Hey There, Corgi Girl...!

Like most humans, we adore the work of one Miss Ava Gardner and are equally mesmerized by her looks. A startling beauty in her youth, she emerged as a fine actress over time (though she sometimes had trouble believing it herself.) In her 1940s and '50s hey-day, she was positively gilded with all the Tinseltown trappings; the gowns, jewels, makeup, etc... and she was dazzling. But unlike a lot of her peers, she didn't cling to this as the years wore on. She allowed Father Time to march acrost her face and simply lived the way she wished to, comfortably. There were few constants in her often tumultuous personal life, but one of them was her devotion to animals, particularly dogs, and most especially to Welsh corgis. So today we offer up a photo essay of Ava and her beloved pooches (chiefly Rags and, later, Cara.) 

There was scarcely a time, even from the beginning of her career, that Gardner didn't have a pet pup on hand.

One thing dogs can give us, and surely gave her, is unconditional love. She was almost never without a big smile when in the presence of one of her corgis.

Ava's canine companions could nearly always be found in her trailer while filming, providing comfort between takes (and fun photo ops in the bargain.) This was during Knights of the Round Table (1953.)

Costumes be damned, nothing was going to interfere with her doggie time.

I hope no one made a mess on the floor...!

I did say they went everywhere. On airplanes, too!

Here they are on a boat!

Between takes on The Naked Maja (1958.)

Taken during Mayerling (1968), which features one of my very favorite Ava looks, her take on Empress Elisabeth "Sisi" of Austria.

In London while filming Tam-Lin (1970.)

With the director of Tam-Lin (and her close friend) Roddy McDowall.

This one is during the filming of Earthquake (1974.) This ornate house dress is only seen fleetingly in the final cut, the scene it was designed for having been hacked out right before release.

The assistant's face behind her here... WTH?

Fun times with actor & pal Charles Gray.

In her later years, Gardner could often be found walking one of her adored friends down the street.

This was nothing new, however. She'd never been "too good" to take her pups out for a spin to do their business.

It's entirely possible, though, that in her final years, passersby had no clue that they'd just laid eyes on AVA GARDNER walking her dog.

Faithful friends right up to the end. 

This was for her unfinished autobiography, which was published posthumously. (She and the author had parted ways before it was done and he used the tapes from their meetings to form much of the book.) I love the dog's expression here, secure in its mistress' arms.

She had her issues, like many of us, but there will only ever be one Ava Gardner and when it came to her canines, she had one huge heart. I adore this portrait of her.

Today is December 30th, so the message here is late! But we do hope your holiday was a great one. And I'll add that I wish every one of my blog visitors a very happy and healthy new year! Thanks for your support.

Top Ten Anniversary: Favorite Movie Bitches

Let's face it... This post could have been simply ten Joan Crawford or Faye Dunaway roles (or split down the middle!) I reined it in so that some other gals could have a turn in the spotlight. Amazing as it may sound, I don't have Stella Stevens' Linda Rogo of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) on here even though I worship and adore her. Despite her (very!) rough edges, I don't really think of her as a bitch, at least not the way Stevens inhabited her. (The Linda in the book surely was an unmitigated one!) I also don't have Eleanor Parker's Baroness Schraeder of The Sound of Music (1965) on the list because I also don't consider her one either, even with some of her sarcasm and manipulations firmly in place. She knows when she's licked and responds gracefully. Carving the list down to ten was, as usual, difficult. But here we are in alphabetical order of their character's names.

AMANDA FARROW of The Best of Everything (1959) -- Rona Jaffe's novel of young career women facing the perils of office employment (and the wolves lying in wait to steal their virtue) was made into a plush romantic melodrama and on hand to show the kids how it's done was a recently widowed Joan Crawford as the tough-as-nails female exec. She orders Suzy Parker around like a slave, bites off Diane Baker's head ("Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!") and squares off against ambitious newbie Hope Lange. When Lange gingerly asks Crawford if she wants some comments "typed," she replies, "No... Beat it out on a native drum." Hardened from years of enduring her own boardroom battles, she finds solace in a married lover once a week, but when that begins to sour she hysterically tells him off over the phone, ending with the immortal line, "Now you and your rabbit-faced wife can both go to hell!" There isn't a wasted line, glance or gesture in the film from Miss C., who turned a barely-there character from the novel into an unforgettably steely and formidable antagonist for the film, yet she still has a certain amount of humanity and dignity in the end. And, like a couple of the ladies here, one can't help wondering if she isn't right more often than not.

CORA HALLETT of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) -- With this film and the hooty Jacqueline Susann's Once is Not Enough (1978), Alexis Smith turned me into a life-long fan. Jodie Foster is almost the whole show (along with a slimy Martin Sheen) in this creepy thriller, but for the brief moments that Smith is on-screen as an imperious landlady, the screen crackles with tension and animosity. Again, there is not a single frame of Smith's performance that isn't completely on board with what she's there to do and she creates some really fun antagonistic fireworks with her fourteen year-old adversary.  Haughty, imperious and harboring certain secrets and fears, she's an uppity, busy-body bitch, but she has her reasons to be wary.

ESTELLE ANDERSON of Madame X (1966) -- The key word that comes to mind is brittle for this dragon-lady mother-in-law. Constance Bennett's voice is brittle, her reed-thin body seems brittle and oh, that hair! As the iron-willed matriarch of a powerful family with political aspirations (methinks at least part of this role was inspired by Rose Kennedy!), Bennett came out of a twelve-year retirement to make Lana Turner's life hell. Friendly for maybe a hot second, she soon betrays her instant loathing of the new wife her son John Forsythe has brought to the family mansion. My great love of grande dame, above-it-all, highly manipulative characters of this ilk probably stemmed from watching Bennett drive the unwanted pest out of her life with vigor and venom. Even with all this, she brings conviction to a moment near the finale where the regret for what she's done shows through. It's a wondrous performance from someone who was once the highest-paid actress in Hollywood and a major star thirty-years prior, yet who in fact was brittle enough that she never even lived long enough to see the film released!

HELEN JORGENSON of A Summer Place (1959) -- "I've read about how the Swedes bathe together and... and have trial marriages and free love. I've read all about that. Anything goes." Thus saith the sexually frigid and repressed mother to Sandra Dee as played by the estimable Constance Ford. This hilariously simmering Bitter Betty has all sorts of great moments as she frets over clean toilet seats and sneers at frowsy alleged "harlot" Dorothy McGuire. Then there's the "merry" Christmas during which she slaps Dee into their pitiful plastic tree, something only a real ogre could do. The sequence in which she insists that her poor daughter be inspected by a doctor for proof of her virginity is probably a teen girl version of Dustin Hoffman going to the dentist in The Marathon Man (1976!) My own favorite moment is when impudent Troy Donahue tells her that if she hurts Dee again, he'll kill her! I think it would take more than Troy to take down this brawny battle axe.

HELEN LAWSON of Valley of the Dolls (1967) -- The rock-hard Broadway musical veteran was intended to be played by Judy Garland, but when the wheels came off of that troubled situation, Miss Susan Hayward was immediately called in and somehow managed to embody the fire-breathing gorgon as if she'd been studying the part for months. Like Joan Crawford before her, Hayward showed the three young ladies who were starring in the film what it meant to be a powerful presence on-screen. Virtually every line that growlingly slips out of her smoky mouth is a quotable hoot. "The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson, and that's ME, baby, remember?," "Neely hasn't got that hard core like me. She never learned to roll with the punches," "You oughtta know... you just got out of the nuthouse" and, of course, "Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope!" The whack-a-doodle lip-sync to (Margaret Whiting's rendition of) "I'll Plant My Own Tree" is splendiferously awful, but only adds to the fun.

KAREN WALLACE of Airport '77 (1977) -- In this movie, Lee Grant is probably the most selfish character imaginable. She's also one of the most audacious and hilarious to behold. When the luxury plane she's on with her agricultural scientist husband (Christopher Lee) crashes below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, she looks at him and says, "What's going to happen to me?" Uh... ME, not US! Ha ha! She does care for him in a possessive, grasping fashion, but isn't above dallying with his hunky associate Gil Gerard. When she's not insulting Lee's endowment by comparing it to toy-size liquor bottles, she's telling dewy Kathleen Quinlan to "move your ass, dear." After trying to extort sex out of Gerard lest she tell her husband about them, he accuses her of blackmailing him. Her response? "Well... Who else have I got to blackmail? I don't get to fool around that much," as if she is required to blackmail someone and he's all there is handy! One of the highlights is when she, in a state of abject shock, decides to put her purse on her arm and open the watertight door to the plane! Brenda Vaccaro attempts to stop her and starts getting pounded by a deranged Grant until finally in retaliation and defense she socks her in the jaw and drops her to the floor!

LIZ SAXON of Back Street (1961) --Although Lee Grant was a good primer, I think it was Vera Miles in this film who truly taught me what a shrew was! She's just positively awful to her gorgeous husband John Gavin, though it's likely that she has somehow sensed all along that his heart never fully belonged to her, but to a wartime lover (Susan Hayward) he lost due to a misunderstanding. Once he's rekindled his affection for Hayward, all bets are off where the already venomous (and drunken) Miles is concerned. She thinks it's fine to carry on with a ski instructor, but God forbid he pay any attention to another woman. She pulls out every stop from threatening suicide to using the children to outright going off the deep end near the climax. But her finest hour is when she realizes that the woman her husband is devoted to is the very fashion designer whose show is happening right in her social circle. She bleats out of the winning bid on Hayward's showpiece wedding dress and then publicly announces that it be sent to woman her husband "keeps on some back street!" It's a sterling piece of melodramatic cinema that I could watch endlessly. Fun fact: one year prior, Miles and Gavin played devoted cohorts in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but here are at each other's throats most of the time.

MILADY DeWINTER of The Three/Four Musketeers (1973/1974) -- Faye Dunaway was the first movie star I ever recognized as such. As a dunderheaded seven year-old, I figured that every movie had its own unique cast and that was it, but after seeing The Three Musketeers and obtaining the paperback tie-in novel, I knew her name. When that name showed up in 1974's The Towering Inferno, my love of seeing stars paired up in all sorts of ways was born. But my love of deep-seeded villainy came with the truly deplorable Milady DeWinter, who let nothing lie in the way of what she wanted (or secrets she wanted to protect.) Dazzling to look at in a series of stunning Yvonne Blake finery, she was one dangerous cookie to try to crumble. At the end of the first film, she tells Charlton Heston's Cardinal Richelieu, "Your Eminence is a great player - great enough to lose. I do not like to lose," thus setting up the second part of the story, which was her revenge on the musketeers for thwarting her plans to disgrace Queen Anne. Having returned to France from arranging an assassination, she tells her lover, "I reek of England and Calvinism" and turns her attention to "the slut Bonancieux," played by Raquel Welch. I've yet to see any actress come close to the level that Dunaway achieved in this famous and much-filmed role.

REMY GRAFF of Earthquake (1974) -- "God-DAMMIT!" says Miss Ava Gardner at the opening of this film (oh, excuse me, this "Event" as the ads said!) and she never looks back from there. She pleads and grasps and commands and claws her way through the whole catastrophe as her screen time continues to sadly diminish. Her opening sequence (sadly trimmed for the final cut) is a symphony of bitchy antagonism towards her hubby Charlton Heston. "Don't you dare lower your voice to me!" Though he bears the brunt of her disdain, few people are safe from it. She grabs a dazed secretary after the big one hits and screams, "Laura, what about my fathah? LAURA! My FATHAH?!?" (her father being played by the less than eight years older Lorne Greene!) Later, she's all over physician Lloyd Nolan, too with, "Doctah, why aren't you with my fathah?!" There is no line of dialogue she delivers that I do not know by heart and try to use in real life whenever possible. Ha ha!

ROBERTA CARTER of Return to Peyton Place (1961) -- The day I saw this movie, my life changed forever. I bought it because I wanted to see Eleanor Parker in Lana Turner's old part and to check out Carol Lynley as the lead, but I was scarcely prepared for the sure-handed bitchery of one Mary Astor as the conservative town's most steely, domineering citizen. That Astor, who was made love to as a teen by John Barrymore and - trapped in a loveless marriage to a stodgy doctor - carried on a torrid affair with George S. Kaufman, should play this judgemental, smothering, controlling monster was a stroke of casting genius. It's not as if she chews scenery or gnashes her teeth at anyone. No, she's a cool customer who knows precisely how to delicately lob a death blow at her enemies, sometimes with a smile. This highly-troubled production (which suffered considerable editing prior to release) was not a great success, and Astor's role was interfered with in post-production, but it matters not. Her presence in the film is towering and unforgettable and caused me to utterly adore her where before I merely appreciated her.

BONUS PICS!

Who can turn the world on with her bile? The stone-hearted Estelle Anderson as played by the zesty Constance Bennett (with Mary Tyler Moore-ish wig in place!)

This is a full version of the picture used in the above post. After Bennett decided to come out of a dozen years' retirement, she had her face done, leading some folks to remark that she looked younger and better than star Lana Turner. As a diehard Lana fan, I can't go that far, but she did look pretty good (and was certainly slim!) She died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage not long after Madame X was in the can at only age sixty.

This is a three-page spread from a 1975 British television channel guide that was published not long before Susan Hayward's death and is heavily centered on Valley of the Dolls.

VOD was playing on the telly that week and so the issue had info on not only Hayward, but also Charles Drake, with Barbara Parkins gracing the cover. Here, Hayward shows off her spangled Travilla muu muu.

In case anyone wanted to read the accompanying text, which tells some of her up & down real life story while strenuously trying to associate it with VOD...

Our gal Lee Grant, showing off her Burton Miller get-up. Somehow all these years later (I first saw Airport '77 in a theater forty-two years ago - can it be possible?!) I had no idea that she was in platform shoes in the movie?! Or were these replaced at some point with other black heels...? I always adored this pantsuit, which starts off with a coordinating jacket over it (and another brooch!)

Don't let the soft frills fool you. Liz Saxon is a dangerous and retaliatory adversary. Vera Miles had shaved her head for Five Branded Women (1960), which led to her wearing a wig for Psycho (1960.) Now, one year later, she had much of her coiffure back, though it was still short and needed some assistance towards the back at times.

No one whams a purse down onto a bed like Mary Astor. Her character was intended to be so aghast at her unsuitable daughter-in-law that she burns the house down with her in it (!), but this story point was eliminated in the final cut. I would love, love, LOVE to see any of the deleted footage of Astor's performance even though I consider what's there to be perfection.

Ava Gardner sports what was then a hot trend: The Drowned Rat Look! Actually, the plucky Miss Gardner (then fifty-two) refused the aid of a stunt double for much of the climactic flood of Earthquake and earned a round of applause from the crew after one particularly grueling take.

Lastly, I've posted this hooty pic before, but not with the caption provided by Universal Studio's publicity department. "Sheer terror!" LOL  This outfit is only seen momentarily in the film because the scene it was featured in was cut. In it, we were asked to believe that Charlton Heston wanted more-than-half-a-century-old Gardner to have children and was furious because she'd recently had a secret abortion...! 

Glamorous Strangers

Thanks to a recent comment on a post that contained info on Ava Gardner, I was inspired to come up with this one, all about how prime-time TV soap operas of the 1980s seemed to draw from Hollywood's collection of once-bright movie stars to fill out their cast & guest rosters. In 1987, I snapped up the book shown below, TV Sirens, because I couldn't get enough of Dynasty and The Colbys at the time (and was thrilled that 3 of the 4 gals adorning the cover came from those two shows.) The book featured practically all television actresses of note, but there was one chapter called "Glamorous Strangers," which focused on ladies who only came to TV every so often. I've pilfered that chapter title for this post.

To those in the know, these ladies who dotted the prime-time soap landscape weren't "strangers," many having once been considerable names in the cinema, but to youngsters (as I was way back then), they were indeed only vaguely known and, in fact, in several cases this was the first exposure some of us ever had to them. We had to backtrack with the help of UHF stations and VHS cassettes to discover these gals in their former glory.

Most soaps, prime-time or not, provided some sort of matriarchal anchor among the cast. Dallas, of course, had the estimable Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie. Bel Geddes radiated warmth and caring while not being above an occasional shut-down if the squabbling Ewings went too far. The short-lived Flamingo Road gave us Barbara Rush as a well-to-do, but suffering wife and mother. Knots Landing added Julie Harris to the mix, as the alternately troublesome and supportive mother of Joan Van Ark. The period-set Beacon Hill (which didn't make it past 13 episodes) featured Nancy Marchand and Beatrice Straight, in contrasting degrees of social standing. Then there's Oscar-winner Donna Reed, who took over for Bel Geddes on Dallas after illness had interfered with her work.

Reed was a still-lovely woman known not only for her Academy Award-winning role in From Here to Eternity, but also her long-running, which made her a favorite TV mom to many a viewer. However, she was altogether different (in elegant looks and lithe carriage) from the very down-to-earth Bel Geddes and it wasn't long before viewers were balking and the producers knew they'd made a fatal error in (re)casting. Reed was ousted (not before crafty efforts were made to make her quit), winning a $1 million settlement in the process (but reportedly at the cost of her health), and Bel Geddes suddenly found the will to work again, having watched her cherished role go up in flames from home!

Miss Donna Reed

Dynasty didn't really have a "matriarch" in that sense, but it did install 1950s movie actress Joan Collins as John Forsythe's formerly ostracized wife and the mother of his children who eventually rose to a position of considerable wealth and power (after marrying Forsythe's business rival on his deathbed and inheriting his legacy.) Collins' Alexis Colby was generally more of a front and center figure than a mother character. Diahann Carroll was another established stage and movie actress who joined the series and made a great adversary for her real-life friend Collins.

Miss Diahann Carroll (Carroll sought out Aaron Spelling, requesting to become TV first "black bitch," though she ultimately emerged as a warm and sympathetic character -- unless crossed by Collins!)

Of course, when it comes to matriarchs, it's tough to top Miss Jane Wyman as the steely Angela Channing of Falcon Crest. The powerful owner of a successful vineyard (among other enterprises), Channing tried to control her family and assortment of enemies while in real life Wyman ran herd on most of the rest of the cast and made things either comfortable or uncomfortable based upon her assessment of the coworker's talent and work ethic.

Miss Jane Wyman

Falcon Crest is one of the 1980s prime-time soaps that featured a bevy of guest stars who'd previously made his or her mark on the big screen. Among the ladies who stopped in for a visit were Eve Arden, Leslie Caron and Ursula Andress. Then there was Miss Kim Novak. Novak had heretofore only popped up sporadically on television in two TV-movies, a miniseries and the pilot of the revamped The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She played a mysterious woman masquerading as another, a nod to her Vertigo success, and whose name was "Kit Marlowe," the moniker that Columbia Studios chief Harry Cohn tried to saddle her with at the dawn of her career.

Miss Kim Novak

Crest's producers wanted Sophia Loren to come on board as Wyman's half-sister (!) and planned a dazzling wardrobe and a 13-episode story arc. Ultimately, negotiations fell apart and instead Loren's longtime cinematic rival Gina Lollobrigida was signed to the part. Lollo worked on only five episodes (but did score a Golden Globe nomination in the process! Faye Dunaway took the statuette for the miniseries Ellis Island.)

Miss Gina Lollobrigida

Another golden age star given a stint on the show was Oscar-winner Celeste Holm. Holm was given the meaty part of a vengeful widow who'd been sent to an asylum after trying to burn Wyman to death in a fire years before (for allegedly driving her husband to suicide.) For six episodes, she appeared as the mother of the also-calculating Anne Archer (herself a victim of 1980s boxy fashions.)

Miss Celeste Holm

Of course the ne plus ultra of Hollywood guest stars on Falcon Crest was Miss Lana Turner. Turner and Wyman, never particular friends even back in the 1940s, were playing bitter rivals on-screen and thanks to some wildly different personalities and backstage methods, soon became rather antagonistic with one another in real life, at least on Wyman's behalf. What might have emerged as a battle of the titans on the show was cut short when Turner was soon sent packing, reportedly with a firm nudge by Wyman who balked at the Tinseltown trappings that Turner encouraged during her stay.

Miss Lana Turner

Turner had once starred in her very own prime-time soap, an expensive failure (that is screaming for a DVD release thanks to its cast and fancy settings!) called Harold Robbins' The Survivors. It only lasted 15 episodes before being cancelled in mid-storyline.

Back to the matter at hand, Dallas didn't indulge too, too heavily in the exhumation of old Hollywood gals, but there was the participation of Martha Scott on ten occasions as the haughty, status-obsessed mother of Linda Gray. After a few initial appearances, she returned a few seasons later as the bee Bel Geddes' bonnet. Scott had played Charlton Heston's mother in two Biblical epics, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.

Miss Martha Scott

There was also the casting of former Warner Brothers leading lady Alexis Smith as the titled sister (Lady Jessica Montford) of Howard Keel. Her appearances on the show came in two sections, six years apart, and saw her swanky character come unhinged and become dangerous even!

Miss Alexis Smith

Dallas' successful spin-off Knots Landing provided safe haven for several Hollywood ladies of a certain age. One of these was Ruth Roman, of Strangers on a Train and Three Secrets to name just two. She clocked seventeen episodes as the (alleged) mother of Hunt Block (as Peter Hollister, one of the show's more memorably slimy bad guys.)

Miss Ruth Roman

Another vintage name to appear on the show (for close to 30 episodes) was Betsy Palmer.  Palmer had been a 1950s starlet in movies like Queen Bee (with Joan Crawford) and The Tin Star (with Anthony Perkins) and was a hit on the TV game show I've Got a Secret. Here she portrayed Joan Van Ark's aunt, on hand to help with Van Ark's twins (and to fill the void left when Julie Harris departed the series.)

Miss Betsy Palmer

The biggest name to guest star, though, and the one greeted with the greatest amount of press fanfare, was Miss Ava Gardner. Breezing in as the devious mother of William Devane, her stay was a mercilessly brief 7 episodes, but it did get plenty of attention. (Incidentally, she's shown in the inset with Doug Sheehan.)

Miss Ava Gardner

The writers put Gardner in cahoots with the show's resident villainess Donna Mills. It also had her working opposite Howard Duff as her husband. Though the two had never acted together, they had once been a splashy romantic item, so this served as a belated reunion for them.

A few other names to toss in the hat... The short-lived soap opera Berrenger's, all about a glitzy department store and the machinations behind it, starred Sam Wanamaker, Ben Murphy and Yvette Mimieux among several others. For a 4-episode period, 1950s actress Neva Patterson (who many may know from An Affair to Remember as Cary Grant's society squeeze) played a duplicitous, and a bit racist, employee who is involved in corporate espionage.

Miss Neva Patterson (and her eyebrows)

Then on another soap, The Yellow Rose, which only lasted one season, Jane Russell was brought back to on-screen acting after a fifteen-year hiatus.  She's seen here with one of the series' stars, Sam Elliott (along with Sam's horse and Sam's other horse - LOL!) Russell only wound up in three episodes before the show (which also featured Cybill Shepherd, David Soul and Edward Albert) met its demise.

Miss Jane Russell

Paper Dolls was yet another attempt at prime-time soap that wasn't able to cut it. It was cancelled after 13 gloss-filled episodes. Morgan Fairchild and Dack Rambo were among the stars, but the show also had Nancy Olson (of Sunset Boulevard and Battle Cry, among others) on board as Lloyd Bridges' wife.

Dynasty's spin-off The Colbys brought Barbara Stanwyck back regularly into TV viewer's living rooms for the first time since the late-1960s, though she found herself dissatisfied with the storylines (one of them being that she didn't retain a solid love interest!) and fled the show (and show business) after only 24 episodes. At least she got to dress in some lovely Nolan Miller clothes, reunite briefly with her old costar from The Big Valley Linda Evans (during a Dynasty cross-over) and create some utterly delicious verbal fireworks with Stephanie Beacham prior to exiting.

Miss Barbara Stanwyck (who truly was credited on The Big Valley as "Miss Barbara Stanwyck!")

Now, when Hotel (which, like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island and, later, Murder, She Wrote, provided loads of old-time guest stars) premiered, it was intended for Oscar-winner Bette Davis to be a regular character. She'd filmed the pilot with principles James Brolin and Connie Selleca and was heavily promoted in all the press materials. (Davis had tried a number of times to get a series off the ground, but never had.) Finally, we were due for a weekly dose of Davis when she was stricken not only with cancer, but four strokes as well! She was forced to drop the show (which she later, from her sickbed, watched on TV and declared that it should have been called "Brothel!")

Miss Bette Davis

Who better to step in for the sidelined Davis than her old All About Eve nemesis Anne Baxter?! Oscar-winning Baxter swiftly joined the series as Davis' sister-in-law and made the show her home until she herself passed away a few years in. At that point, the once contained program, with each hour remaining mostly unto itself story-wise, because a continuing drama (with the leads finally admitting their love for one another and bedding down.)

Miss Anne Baxter

This was also when our recently deceased Underworld favorite Dina Merrill came on board for two episodes as one of three members of Baxter's family (the other two being Efrem Zimbalist Jr and Ralph Bellamy) squabbling over who ought to run the hotel of the title. Naturally, Brolin emerged victorious in the end, though the series was only able to limp along in this new, soapy format for another season after this.

Miss Dina Merrill

As the '80s drew to a close, most of the once-hot prime-time soaps began to peel off the screen one at a time as well. There were still many attempts, some successful (Beverly Hills, 90210, which begat Melrose Place, which begat Models, Inc., the latter unable to last very long), but most not (2000 Malibu Road, Pacific Palisades.) One show that almost made it was Central Park West (later revamped to CPW.) In a last ditch effort to save the flagging show, 1960s icon Raquel Welch was brought on.

Miss Raquel Welch

Amid a flurry of publicity, she and Gerald McRaney came on board. She was pitted against series regular Lauren Hutton and the two even found themselves involved in a fountain-splashing catfight, much like the ones that were done on Dynasty in its hey-dey. (Don't miss the stunt doubles visible in these behind-the-scenes shots! Egads!) But apparently the animosity was only for the cameras and the flailing was all in fun, as I hope this post was for you!