Designer Double-Dip: Seeing Through the Drape

The time has come again when we pull back the curtain on the sometimes easy (sometimes hard) to spot habit of Hollywood repurposing articles of costuming. It makes sense, after all. Why build something, often out of beautiful, expensive fabric and then let it languish in closeted purgatory forever? This time, the clothing barely had time to get back from the cleaners until it was used again! LOL And the actress was recycled, too!

We begin with the recycled part. In an episode of Mannix, which aired in March of 1968, we find an artist sketching away. He's drawing a rather revealing get-up on an appealingly hourglass figure. The model isn't actually in front of him! It seems he's using a telescope to look through to the next building where a young lady is posing for someone else.

We have a soft spot for the rather simian-looking actor playing the artist, Paul Mantee. It's likely due to his starring role in the sci-fi camp classic Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), a movie that captivated us completely as a kid. Stay tuned below for a little bonus on that point!

This is what he sees through the scope; a pretty blonde with a generous amount of her torso bared as she models for a sculptor in that building.

Mantee has someone over - TV staple William Windom (some of you li'l chicks may have grown up watching him as Seth, the paunchy, cranky sheriff on Murder, She Wrote?) He has a look through the telescope and we see that the lady in question is:

...the lovely Leslie Parrish, who played Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner (1959), was in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as Laurence Harvey's wife and appeared in countless television shows of the 1960s.

It seems she has a telltale mole along her waistline and this sparks a problem for Windom. He's just purchased an expensive Renoir painting in which the subject not only looks very much like this gal, but also has the same mole in the same spot!

He frantically asks Mantee how one gets to that room across the street. (Um... go downstairs, cross the alley, enter that building and then go up??)

By the time he arrives (maybe he took a taxi? LOL) the girl is gone. And the sculptor is not particularly eager to help.

Thus, Windom must hire the title detective Mannix in order to find out just what is up. He has the painting brought down....

Sure enough, the gal looks similar...

...and there's the mole, 'cause, you know, Renoir just couldn't resist dabbing this dark brown spot onto "his" masterwork!!

Close-up of "The Girl in the Frame" - the name of this installment of Mannix.

Incidentally, the real Renoir subjects tended to be far more nude and far more zaftig... But, you know what? I do think I see a mole on the center woman's behind!

Later, when Mannix catches up with the model, she's sporting one of those lunatic (and wonderful) hairstyles that could only have come from the mid-to-late 1960s. And it does turn out that she is - whether aware or not - part of an art forgery ring. But that Grecian get-up she was sporting in the first scene. Where have we seen that (and her!) before....?
 

Oh, here she is! Parrish had guest-starred on a September, 1967 episode of the famous sci-fi series Star Trek. As Lt. Carolyn Palamas, she was called upon to join a landing party in order to investigate an alien being seemingly in the form of Greek god Apollo who is holding their craft in stasis.

Apollo (played by one Michael Forest, who has a tribute to him here) is immediately taken with the young lady. And since so often the females on Star Trek were photographed with back-lighting and through gauze almost as thick as an Indian blanket, she is indeed lovely (she was thirty-two at the time... hardly Lucille Ball in Mame, 1974!)

Forest is unhappy with the way she looks in her Starfleet uniform. He thinks she should have one arm (and more!) bared. So with the wave of his hand, she is suddenly transformed into this eye-popping creation. Trek designer William Ware Thiess was legendary for exposing unexpected parts of the female form in his costumes, making sure to keep the crotch and nipples well covered as the censors dictated, but showing off other bits in the bargain.

Forest decides that the two need to head off on their own for some quality time, much to Captain Kirk and the others' dismay. But there's nothing they can do about it.

She isn't terribly resistant to the idea either, claiming to be able to do more good for their current problem this way. (BTW, color variations on this costume are due to the different sources used for these images. The unrestored visuals show it as more of a rosy pink while this color-corrected shot at right reveals its more true, shocking pink tone.)

Parrish looks smashing at the side of Forest and seems strangely keen on being with him, even though he is so threatening to her entire starship full of fellow crew members.

It's tough to blame her, though, as he looks so cute in his slinky little gold toga!

This was a fairly daring glimpse for 1967 TV. She looks half naked here. An unused ending (nixed by the powers that be at NBC and never filmed) had Parrish winding up pregnant at the end of the episode! Both Star Trek and Mannix were Desilu productions and often shared common actors (and apparently some costume pieces, too!)

Being loved by a god isn't always easy....! Michael Forest had nice things to say about Ms. Parrish, saying she "was a delightful person to work with; no problems; never any difficulties; we would just discuss what we were going to do and we would do it. She was excellent and very personable. William [Shatner] was a bit of a problem, however. You never saw me standing with him; we were always in different shots. We would be talking to one another, but we wouldn't be on camera at the same time. I'm sure that's what he stipulated - because I was so much taller." An earlier screencap does show that in long-shot they were shown together (and also demonstrates that Shat's fears were valid! LOL But Apollo was supposed to be much taller, fer cryin' out loud...! Vanity...) Ms. Parrish left acting in 1974 and turned her attention to producing, social activism and television broadcasting. She is still with us today at age eighty-five!

Bonus Pics! 

Mr. Paul Mantee in Crusoe, taking a Martian bath!

Watching this movie on TV as a kid was a thrill, but never more so than when this fleeting rear nude scene (inset) came about! It was one time when cropped pan 'n scan afforded a somewhat better view.

This here Robinson Crusoe made me tingle in strange places!

I mean, he's drifting into Clint Walker territory here...! Paul Mantee. Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Be there!

Farewell till next time!