhodes (shown here, of course), though he started acting professionally a tad later at age eighteen when he worked on Charles Laughton's production of "Romeo and Juliet," actually broke into screen acting first, albeit the small screen of televison. In 1951, he worked in an episode of the series Stars Over Hollywood with Raymond Burr, Cameron Mitchell and the glorious Steve Reeves. After this, though, it would be 1955 before he appeared before the cameras again. Pretty much from the outset, Rex was a movie actor while Rhodes was seen more on TV. They would both straddle the two mediums, but Rex won a contract with Universal and got something of a build-up there while Rhodes worked mostly for the independent, and usually low-budget, Bel-Air Productions.

When Universal signed Rex in 1954, he was cast in the Douglas Sirk-directed curiosity Taza, Son of Cochise. Starring Rock Hudson as the title character and Barbara Rush as his love interest, the story centered on Hudson wanting to retain peace while his fiery half-brother (Rex) wanted to exact revenge on the white man. All of the principles were covered in dark make-up. Rex was done up in Apache drag, his piercing blue eyes at odds with the dark skin and wig he was given (though it must be said that this was a standard practice of the day. That same year, light-eyed Burt Lancaster and Jean Peters starred in Apache.)

Though they don't really look alike, it is sometimes hard to tell Rock and Rex apart at first glance, they're both shaved down, bewigged and slathered in body make-up! Despite the fact that Rex was a healthy, fit, well-built young man, he didn't seem to do very much beefcake. (Similarly, with a few exceptions, Rhodes didn't either!) The Technicolor film was released in 3-D, then enjoying a blast of popularity at the movies. He was billed here (and described in the movie's trailer) as Bart Roberts. It's hard to understand what the powers that be at Universal found unacceptable about the name Rex Reason, which sounds like a movie star name, that would lead them to re-dub him. Rex hated the fake moniker and bristled at its use.

Rex possessed the most wonderful deep, rich voice that was put to use as a narrator on a few films including Saskatchewan and Sign of the Pagan (both 1954.) For his second Universal film, he was again billed as Bart Roberts. The film was Yankee Pasha and he played a Moroccan who takes the flame-haired Rhonda Fleming into his band of slaves, much to the dismay of her beloved mountaineer boyfriend Jeff Chandler. Chandler leaves Massachusetts to rescue her from Rex's clutches. Playing a villain, Rex was outfitted with a flattering goatee and a variety of bejewelled turbans and other headgear.

By 1955 and Smoke Signal, he had demanded the right to use his own name and Bart Roberts slid away into the annals of film history, to be generally forgotten. (He had appeared in one episode of Lux Video Theatre under the name as well in 1954.) Smoke Signal was a cavalry versus Indians tale that had him battling star Dana Andrews for the attentions of Piper Laurie while trying to navigate a dangerous river that is under threat of attack by some Ute Indians.

Two brotherly career paths collided briefly in 1955 when Rhodes made his (uncredited) film debut in Lady Godiva of Coventry in which Rex had a supporting role (with his hair lightened in color.) It would mark the only time the Reason brothers worked in the same film or TV show. Maureen O'Hara essayed the title role while George Nader played her husband. They enacted a "Taming of the Shrew"-like battle of the sexes until political circumstances led to her legendary semi-nude ride through town (which, as you can imagine in 1955, was not terribly revealing.)

Rex's most famous film by far came out in 1955 as well. This Island Earth was heralded at the time of its release for the quality of its special effects and for the overall way its science-fiction elements were presented (at a time when virtually all sci-fi was cheap and aimed at the kiddies. The benchmark Forbidden Planet was still one year away.) Fifty years later, however, the movie was pared down and mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000, proving that state of the art only lasts as long as it takes for the next and (presumably) better thing to come out.

Rex played a scientist enlisted to help a race of dying aliens, being helped by fellow scientist Faith Domergue, only to discover that the “endangered” aliens are actually plotting to conquer the Earth! Top-billed Jeff Morrow portrayed one of the less threatening members of the alien race. Domergue reported later that her pants were so tight that underwear underneath them was impossible. A female dresser had to help her into them! Unfortunately, we couldn't get that lucky with Sexy Rexy. Good or bad, the movie has endured as a cult favorite among fans of classic sci-fi and Rex Reason is best remembered for having costarred in it.

Now consistently playing third-billed leads, he joined Jack Palance and Barbara Rush in Kiss of Fire, the story of a Spanish duke (Reason) enlisting the aid of a roguish outlaw (Palance) in bringing a princess (Rush) from New Mexico back to Spain in order to claim her title as the king lies dying. As the necessary conflict, there are Mexican officials who do not want her to reach her destination as they favor a different heir to the throne. Next was Raw Edge, a western set in Oregon in which a decree mandates that any single woman can be taken by the first man to claim her! (I'm thinking this was not a favorite late show flick of either Bella Abzug or Gloria Steinem...) The stars of this one were Rory Calhoun and Yvonne De Carlo.

In 1955, Rhodes was starting to work quite regularly in television, with roles on The Adventures of Champion, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Sky King and Highway Patrol. He also did a TV version of "The Old Maid" on Matinee Theatre, with Sarah Churchill and Katharine Bard taking on the roles that Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins had portrayed in the 1939 film. In 1956, he had bit parts in Tension at Table Rock (with Richard Egan and Dorothy Malone), Flight to Hong Kong (with Rex's Raw Edge costar Rory Calhoun and Rex's Kiss of Fire costar Barbara Rush) and Emergency Hospital. Occasionally, a more substantial part might come along, albeit in a low-budget programmer. He worked with Boris Karloff in 1957's Voodoo Island, which concerned natives with mysterious powers and a clatch of man-eating plants!

At the same time (shot back-to-back in Hawaii), he made Jungle Heat, an espionage drama set just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The movie's stars were Lex Barker and Mari Blachard. Of slight interest is the fact that his character's name was Major Richard “Dick” Grey and one hopes that no on in the picture called him “Major Dick!”

Rex Reason was appearing frequently on TV himself, with guest roles on Matinee Theatre, The Millionaire, The Ford Television Theatre and Conflict. In 1956, he took part in another sci-fi film that has found its way into the hearts of many fans of the genre. The Creature Walks Among Us was a second sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon (the middle film being Revenge of the Creature.) In this final installment, Rex and costar Jeff Morrow (who'd also starred in This Island Earth) play scientists who draw the gill man out of his Amazonian hiding place in order to capture him. Unfortunately, he is burned severely and undergoes surgery to transform him into more of a man than a creature, causing him to breath air instead of process oxygen through his gills.
The real draws here are the extended scenes of Rex in a painted-on white swimsuit, his now-grown-back chest hair (which had been removed for Taza, Son of Cochise) firmly back where it belongs. His hunky face with thick lips and beautiful eyes, teamed with his manly chest, velvety speaking voice and soothing manner, make him the creature I wish would walk among me! Not only does he twice don the little pair of swim trunks, but he even has a scene in which he dives into the water in his pajama bottoms, not that anything much can be seen.

His next film was a minor western called Badlands of Montana that also starred Beverly Garland, Margia Dean and Keith Larsen (regular readers will recall him as the third husband of recently profiled Vera Miles.) 1957 also had Rex appearing in Band of Angels with Clark Gable and Yvonne De Carlo and Under Fire, a military courtroom drama in which he had top-billing.

Rhodes, after appearing as a guest on Maverick, Sugarfoot and The Millionaire, won the lead in his own series, a British project called White Hunter, in which he faced adventure in the wilds of Africa. 39 episodes of the show were made and it was broadcast over the course of a few years from 1957 to 1959. He also married in 1957, a union that produced three children and lasted until 1972. Then, in 1959, Rhodes was cast in a supporting part in the Disney-produced, quasi-Biblical epic The Big Fisherman, starring Howard Keel (as Simon Peter), Susan Kohner (who had Imitation of Life that same year) and John Saxon.

Rhodes was then enlisted as a Warner Brothers contractee, so he did time on most of that studio's television programs, shows like Bourbon Street Beat, Cheyenne, Bronco and Surfside 6. He also was given a part in Clint Walker's Yellowstone Kelly, a color western that also included Edd Byrnes, Ray Danton and John Russell.
Meanwhile, Rex had been given his own TV series as well. Man Without a Gun ran from 1957 to 1959 and concerned an old west Yellowstone, Wyoming newspaper editor. It's aim was to demonstrate a less violent type of TV western with a “pen is mightier than the sword” approach to its storytelling. Rex portrayed this upstanding townsperson with a healthy serving of idealism. During the run of the series, he still worked as a lead in minor films such as 1958's Rawhide Trail, about marauding Comanches after him and others (costar Nancy Gates had the good fortune to not only have a scene with him shirtless on a bed, but also another that had him face down on a bunk bed, shackled to a post!), Thundering Jets (also 1958), with him as a rigid air force commander (and with a cast that's peppered by cuties Barry Coe and Robert Conrad!) and Audrey Dalton as his wife, and 1959's The Sad Horse, a film that starred David Ladd and Chill Wills along with Rex, whose wife was played by Patrice Wymore. Wymore was Errol Flynn's last wife (though they were separated when he died in 1959.) For a while during this period, Rex escorted Wymore to various Tinseltown functions.
1959's The Miracle of the Hills had Rex starring as a small town minister who helps rescue some children (and a dog!) trapped by a flood in the aftermath of an earthquake. One of the tykes was played by Jay "Dennis the Menace" North. Next, he, like brother Rhodes, became a Warner Brothers contract player as well. Thus, he could occasionally be found on 77 Sunset Strip, Bronco, Bourbon Street Beat, Sugarfoot and The Alaskans. Viewers must have been scratching their heads from time to time at the similarity of these two men playing different roles on all these shows.

In 1960, he starred in another series of his own, this one called The Roaring 20's (this mispunctuation is exactly the way the show was titled!) He was playing another newspaperman, this time a Chicagoan in the midst of all the Prohibition era crime and mayhem. He and costar Donald May also competed for the attentions of the series' primary star Dorothy Provine, a flapper-type of singer who figured into most of the storylines.

Brother Rhodes was in another show of his own, too. Bus Stop was an extension of the William Inge play and the movie that had starred Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray. Here, Rhodes played a sheriff not in found in the previous renditions while Marilyn Maxwell costarred in a part that Betty Field had done in the 1956 movie. The series only ran for 8 episodes, but not because it wasn't popular. It was cancelled because of an outcry over the extreme violence found in a particular airing that starred Fabian as a cruel psychopath! Next, it was on to many guest shots on shows including Perry Mason, Daniel Boone, Death Valley Days and The Rifleman.

Rex, having finished with The Roaring 20's, was growing increasingly disenchanted with the acting business. He worked on episodes of Perry Mason and Wagon Train, but decided that he would rather exit the field of motion pictures and television and investigate the world of real estate instead. Ironically, just as he was walking out on his Warner Brothers contract (never to return!), he was being sought for a role in a significant movie!

Frank Sinatra, who had done his famous From Here to Eternity screen test with Rex Reason playing opposite him (the role ultimately winning Sinatra an Oscar and reviving his career) was eager to thank him by offering him a prime part in an upcoming film. Reason, however, had declared himself through with acting and couldn't be reached for the offer. The potentially career-lifting part was eventually played by Laurence Harvey. The film was The Manchurian Candidate. Rex went into real estate and was never again seen on TV or in the movies (beyond reruns, of course.) His last acting role was broadcast in 1963 when he was in his mid-thirties. He had remarried in 1962 to curvaceous Sanita Pelkey, but they were divorced in a year's time. In 1968, remarried for the last time, having three more children and enjoying a lasting marriage.

Rhodes was still plugging along. He made two appearances on The Time Tunnel, an Irwin Allen adventure show that flung stars Robert Colbert and James Darren into a new bit of historical turmoil every week. One instance had him playing Joshua, the heralded Biblical figure who brought down the walls of Jericho. He also showed up as Colonel William Barrett Travis, one of the men who faced General Santa Ana at the legendary Alamo.
He went to Japan to work on the sci-fi howler King Kong Escapes, a color continuation of the creature first seen back in 1933. Kong is unearthed by a scientist and put to work as a thief! The cheapjack, camp-filled movie is nevertheless beloved by many genre followers because of its very badness. It is regarded simply as good old-fashioned matinee-era fun by many viewers. His participation in this picture has led to an enduring fan base of monster-movie aficionados.

What helped him to enter the realm of sci-fi fans even further was the fact that he guest-starred on Star Trek in 1968. He played Flavius in the episode called Bread and Circuses, about a starship commander who turned his entire crew over to a bloodthirsty ruler who has fashioned his society around ancient Rome. Gladitorial battles to the death are commonplace and now the ruler wants the crew of The Enterprise for use as participants! Rhodes, in a rare display of beefcake, was the star gladiator who in time begins to question the ways of his planet.
In 1970, he was part of the now-forgotten The Delta Factor, a low-budget spy movie based on a Mickey Spillane novel that starred Christopher George and Yvette Mimieux along with Diane McBain and Yvonne De Carlo. Unintentionally amusing now is his 1972 guest role on Mission: Impossible in which he was (by necessity of the plot and the fact that star Peter Graves was going to impersonate him) bewigged with a white head-topper! He was still handsome nonetheless.

Both Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were Desilu productions, the company formed by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, which Lucy continued to oversee after their divorce. She must have been quite fond of Rhodes Reason because she used him five different times on Here's Lucy, her comedy series that ran from 1968 to 1973. Here, Rhodes is shown in an episode that costarred Lucy's pal Carol Burnett in the early, but already successful, stages of her career.

As the '70s trudged on, Rhodes found less and less decent work. He did pop up on the fondly-remembered sitcoms The Bob Newhart Show and Phyllis, but also played a hard-nosed detective in the hideously-titled teen gang flick Cat Murkill and the Silks. In 1977, he played one of David Janssen's friends in the made-for-TV, descent-into-alcoholism horror story A Sensitive, Passionate Man. He barely got any screen time as the focus was primarily on Janssen and his suffering wife played by Angie Dickinson. He had obviously aged, but when he turned on that smile, it certainly helped melt away some time. Following this, the fifty-seven year-old actor retired from the screen. He wasn't completely finished acting, though. In the early '80s, he shocked most fans of his by appearing on Broadway as a replacement for Daddy Warbucks in the smash musical “Annie!” He went on to headline the national tour, playing the role for three years and displaying a singing voice that few folks ever knew he had.

As they aged (and both gentlemen are still alive today! Rex is eighty-three and Rhodes is eighty-one), Rex went the Tony Curtis route and opted for a fluffy hairpiece. Rhodes made the decision to trim off his thinning hair and go bald. In 2010, Rhodes remarried for the second time. Both men are still wed at present (Rex since 1968 to Shirley and Rhodes to Jerrlyn – aka Jeri.) Rex continued to supplement his successful real estate ventures with voiceover work, utilizing that awesome instrument he was born with. He still resides in California. Rhodes lives in Oregon now, where he stages yearly charity events for those less fortunate than others. Both of them make the occasional trip to a convention or autograph show where they are enthusiastically received by fans.
It is generally acknowledged that Rex was perhaps slightly better looking than Rhodes (Rhodes' looks were a bit harder, making them more attractive that Rex's to some) and that Rhodes was able to act with more skill (and, as a result, enjoyed a slightly longer and busier career.) They both were amiable, appealing men, in any case, who I'm always happy to stumble upon in a movie or on TV. In researching this tribute, I learned a little more about them and their differences, though by combining their careers and lives into one post, I probably just muddied the waters further! Either one of them is good enough reason for me to watch something, though.