Recently, we subjected ourselves to a
screening of an obscure Bob Hope comedy, one of his many 1960s
fizzlers, and were confronted with the sight of an iconic Bond girl
portraying the decorous love interest of a man more than three
decades her senior. She was awfully attractive, though, and it has
led to a tribute here in The Underworld. Today, we salute the career
of Shirley Eaton.
Born with that very name in Edgeware,
Middlesex, England on January 12th, 1937, she was the
child of a prosperous furniture store owner and his wife. An early
interest in dramatics (and dance) led her to attendance at the Aida Foster
Theatre School. By age twelve, she was already working on the stage.
At age fourteen, she was cast on a biweekly British sitcom called
Parent-Craft (1951) opposite no less than Robert Morley and James
Fox.
In the wake of that experience, she
pursued bit roles in a variety of English-made films, an early one of
note being Doctor in the House (1954) in which she portrayed an
amorous young girl whose blatant pursuit of med student Dirk Bogarde
sent him packing to an apartment with three male roomies. (She's
shown here in cheesecake publicity for the movie alongside burly
muscleman Reg Park.) Also, in 1954, she worked as a stand-in/stunt double for Janet Leigh who was filming Prince Valiant in England.
Eaton also won featured roles in comedies
like The Love Match (1955), regarding two young men desperate to
speed home in time to catch a football match, and the musical Charley
Moon, all about a music hall performer breaking into the big time. A singer herself, she took part in songs and skits in various variety stage shows as well.
She was part of the Rank Organization
of film-making and as such joined other starlets of the studio
(including Belinda Lee, Mary Ure, June Thorburn and Maureen Swanson)
in being presented to Queen Elizabeth II in 1956 at a special movie
performance.
Then Sailor Beware! (later retitled
Panic in the Parlour, 1956) cast her as the newly-engaged daughter of
a hen-pecking battle axe mother, who comes close to scaring off the
fiance! That same year came the comedic hit Three Men in a Boat, with
Laurence Harvey and a sizable cast of notable British names such as
David Tomlinson, Jill Ireland, Martita Hunt and Adrienne Corri.
In 1957, she was reunited with Dirk
Bogarde in the substantial hit comedy Doctor at Large as an
attractive nurse. This was actually third in a series that began with
the earlier Doctor in the House, though Eaton was now playing a
completely different character. Also in 1957, Eaton worked with Tom
Drake in Date with Disaster, a crime drama, and Your Past is Showing,
a comedy concerning blackmail which starred Peter Sellers and
Terry-Thomas.
The year 1957 was notable, too, for it
was the year Eaton married her husband, builder Colin Rowe. This, her
only marriage, would last until his death close to forty years later
and yield the couple two sons.
1958 marked the debut of Carry on
Sergeant, another comedy that led to a lengthy series of sequels. The
movies almost invariably began with “Carry On” and lasted until
1992 (!), though the phrase itself had been cribbed from a 1957
comedy called Carry On Admiral, which was unrelated to the subsequent
movies.
This habit of appearing as the
curvaceous beauty amongst a sea of goofy comedians continued with
Further Up the Creek (1958) and a second "Carry On" movie, Carry On
Nurse (1959.) These comedies were balanced with a co-starring role in
the thriller In the Wake of a Stranger, about an innocent sailor
being framed for murder. Eaton gave birth to the first of her two
sons (Grant and Jason) in 1959.
Her career, however, was still going
strong with 1960 bringing the middling comic-fantasy Life is a Circus
as well as Carry on Constable, her third and final installment of the
popular series. There were four films released in 1961 that featured
her. A Weekend with Lulu, about a young couple's romantic trip being
spoiled by the company of her mother, the RAF-set comedy Nearly a
Nasty Accident, the marketing industry comedy Dentist on the Job and
the killer-on-the-loose mystery spoof What a Carve Up!
All of these movies focused in on
Eaton's considerable physical charms. The 5'7” stautesque blonde was often
shown in either tight skirts, bikini bathing suits, towels or some
other form of light dress, something the posters for these movies
exploited in order to get folks in the door.
In 1962, Eaton was invited to guest
star in the inaugural episode of a new TV series about the exploits
of a British spy. The Saint was played by Roger Moore and Eaton would
return to the show two more times (in different parts) following this
one. The color photo shown here is from a black & white episode of the series.
An unusual project came along in 1963
called The Girl Hunters. In it, Mickey Spillane, the author who
penned so many Mike Hammer mystery novels, played his own character
of Mickey Spillane! Not only did the non-actor win the leading role,
but the whole movie was filmed in England, yet the story took place
in America! Thus, Eaton and several other English performers were
called upon to affect American accents, few to any convincing degree.
The movie retains a cult fascination
and has some interesting sequences (and, again, Eaton's body was
featured in the ads as well as the film itself), but in the end was a
little too odd to be taken completely seriously. (She also had to be
kissed in a most unappealing way by the author/”actor” during
their love scenes!)
In 1964, Eaton would work on the
film that catapulted her into the public consciousness and made her
body an instantly recognizable commodity, though she only appears in
the finished product for less than seven minutes! The film was
Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery as James Bond, and Eaton was cast
as Jill Masterson, a memorably ill-fated “Bond Girl.”
The whirly-whip hairdo Eaton sports in
the publicity photo above was wisely discarded in the movie itself in
favor of a more seductive, over-one-eye look. Eaton played a curvy,
beautiful stunner who works for gold-obsessed crime czar Gert Frobe,
yet cannot resist the allure of Connery.
She pays for her indiscretions by being
painted from head to toe and left to “suffocate to death” from
its effects, according to the script. For this process, Eaton had to
endure the considerable torment of being painted almost entirely in
gold paint.
This was only part of the agony,
though. It was the endless soaking and scrubbing to remove it
afterwards that really caused discomfort. For her trouble, Eaton was
granted the cover of Life magazine and became an international
sensation, her photo popping up everywhere the blockbuster film was
mentioned and, for decades afterward, serving as an iconic image for
the long-running film franchise.
Shirley Ann Field had been approached
for the role but declined it. Eaton had no such reser-vations, knowing
that the burgeoning series was at or near its glory and with no
issues at all regarding the showing off of her considerable body (and
this is after having given birth twice!)
Thanks to Goldfinger, Eaton was now a
sex symbol known all over the place and was, to many, an “overnight
sensation” though she'd been steadily working in the British film
and television industry for well over a decade.
Next up was an adventure tale called Rhino! (1964), directed by prolific animal-oriented filmmaker Ivan Tors. (This was filmed after her work on Goldfinger, but released before it.) She was the leading lady to Harry Guardino and Robert Culp as a South African district nurse who assists a zoologist trying to prevent endangered species from being hunted and killed for sport and profit.
She was able to capitalize on her newfound notoriety with top-billing (for the first time) in a movie called The
Naked Brigade (1965.) In it, she portrayed a British girl who finds
herself on the island of Crete during the German invasion of WWII.
She joins resistance fighters including Ken Scott (who, from the
looks of the movie's posters, was more naked than she was!)
Her next project is the one I happened
to have seen her in first! As a tyke, I caught the 1965 version of
Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little Indians' on TV and was instantly
captivated by the opening credit sequence in which east cast member
is shown along with his or her name. (Longtime readers here know of
my obsession with this practice.)
Cast as the film's leading lady
opposite hunky Hugh O'Brian, she continued a mid-'60s trend for her
of working with darkly-handsome, hairy-chested leading men. She,
O'Brian and a chalet full of other guests are at the hands of a
murderer who is picking them all off one-by-one, causing all of them
to distrust each other for fear of being offed.
One of her fellow houseguests was
played by Dennis Price, marking their fourth film together (one of
which had been the slightly similar, albeit comedic, What a Carve Up!
a few years before.) The producer of this version, Harry Alan
Towers, proceeded to remake it two more times after this, though few,
if any, people feel that he improved on it either time.
Having worked for Ivan Tors in Rhino!,
Eaton was approached to join a group of other performers he'd helped
make famous for the water-based adventure Around the World Under the
Sea (1966.) Lloyd Bridges of Sea Hunt and Brian Kelly of Flipper,
both Tors-produced series, joined Keenan Wynn and David McCallum for
the colorful adventure flick. There are worse ways to make a living
than hanging out in swimwear with Bridges and Kelly!
As was often the case, Eaton has a
bikini scene along with an underwater swimming showcase. Kelly was
yet another hunky, hirsute costar.
Now Bob Hope came calling with a role
for Eaton in his latest comic romp. Eight on the Lam (1967) cast him
as the widowed father of seven children who are watched over by zany
babysitter Phyllis Diller. As luck would have it, he is romantically
involved with his youngest son's teacher, the stunning Shirley Eaton.
Hope is incorrectly suspected of
embezzle-ment from the bank at which he works and the contrived plot
soon has him and his seven urchins becoming the octet referred to by
the title. Eaton avails herself as an aide/child wrangler until he
can prove that he's innocent.
Her role is almost sheer decoration,
but she delivers that much in full. There's something about the
incredible skin tone that was present in these mid-'60s movies. She's
just radiant. There is also the odd distinction here in that she, a
Bond Girl, has a moment alongside Jill St. John, who would in time be
a Bond Girl as well thanks to Diamonds Are Forever (1972.)
Harry Alan Towers soon came calling
again, this time in order to cast Eaton as the exotic villainess in
his movie The Million Eyes of Su-Muru (1967.) For the first time in
her career, she went with dark brunette locks, lending her a sinister
air not unlike Barbara Steele. Her costars were Frankie Avalon (!),
George Nader, Klaus Kinski and, from Ten Little Indians, Wilfred
Hyde-White.
As the the title character, she is the
leader of an all-female army who intend to replace all the male world
leaders with representatives of their own and thus dominate the
entire world.
After years of playing bouncy blondes
and curvaceous sexpots (when not just downright window dressing),
Eaton relished the chance to portray an evil, sadistic bad girl.
Nader continued the unintentional (?) string of handsome, dark and
hairy-chested male costars.
An outtake from this movie was used by
producer Towers, without her permission, as a “cameo” in the 1968
film The Blood of Fu Manchu. In that, she is referred to as “Black
Widow” though she had no willing participation in the Jess
Franco-directed film, which starred Christopher Lee as the title
figure.
Nevertheless, she made another movie,
her last, for Towers, which was a sequel to Su-Muru. The Girl from
Rio (aka, Rio 70,1969) had her back and bent on world domination
again, this time in Rio de Janeiro. Her primary antagonist in this
one was George Sanders (though she's seen here with the film's leading man Richard Wyler.)
Just prior, in 1968, she'd made one
final TV appearance on The Saint with Roger Moore (who was still a
couple of years before his casting as James Bond in Live and Let Die,
1973.)
Now thirty-two, with a husband and two
small boys and a career that ranged from middling to unsatisfying in
the wake of all the James Bond hoopla, Eaton began to crave life as a
homebody with her family. A famous quote, given by her later, was “A
career is a career, but you're a mother until you die.”
Without fanfare or regret, Shirley
Eaton walked away from acting and all its complications,
considerations, congratulations and celebrations. She raised her sons
and was a wife to her (beloved and only) husband until he passed away
from cancer in 1994. During that time and since, she explored her
creative side through artwork, poetry, photography and sculpting,
among other things, occasionally appearing on retrospective specials
having to do with the “Doctor,” Carry On” and “Bond”
franchises she has been a part of.
She attended the premiere of Skyfall
(2012) wearing (what else?) gold. In 2014, Goldfinger marked its 50th
anniversary and she was immediately invited to attend a special event
in London to commemorate it. Now seventy-eight, there is precious
little change in the silhouette of her legendary figure half a
century later. Unlike countless other stars and starlets, she has
also allowed her face to age without the extensive cosmetic surgery
that has blanketed most of the entertainment industry.
This appearance was not without
controversy, however, for it was reported that Eaton provided a
certain amount of difficulty regarding the invitation of another
person, one Nikki van der Zyl, a talented voice actress who had
overlaid the speaking voice of Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962) and,
as it turns out, Eaton's in Goldfinger. Eaton's own speaking voice
had been deemed “too Cockney” and van der Zyl, who was the
invisible voice of many Bond girls and many other females over the
course of the series, was enlisted to redo it.
Goldfinger's villainous Gert Frobe was
also re-voiced almost entirely due to his heavy accent, but no one
seemed to care much about that! It might be a more sensitive subject
due to the fact that the original performer spoke English and not a
foreign tongue as so many others in this situation did. (I've never
noticed anything at all unpleasant about Eaton's voice and have
trouble understanding what the fuss was, but maybe perceptions and/or
class differences were different in 1964.) I always prefer to hear an
actor or actress's “real” voice whenever possible, but there is
no question that van der Zyl did an excellent job with all those
voices over the years. She was the guest and honoree at a separate
Berlin tribute a few days later.
Having spent some years in the south of
France (where she retained a friendship with Roger Moore), she now
enjoys her art and her five grandkids back in England. She also
enjoys periodic appearances at nostalgia events and wrote an
autobiography in 1999 detailing her life and her career in the movies
as well as another book full of poetry. Though her career was cut
short by her own choosing, we always enjoy seeing her in any project
that comes before us. Here's to a real golden girl!
