Thursday, November 10, 2016

Fun Finds: Movieland and TV Time Magazine, March, 1968

We're traipsing back into the late-1960s today with another Fun Find, this one a celebrity magazine with stories featuring a variety of cinematic and TV personalities and several great photos of people we tend to like here in The Underworld. With a cover date of March, 1968, this issue was likely on the stands a couple of months beforehand (and cost only $0.35 at the time!)
The way the text in this column is written is highly annoying to me. At times it becomes a glob of idiotic, vague word salad (that, like a lot of "insider" gossip, is wrong anyway. But it's neat to see photos of Christopher Jones (don't dare miss those pants!), Diane Varsi and, especially, the wondrous shot of The Burtons visiting Angela Lansbury after one of her legendary performances in Mame. Liz and Ange were child stars together at MGM.
More great photos (and idiotic text) on this page. Kirk Douglas' movie wound up being titled The Brotherhood (1968) and he and Lancaster would have to wait until 1986's Tough Guys to co-star together again! Neat to see a photo (albeit a slightly awkward one) of George Hamilton and Burt Reynolds together. Though it's true that Reynolds became a top box office star in the next decade, he nonetheless was back in a series (Dan August) by 1970. Look how tall Lyle Waggoner is! (6'4" to be precise.)
It's fun to see this happy photo of George Montgomery and Dinah Shore together five years AFTER their marriage ended. No one then could have guessed that within a couple of years, she'd be a major presence in Burt Reynolds' life. Love seeing happy, handsome Brian Kelly! Annette Funicello and her husband Jack would divorce in 1983. Eve Arden and her husband remained wed until his death in 1984, a 32-year union. (The movie Geraldine Chaplin was filming for Spanish director Carlos Saura is Stress Is Three, 1968.)
Here we see an ostensibly happy Brenda Benet and Paul Petersen (who'd costarred on The Donna Reed Show as a youth.) Benet's life contained more drama than most movies and if anyone ever decided to film it, it would surely be a hit! She left Petersen for Bill Bixby, won a plum villainess role on Days of Our Lives that enraged the series' fans, suffered the loss of a young son, left her husband and entered into a lesbian relationship and finally committed suicide!
We adored Dack Rambo from the moment we first laid eyes on him. But I bet he didn't truly reveal which fan letters he opened and answered FIRST! LOL
"A Psychiatrist Discusses..." !!!
Some neat photos here. We recently profiled Jacqueline Bisset and her taking over of Mia's role in The Detective (1968.) It's long been noted that overruns on Rosemary's Baby (1968) were what sent Frank off the deep end, cancelling Mia from The Detective and from his life, but it was likely just the final straw as she'd been in London filming A Dandy in Aspic (1968) prior to that and Frankie couldn't possibly have been pleased by such a lengthy separation capped off by her missing the start date of the project he'd had in mind for them together.
One can only imagine the pressures and stresses that were put upon Sammy Davis Jr. and May Britt when they opted to wed in 1960 (when 31 states still forbade interracial marriage by law.)
He remained a staggeringly busy performer throughout this period while she didn't act even once. After their divorce, she did a bit of TV and, later, one low-budget horror movie before concentrating on painting. She remarried in 1993 and is still with us today at age eighty-two.
Anyone who is familiar with I Dream of Jeannie and Barbara Eden's costar Hayden Rorke (misspelled in the magazine's caption) ought to find this desperate photo rather hilarious. Rorke was not only gay, but had a longtime, live-in partner who was a prolific TV director.
These are fun shots from the life of Michael Ansara and Barbara Eden who, sadly, could not keep their marriage intact.  It ended in 1974. One major trauma came when she became pregnant again and was forced to deliver a stillborn baby. This joyous woman (now eighty-five, if you can believe it!), who brought smiles to millions of faces, was also dealt a crushing blow when her only child Mike Jr. died from drug-related causes.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s David McCallum was freshly wed to Katherine Carpenter at the time of this magazine.
It's quite refreshing to note that these two are still married to one another today, nearly 50 years later! While not winding up with a "large family" as the prior page denotes, they did have a son and a daughter together (and McCallum had three sons with his prior spouse Jill Ireland.)
We truly adore the piano playing of Miss Jo Ann Castle. A wondrous child prodigy at age three, she married for the first time (to a cameraman) at age twenty-one.
The marriage resulted in a child, a daughter who had cerebral palsy. What readers didn't know at the time of this article (but surely Castle must have!) is that she would soon marry again, in January of 1968! This union resulted in a son and a daughter, but the marriage was over by 1971. Hubby #3 came along from 1978 to 1986. She's with the fourth (and final?!) husband now since 2011. Castle is seventy-seven. (By the way, little Deana passed away in 1978.)
Can you imagine being on a double-date that involved both Don Grady and Dack Rambo?! The gals involved were Francesca Hilton (Zsa Zsa Gabor's daughter) and Christina Ferrare, a teen model for Max Factor and with the Eileen Ford agency, who'd just done The Impossible Years (1968) opposite David Niven as her father. Surely, anyone who was around back then recalls all the hubbub of First Daughter Lynda Bird Johnson's wedding.
Who do we think was more Warren Beatty's type, Virna Lisi or Anna Magnani? As for Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland (who'd left the aforementioned David McCallum for Bronson years before), they did wed this year, but I find her positively unrecognizable in this picture! She looks awesome, though. Robert Culp swung from wife to wife to wife from 1951 to 1976 (France Nuyen and he were done by 1970.) His fifth marriage was the longest (at 26 years), but it, too ended in divorce. Nuyen never married again and is currently seventy-seven. I truly thought the bottom photo was of Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate, who costarred in Don't Make Waves (1967), but it's actually his second wife Christine Kaufmann. They divorced this year. He wed four more times. She three more (apparently?) Kaufmann is now seventy-one.
Bobby Rydell must have truly loved Camille because they did marry in 1968 and remained wed until her death in 2003. He married a second time in 2009 and is currently seventy-one. Sadly, Petticoat Junction's Bea Benaderet did pass away from lung cancer in October of 1968 at age sixty-two.
I couldn't help chuckling at the headline "Brando's New Girl" next to a convalescing Margaret Rutherford!! LOL  But the blurb was meant for his costar Pamela Franklin. The headline "Tough Lady!" was for Rutherford. (She was in a Brando movie, too, though! A Countess from Hong Kong, 1967.) Emily McLaughlin and Robert Lansing did divorce in 1968 and she promptly married dreamy Jeffrey Hunter, though he was dead and gone within three months, sadly.
Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young did at least manage to stay together until 1973, despite this photo caption's despair over their new marriage. Raymond Burr's alleged dream of appearing in a Broadway musical did not come to fruition. Kim Novak's then-boyfriend caught my eye and required me to look into him further. Joel Thomas was a Carmel, California restauranteur and photographer who she dated for a while. He was with her at the premiere of The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) when she wore THIS get-up!
This article was in anticipation of The Beverly Hillbillies star Buddy Ebsen's Walt Disney musical The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), which costarred Walter Brennan, Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson. Ebsen had at one time been cast as The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939) before an allergic reaction to the makeup led him to drop out and had a considerable background in song & dance, in contrast to his TV roles on Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones.
Here's a shot you don't see very often! Jane Fonda in full Barbarella (1968) drag looking over a pot of boiling spaghetti!
This behind the scenes photo shoot reinforces just how UN-glamorous movie-making can be when one is not before the cameras. And this was probably considered a rather comfortable dressing room compared to where people other than the star were shunted between takes.
Singer Eddie Fisher, reportedly looking over newborn daughter Joely Fisher (later a cast member of Ellen.)
Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens were only wed for two years and had two children (another girl, Tricia Leigh Fisher.) I was no pavement-pounding fan of Fisher to begin with, but after reading his second autobiography I downright disliked him. He married twice more after this, but Stevens (now seventy-eight) never wed again.
Perhaps because when I was a kid in the mid-'70s NOTHING was nerdier than The Lawrence Welk Show, I'm always a bit surprised to see how popular the stars from it were in mainstream periodicals. (Now, of course, I adore the show for its candied-coated camp qualities!)
I had no clue that Bobby & Cissy were ever a couple in real life. He wed Kristin Floren (Myron Floren's daughter) in 1971 and had four children with her. Of course, my own guilty pleasure memory comes courtesy of one of my old theatre buddies who was in a musical just prior to the Tennessee venue being occupied by Welk & Co. My curmudgeonly pal left a note on the men's dressing room mirror that read: "Welcome Bobby and Cissy. Which one's the Cissy?"  Ha! He is seventy-five now while Cissy is seventy.
Because Paul and Brenda appeared earlier, I've already covered them.
As it turned out, they were divorced by 1970 and didn't have any children together. Paul Petersen is seventy-one at present.
Photos of singer and TV variety star Andy Williams and his wife Claudine Longet. At this time they had two children, but a third would come along in 1969. That third child would be named Robert ("Bobby") after their friend Robert Kennedy. Williams and Longet were on site the day of Kennedy's assassination and even in his hospital room with Ethel prior to his demise.
The author of this article - about how Longet's singing career might wreck her marriage - couldn't have dreamed of the drama to eventually unfold. The Williams divorced in 1975. The following year she was on trial for the shooting death of her lover (Olympic skier Spider Sabich) with Williaams at her side, but she wound up marrying her defense attorney! They're together still. Longet is seventy-four. (Williams died in 2012 at age eighty-four.)
Here was have behind-the-scenes shots from The Mothers-In-Law, a two season sitcom that starred Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard. It was a rather garish, loud, slapsticky show somewhat in the vein of Lucille Ball's later efforts (which made sense since Desi Arnaz was the producer!) One's tolerance for broad comedy would indicate how much a person could enjoy the antics of the two comediennes.
The writer Joyce Becker seems fond of appearing on camera herself. She's in all six photos from the spread! Roger C. Carmel was fired after season one for reasons that remain in debate even now (salary dispute or drug issues.)
This spread showcases That Girl's Marlo Thomas and how the time constraints of starring on her own show kept her from finding love.
Both Thomas and her costar Ted Bessell remained unmarried at least another decade. Thomas (now seventy-eight) wed Phil Donahue in 1980 and they're together today. Bessell married in 1982 and remained so until his untimely death in 1996 at only sixty-one of an aortic aneurysm.
Hello and welcome to the showbiz twilight zone, where the nuptials between Sally Field and Davy Jones (!) are predicted and there is rumor of romance between Sir Laurence Olivier and Diana Ross! It's interesting, though, to note that Ross (now seventy-two) might have been in contention for Paula Kelly's role in Sweet Charity (1969.) I suspect that the heavy dance element did her in on that one. Fun to see a 1968 candid shot of Rosalind Russell and Claudette Colbert together!
Hayley Mills (who I didn't recognize from the photo) did end up marrying Ray Boulting, but not until 1971! They divorced in 1977. Mills is now seventy. At close to the 30th Anniversary of Gone with the Wind (1939), Olivia de Havilland poses with Clark Gable's widow Kay. What a neat photo. This columnist really likes to have her say! She picks at Katharine Houghton and slams Mia Farrow and Sammy Davis Jr.
Some fun pics on this page of Dyan Cannon, Ryan O'Neal and Carol Lynley, among others. The son of Agnes Moorehead's that Victoria Cole refers to in her column was a boy named Sean that she adopted. He later ran away from home and they were apparently never reunited!
I ALWAYS forget that Jack Jones was once married to Jill St. John! I can be forgiven since the union only lasted from 1967-1969. Her first marriage (when she was sixteen) lasted less than a year and her second (to multi-millionairess Barbara Hutton's only child!) only three, though they were separated for a whole year. Her 1990 union with Robert Wagner has far outlasted all the rest at 26 years and counting. She is currently seventy-six. (Jack Jones is seventy-eight.) Don't miss the photo of Tippi Hedren in Japanese garb!
And that brings a close to this installment of Fun Finds! There's sure to be more since I am ever rooting through flea markets, antique stores and thrift shops for rare and unusual finds. One thing that recently happened for me was shocking indeed, but in a good way. I was in a Goodwill store, sifting through the books, and saw Raquel Welch's autobiography, in mint condition, sitting there for $2.00. I had been curious to read it, but didn't buy it new when it was published. So I grabbed it only to discover that it was 50%, so $1.00...  Good enough. But when I opened it, there was an Amazon.com gift card in it for $25.00 that was activated! Some schmuck tossed their unwanted gift of Miss W's book into the giveaway pile and also left his or her gift card in it, too! Did they even bother to notice it was there in the first place?  So I definitely scored on this unintentional "Pay It Forward!"  :-)

9 comments:

Michael O'Sullivan said...

I loved Movieland & TV Time, but circa 1960, 1961, when in my mid teens, and it was all about Sandra and Troy and Connie with lots of full page colour photos. Utter bliss!

Gingerguy said...

Very fun. I clicked on all the pics and was glad I did, there is a lot of material. So Lyle Waggoner was really tall on top of being gorgeous? it is almost too much. What a dreamboat. I had no idea Dack Rambo had such a long career, to me he seems so 1980's. Loved him in "Paper Dolls" or anything actually. I am remembering reading about him here, will have to revisit. I only thought I knew his buddy Deborah Whalley from "Gidget" but see her in later pics on "The Mother's In Law" she looks so different with long hair. The Frank/Mia drama is fun. It does seem like she might have a compulsion to be annoying, her ethereal/little girlie bit is not for everyone. As far as celeb autobios though, hers is juicy, juicy, juicy. I read it a few years ago before the later Frank/Ronen/Satchel bits. Haydon Roarke on "Jeannie" was really funny, along with his tv wife Amanda Bellowes. I always enjoyed their double takes.
Christina Ferrare was later Christina Delorean, married to the scandalous car maker, I think she might have had a talk show at some point.
Yes! agreed on Welk, nothing was more boring when I was a kid but live for it now and watch it every week. I enjoyed reading about Joanne Castle, she is always so bubbly and "on" reading this I see she had her share of heartbreak but you would have never known from watching her.
The hightlight of this was the link to the photo of Kim Novak. The headband and the fringe is just a nightmare. "lylah Claire" is one of my holy grails of bad movies. Might just need to watch it again soon. Great post, thanks Poseidon

Gingerguy said...

p.s. love the Raquel story. I actually thought that was a wig ad. There is a wig store near my house and they always have pictures of her in the window sporting one the new models from her line. She is the Eva Gabor of the 21st century in the world of hair enhancement.

Unknown said...

Speaking of wigs, since this era and probably year are the height of wigdom, is Marlo Thomas' hair fake? I was always amazed at how perfect it looked all the time. Jane Fonda's hair looks fairly bad here, so I'm guessing it's real?

I watched The Lawrence Welk Show with my grandparents circa 1970 to 1972, so I'm embarrassed to admit that I know who these people are. Guy & Ralna, Anakani (sp?), Norma Zimmer? I saw them every week.

I have a LOT of Andy Williams on my ipod, and Claudine's greatest hits at least. She's terrible but quiet and sometimes I'm in the mood for it. Andy was underrated as a singer because his image was so sugar sweet. He actually has a very nice tone to his voice.

joel65913 said...

A fun find indeed! I was a faithful reader of these type of mags when I was a teen. My mother would despair that I spent my allowance on them but then read them when I was done!

Love the pic of Angela and the Burtons! Liz being in her massive beehive period and all.

Two references to Eve Arden in one magazine!! Heaven. The Mothers-in-Law was loud and slapsticky with an eye straining color scheme but I confess I own the box set because I love the two women so and their interaction is what made the show worth seeing. Have you ever read Kaye Ballard's bio "How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years"? It's short but a total delight.

You're so right about Brenda Benet, what a life so full of promise that just spiraled down to a tragic end. I recall after her suicide Paul Peterson, they had remained friendly after their divorce, wrote a lovely article about her for TV Guide remembering the positive attributes she possessed and the struggles she went through which those around her were unable to help her overcome.

I also thought that was a snap of Tony Curtis & Sharon Tate from Don't Make Waves, a silly but fun comedy, before I read that it was Christine Kaufmann. Now I recognized Jill Ireland right away but might not have had Bronson not been in the pic with her. I think it's the hairdo she usually wore a much simpler style.

Jane Fonda's pictures cooking in her Barbarella costume are beyond anything! Particularly amusing since she was so very close to throwing that image away.

Marvelous picture of Rosalind Russell and Claudette Colbert. It's somewhat surprising to see performers who had been big stars at different studios together. They always seemed so insular that it seemed the great friendship were between stars who worked at the same lot. But Roz was very social and involved in many causes so I guess her circle was broader.

I remember the HUGE scandal that swirled around Hayley Mills and Ray Boulting because he was more than 30 years her senior. How could Pollyanna do such things!!! They cried! I didn't care about that I just didn't understand why she was interested in someone who seemed so sleazy.

Congrats on your all around luck with Raquel's book! Make sure to spend it on something completely frivolous as found money should be. I've read her book which was an interesting mix of bio and beauty advice. It wasn't all I'd hoped for in the behind the scene tidbit department but actually provided some insights in how she became involved in her wig business which was related to her film work. Also while she seems like at times she could be a handful, something she alludes to between the lines, she seems down to earth and practical in other ways. For instance, and especially helpful in the type of partial beauty book this is, she admits she had tried all the best and most expensive skin care products around but always returned to Oil of Olay because that's what worked best for her skin and encouraged the readers to be that sensible too.

As always Poseidon a marvelous read! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Oh how I love and (somewhat sadly) live for these fun finds of yours, Poseidon! I've said this before but I'll say it again - I started collecting these old mags because of you! Its all your fault that I spend endless hours looking on eBay for these rags! I truly miss the days when magazines were orchestrated PR corn fests. I suppose they still are now, but these old ones seem more charming. My favorite is the "Letters to..." advice columns like the one featured here with Paul Peterson. As much as old PP sort of annoys me these days, it's so funny to see he was something of a hot star.

I love that terrible pic of Barbara Eden and Hayden Rorke! The editors couldn't find a better pic of them together that might even hint at some affair which clearly never happened?

The pic of old Jane Fonda cooking up spaghetti in her Barberella costume is also a hoot! Her scantily clad crotch that close to the pot has got to be a health code violation! And her hair! What's going on there?

I will never wrap my mind around the appeal of Eddie Fisher. I tried watching a few episodes of his old TV show Coke Time (pretty fitting name considering his own drug addiction!), but nope. Not seeing the appeal. He can sing and all, but he has that overwhelming slimy quality that I just can't get past.

Also, congrats on finding that Raquel autobio and a free Amazon gift card at the Goodwill. Goodwills and libraries are treasure troves for anyone who loves books or movies! You may not find something great every time, but you can hit the jackpot enough to make yourself go back more than you should. A few months back my local library was giving books away. Just giving them away! I found Gene Tierney's autobio (first edition) and Sammy Davis' Yes I Can. I was so stupid excited! Now I just need to find a local shop that sells old magazine and I'll be set.

Poseidon3 said...

Hi, Michael! Oh yes... the color portraits were surely the best. They could make almost anyone look amazing back then.

Gingerguy, I lived for 1980s Dack Rambo. He seemed to be everywhere: Paper Dolls, Dallas, Hotel, Love Boat, Fantasy Island... so no wonder you associate him with that era! He was quite adorable, though, on a rather sepia-toned western called The Guns of Will Sonnett. I just wish the DVD of the series wasn't of such low quality. Jo Ann Castle was so, so, so bubbly and fun. I guess she was compensating a fair amount. I have always wanted to like Lylah Clare and have twice considered profiling it here, but somehow I always wind up feeling a little bored/disappointed by it overall, even while liking certain parts of it. But wasn't that outfit of Kim's a HOOT?! And I totally agree about Raquel being this era's Eva Gabor with the wigs. How funny.

Dave, I am not sure about Marlo and her hair! I agree... How can it always be so flawless?!?!? It seems real and yet could also be a wig. Maybe I need to look into that. As for the Welk show, my mother could not STAND to hear the gooey duets of Guy and Ralna. I thought she was the most glorious thing with her thick hairdos and icy eyes, but his chia pet hair!!! LOL I forever called Anacani "Anaconda!" Norma's auto-bio was pretty good. I couldn't agree more about Andy Williams. I love the way he sang. He was very, very mean to a friend of mine once out in Vegas, though, so I've never been allowed to publicly admit that I enjoyed him, though. LOL My own favorite song of his is "Can't Get Used to Losin' You."

Joel, we never had these mags around. The best I could ever do was The National Enquirer! LOL I never even got "real" TV Guide. The Sunday paper version was it... I would like to read Kaye's book, but haven't yet. I bet it's fun! My friend Joe brought his boxed set over one time and we watched some of it. What stuck in my mind more than anything was a bonus show - a TV pilot - with Rory Calhoun in it. I recall him in a swimsuit?? That's great that Paul Petersen could be so good about Brenda. As for Hayley, her sister then went and wed a man far younger than herself! LOL Wow. I know nothing of Ray Boulting. I need to look into that. Thanks for the info on Raquel. I wound up getting - among other things - the DVD of Tab Hunter Confidential with my gift card. Yum!

DevilYouKnow, I almost spit out coffee over Jane's crotch and the pot of boiling spaghetti!! LOLOL Hilarious!!! I still cannot wrap my mind around her doing this in costume! Was there red sauce? Olive oil? What if she'd messed up her outfit!??! I completely concur about Eddie Fisher. Can we assume he was somehow great in the sack to attract all these women? He is so repellent to me. I'm sorry that I unearthed an addiction in you over these magazines. I hope it doesn't prove too costly!! I limit myself on how many I buy and only do them in person, not online, or else I'd spend way too much money! My favorite thrift store find book-wise was Jerry Lewis' autobiography, signed by him, for $0.29!! I enjoyed Gene's book, though it's a sad tale, and Sammy's, too. Nearly everyone has the makings of a good autobiography if they're truly willing to share their life. Sometimes, though, they'll reveal just a hair too much of their true persona and turn me off. It disappoints me when that happens. (Or others are just plain dull, focusing on all the wrong things instead of what we bought the book for in the first place!)

Unknown said...

Not only were Sean and Agnes never reunited but, after a brief stay at Paulette Godard's Swiss chalet, Sean vanished and was never heard from again. Agnes variously referred to Sean as a foster son and her adopted child but no papers establishing his legal status have ever been located and no one has ever determined where he even came from. Their relationship was tumultuous, with Sean robbing her on at least two occasions. He did not return for her funeral and in her will Agnes stated she had no children, either natural or adopted.

Gingerguy said...

After reading about the Raquel book I got a copy from the local library, lo and behold,I found a gift inside the book-A Tori Spelling bookmark! Either it's a coincidence or Raquel Welch loaded each copy with gifts (besides her beauty secrets)