Soap S(t)uds!

It hasn't been long at all since our April showers post, but I'm still not feeling completely clean yet... Thus, we turn our focus now to famous gents taking a bath! Like many of my themed photo-essays, I collect pictures over the course of time and then pull the plug when I have enough to warrant a post. So light the candles, turn on some soothing music and squeeze the jug of bubble bath because we're about to dip into the tub(s) again as we have several times before. Thanks to our cover boy for today, Clint Eastwood, during his days on Rawhide.

Clint's co-star on Rawhide, Eric Fleming, enjoys a sudsy bath in this one along with a shave. The shave is supplied by a pal. Let's hope that the cream on his chest has dropped from his neck and isn't a prelude to shaving off that hair, too!

Continuing with a few more "onesies," we find 1930s & '40s movie tough guy Edward G. Robinson (clearly) enjoying both a cigar and a bubble bath.

Ray Milland (in an early film of his I cannot name, but I bet some of my diehard readers will be able to) double double-duty of shaving & bathing at the same time.

This is 1940s actor Mark Daniels (who did quite a number of 1930s movies as Stanley Hughes) in Winged Victory (1945.)

Singing sensation and movie actor Frankie Sinatra, scrubbing up in the tub.

Boxer and Muhammad Ali opponent Leon Spinks, also doing the cigar thing while soaping up.

Donald Sutherland enjoying a bit of luxury in the comedic Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), in which both he and Gene Wilder play sets of twins who are mismatched shortly after birth.

Vega$' Robert Urich. If I recall correctly, he shared this bath with one of his short-lived gal-pals on the private eye series, Miss Priscilla Barnes.

Brat Pack member Rob Lowe, drinkin', smokin' (and probably runnin' around, too!)

Blythe Danner consults with her husband Martin Sheen in the 1983 film Man, Woman and Child, about a man whose long-ago affair produced a child, now motherless and about to come and stay with him, his wife and two daughters.

The Sex Pistols having a lark in the bathroom. Although this is just a photo shoot, it's remarkable how many TV and movie baths involve someone else in the room!

Now onto some multiple shots from specific movies, starting with The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935.) Gary Cooper shaves in the bathroom while his roomie enjoys a soak in the tub.

Maybe it's because I'm an only child (and would hate it had I grown up with people all around), but I love intimate scenes like this between gentlemen.

In the tub here is Richard Cromwell, then a popular young male lead.

Apart from this and several other films, Cromwell is mostly remembered today for once having been the husband (for not even a full year) of one Angela Lansbury. The marriage collapsed almost immediately because of Cromwell's homosexuality. He was an accomplished artist and ceramic designer and eventually turned to that as a career, dying of liver cancer at age fifty.

This scene in Bengal Lancer, by the way, is made even more homoerotic by the fact that third costar and roommate Franchot Tone is blowing on a rather phallic instrument, with Cooper "creaming" Cromwell in the face over his snarky remarks!

Ancient Rome is usually good for a bathtime or two. Here is a luxuriant sunken tub containing Robert Taylor in the movie Quo Vadis? (1951.)

Important soldiers such as he don't have to do much beyond sitting in the tub while servants do the rest!

For whatever reason, I had strenuously avoided this movie until very recently and when I watched it, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit!

Although we cannot see anything, this is a pretty revealing moment for a leading man in 1951 cinema. (Gotta do something to get people away from television!) Oh, and check out the scraping device...! You thought your loofah was rough?!

If this tub of John Wayne's doesn't look particularly glamorous, take into account that he's in 1950s China (the film is Blood Alley, 1955.)

This is how it read onscreen. Again, a bath is interrupted by another party entering the room...

This is George Nader in 1958's Nowhere to Go.

It was customary for Nader to at least go shirtless in his movies. In Miss Robin Crusoe (1954), he barely bothered to dress at all!

Here we have a slightly kinky set-up from the 1959 film Green Mansions. Henry Silva (shown in the inset) steps towards a waterfall for a bit of a shower while in the pool below floats a naked Anthony Perkins, bathing!

The two carry on a conversation during their jungle wild "spa day."

Eventually, Tony swims away from the side of the pool...

...to retrieve his clothing and proceed with the story line.

Also in 1959 was Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag. Curtis has to submerge himself in a tub while wearing his pajama bottoms.

As he exits, it's close to a rear nude scene thanks to the flimsy fabric!

In 1960's My Geisha, Robert Cummings and Yves Montand are excited to take part in a Japanese community bath.

They strip down in anticipation of joining some Asian lovelies in the adjacent room.

Look how close "nude" Cummings is to Montand as they open the door! The steam is so thick they cannot see more than a few inches in front of their faces.

They literally have to hold hands to navigate the room before submerging into the tub, whereupon they can't even tell the men from the women...! The visit is a bust.

I should think you'd be hard-pressed to guess who this is with his foot sticking out of the soapy water in his tub.

Why it's none other than Richard Long (of The Big Valley fame) in the 1963 movie Follow the Boys.

Take note of the ornate, fish-shaped spout that fills the tub.

Long is jarred from his bath by the unexpectedly early arrival of his date. How 'bout the glitz of this hotel suite?

He frantically wraps a robe around himself, checking the time on his watch.

And is then confronted by his date, Dany Robin. The title of the film refers to women who follow naval officers all over the world, meeting them in the next port, etc...

Back to nature's bathtub, a lake, for Wild Seed (1965) starring Michael Parks.

Drifter Parks is in the company of a naive young girl (Celia Milius) en route to find her father.

He really doesn't always enjoy having her tag along with him (and it must have been BRIGHT that day because he can barely open his eyes in the scene.)

Eventually, he opts to shock her by running to the shoreline naked. (As she's supposed to be seventeen in the story line, it's a wonder they even run this movie in today's sociopolitical climate...)

Henry Fonda takes a cool bath in 1965's The Rounders as Warren Oates looks on.

Fonda can't catch a private moment as he's next approached by a blonde ladyfriend. As the Production Code ended and permissiveness seeped into films, most Hollywood stars were called upon to show more skin than had usually been the case prior. Note how in the first pics, the water was clearer and had some fresh pouring in from a spout. Now the water is cloudier and still...

Deliriously hunky Sam Elliott takes an impromptu soak in the 1972 western Molly and Lawless John.

His companion in the movie is Vera Miles and she spies him through a missing brick in the surrounding structure. Eventually he stands up and gives her a good look at the merchandise!

Well, I'm a tad out of chronological order with All Neat in Black Stockings (1969.) Here, we find Victor Henry enjoying a bubble bath in quite a cluttered area (but get a load of the size of that tub!)

This time the only interloper in his bathtime is a large rubber ducky.

Henry met with quite a tragedy not long after this when he was struck by a street lamp that had been hit by a car and it placed him in a coma that he never recovered from. He passed away almost fifteen years later.

This tableau is from the 1970 film The Adventures of Gerard, a spoofy Napoleonic-era story starring Peter McEnery.

Norman Rossington is the man that messenger McEnery reports to and he seems to have a proclivity for bathing.

In this sequence, he's coercing McEnery to join him and the others in their scrub-up.

He does join them, fully clothed...

Later, McEnery peers out his window to find Rossington bathing in a tub while a team of horses drinks from it!

I don't know what was used in that water during filming (hopefully some milk??)

Anyway, he eventually stands up and has to rely on one of the steeds to shield him from the ever-seeing eye of the camera.

What a wild and woolly day on the set that must have been, trying to act a scene while hoping a horse will stay where you want it (and not try munching on your carrot! LOL)

This lobby photo from the oscure film The Girl in Blue (1973) depicted a little bit of David Selby in the bathtub as an older woman looks on. Well, you know I wasn't about to settle for that...

Here's a glimpse of how the scene looked in the actual movie, along with a close-up of Selby from the same film.

Another somewhat older gal (Liz Fraser) has her eye on a young man bathing, this time in Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976.) The man is Robin Askwith, who starred in four of these "Confessions of..." sex romps.

The amorous scrambling around in the tub creates quite a mess before it's over. These British comedies included scads of naked women, but Askwith (the son of director Anthony Askwith) was always shucked down, too, including nanoseconds of frontal nudity.

This is John Heard, taking a soak in the 1979 film Chilly Scenes of Winter.

Heard continued on to a lengthy, busy career as a character actor until his death last year of a heart attack at seventy-one. He had several projects in the can for 2018 release.

Circling the drain on this installment, we find yet another person taking a bath while someone's watching.

In this case it turns out to be Billy Bob Thornton in 2003's Bad Santa.

But you didn't think I was going to leave you with BBT as the final taste, did you? I wouldn't burst your bubble like that! LOL I discovered that I actually have the Vega$ episode noted earlier in this post, so I dug it out last night.

Indeed it was Priscilla Barnes who was taking a sudsy bath with Robert Urich.

Their heavy-duty romance was stalled by the teensy fact that all her grad-student studies taking place several nights a week at the library were in actuality tricks that she was turning as one of Las Vegas' priciest call girls!

That would never do for the intrepid Dan Tanna, though he did make an attempt to stay with her nonetheless. Aaron Spelling shows, for all their jiggle, usually featured rather upstanding leads (recall how little actual bedroom action Charlie's Angels ever got!)

So with that, I give you...

The End of this tub post. I'll be back soon with something new!