Guest Who: Reunited and It Ain't So Good.

In 1961, two of the THE most popular movie and TV stars were the tan, blond (and perhaps a bit bland!) Troy Donahue and the perky, blonde (and bubbly!) Connie Stevens. Not only had the two been appearing together on the hit series Hawaiian Eye (along with humpy Robert Conrad, as shown below), but they had also guest-starred together on a 1959 episode of Will Hutchins' western Sugarfoot and were now pairing up on the big screen as well!

There was Susan Slade (1961) in which poor Stevens was a knocked-up seventeen year-old forced to watch her mother Dorothy McGuire raise the baby as her own rather than invite a scandal. Donahue played one of Stevens' suitors, wondering what it was that made her fret so over her baby "brother."

Then there was Parrish (1961), in which Donahue played the stepson of a tobacco magnate who romanced three young ladies, one of them being sharecropping Stevens. (This time out, Stevens was preggers again! And again it wasn't Donahue's.) Yes, this was their year and, in many ways it was all downhill from here.

In Palm Springs Weekend (1963), they were touted as the stars, but their characters actually romanced other people instead. Donahue was after Stefanie Powers while Stevens juggled Robert Conrad and Ty Hardin (though a gal could face bigger problems!) Within just a couple of years, the wattage faded from their stardom and, though they continued to work, it was never with the same fanfare they'd enjoyed in the early-1960s.

In a 1978 episode of Fantasy Island, these teen dreams were reunited in a pretty loony and lame entry in what was already an often simpleminded show. Stevens and her pal (the omnipresent 70s playmate Barbi Benton) play showgirls who want to marry a couple of millionaires as their fantasy.

As part of their stay, they will also be headlining a new musical that is bound for Broadway, written by first-time composers Fred "Gopher" Grandy and Donahue! As these gents run through one of their numbers, Donahue is called upon to "sing" the female part in a ghastly falsetto!

Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize) then introduces the guys to the gals. Naturally, Grandy is smitten with Benton and Donahue is taken with Stevens upon first sight. The ladies come enter the room, dancing in a rather rudimentary way, and yet are considered stunning talent...

As the gals are put through their rehearsal paces, the gentlemen are continuing to be enamored of their leading ladies. Donahue and Stevens share a tender moment when she strains her ankle and he rushes to her aide.

Villechaize has set up a cocktail party filled with millionaires for Benton and Stevens to choose from, and the girls are a hit, but something still seems amiss. Maybe because the rich guys are annoying and more than a little unappealing! Stevens was at a stage here when her mass of hair forever threatened to overtake the rest of her, yet - thanks to the scads of under-eye highlighter she favored - we still somehow make out her (overdone) expressions.

Finally, not long before the show is set to open its preview, Grandy and Donahue confess to the ladies that they are in love with them and want to marry them. Stevens and Benton are forced to let them down easy because, even though they like them in return, they came here to marry millionaires, not untried music makers without two dimes to rub together.

The (truly, truly abysmal) show goes on and the cast perform a number about getting married.

What no one but Villechaize knows is that the actor playing the priest in the musical is actually not an actor, but a priest for real!! So in the course of the production, each couple really does become wed! (Blood test? forget about it... License? meh...)

As it turns out, Grandy and Donahue are indeed millionaires as well! They are untried musical composers, but happen to be very successful dramatic playwrights and have come to Fantasy Island in order to live out the fantasy of producing a Broadway musical... All four of them depart on "de plane," happy as clams.

The Island TV reunion may (or may not) have been fun for the long-time costars, but it was bittersweet to see them reduced to some of the shenanigans they were called upon to take part in. We prefer to watch them in their hey-day when their creamy blond goodness provided jaw-dropping melodrama of the highest order and unintentional laughs that we the viewers didn't have to feel guilty about as we did during the ghastly installment of Fantasy Island. As seen here, they'd once enjoyed being awarded medals for popularity by Photoplay Magazine, but by 1978 were lucky to be recognized by anyone other than parents and grandparents on an episode of a prime-time TV series.

FYI:  A later reunion of these stars came about in 1983 when they were part of a week of All-Star Family Feud with their Hawaiian Eye compatriots Anthony Eisley, Poncie Ponce and Grant Williams. They later joined Edd Byrnes, Patrick Macnee and  Abe Vigoda on a 1984 Family Feud contest called "Battle of the Crime Fighters," shown here, wherein the quintet were called The Crusaders. I really think they both look better in 1984 than they had in 1978!