You know I'm forever hunting down old books at this flea market or that antique show. Having already read and loved virtually every "What Ever Became of...?" book by Richard Lamparski, in which he endeavored to update us on celebs who had fallen out of the limelight, I was startled to see this 1975 paperback by another author entirely. "Is that who I think it is?" is in a very similar vein to the aforementioned books, but is by Patrick Agan, who penned the oversized paperback "The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses," which I have owned for many years and enjoyed. He also wrote bios of Robert DeNiro, Clint Eastwood and Dustin Hoffman.
It was surprising to see a 1976 book that was already wondering what happened to Maureen O'Hara (on the front cover) and Rosemary Clooney (on this, the back cover)! Fame is fleeting and fickle for most, I guess... Jimmy Durante, who also was featured on the cover, was still in the public eye to a point, having done a Volkswagon commercial in 1973, and would live until 1980 when pneumonia claimed him shortly before he turned eighty-seven. In this post, I've picked out a few little tidbits or personalities that stood out for one reason or another. Call them Thanksgiving leftovers if you like!
First we come to Jess Barker, a fledgling actor (under the name Philip Barker) whose career was interrupted by WWII. Meeting Susan Hayward at the Hollywood Canteen in 1943, they were wed in July of 1944. The couple already hit a snag that September with a brawl on Steve Cochran's yacht, but got it together soon enough since Hayward was discovered to be pregnant (with what would be twin sons.) As her career kept building while his kept sliding, their marriage began to crumble. He reportedly chased a nude Hayward around their pool as she shouted "Don't kill me!" when he suspected that Howard Hughes had been visiting her secretly. Their divorce and, especially, custody battle were among Hollywood's most contentious. She had done something unheard of in 1944 which was have Barker sign a prenuptial agreement regarding their incomes (allegedly at the suggestion of her mother.) Thus, after he stupidly refused a $100,000 settlement, he walked away from the marriage with only a station wagon. She, however, was emotionally crushed and attempted suicide in 1955. The next year, Barker lost a paternity suit that claimed he was the father of a baby girl. Hayward proceeded to costar in Hughes' crazed epic
The Conqueror (1956), through which she was believed to have developed the brain cancer that would later kill her in 1975. A prior nominee four times, Hayward won an Oscar during her fifth bid for
I Want to Live! (1958.) Barker never recovered career momentum and never got over his divorce from Hayward. Diving headlong into alcohol dependence, he died of cirrhosis in 2000 at age eighty-eight, having never re-wed and with framed photos of Hayward all over his small apartment. Their sons found success as a veterinarian (Gregory) and a public relations exec (Timothy.)
The next name I'm dredging up is less dramatic. Highly-skilled saxophonist and orchestra leader Charlie Barnet came from a very wealthy New York family and was educated in exclusive private schools with the intention that he become a corporation lawyer. However, he had other ideas and by age sixteen was the head of his own jazz band, which toured the country. Introducing the new big band "swing" sound to many music halls and clubs, he ran into opposition at times from those who disliked or were resistant to the genre. One area in which he found little resistance, though, was women. His quote was, "I like the girls to match the upholstery of the car." In other words, they were changed out as frequently (or more) than his vehicles! By age twenty-six, he'd recorded one of 1939's biggest hits, "Cherokee," with "Skyliner" and others coming behind it. By 1949, he was semi-retired, having lost interest in music for the most part (and he was still wealthy from his family so that he could do as he pleased.) Ladies, however, remained a fixture. He was married at least eleven times (!), with additional nuptials taking place in Mexico which were either illegal or annulled! Mickey Rooney had some competition. One woman, his final wife, was able to put the brakes on his revolving door of spouses and they were together thirty-three years. Barnet passed away of Alzheimer's disease in 1991 at age seventy-seven, but his music lives on, with songs of his being used on movie soundtracks and TV shows as recently as 2017.
Rod Cameron was a strapping 6'5" Canadian who wanted to become a Mountie, but wound up suffering from a back injury that prevented it. After doing a string of odd jobs in New York City, he made his way to sunny California where a movie extra pal helped get him an interview to be Fred MacMurray's stand-in! But the handsome young man began to win roles in movies in his own right. A mixture of war movies and (chiefly) westerns followed. Although he acted in over 200 (then-)contemporary detective series episodes across three shows of his, he was forever typecast as and thought of as a cowboy. Having wed a young Portuguese girl in 1950, it raised some eyebrows when her mother accompanied the couple on their honeymoon. This was followed by many public squabbles and a front-page scandal when his mother-in-law had him admitted to the hospital for alcoholism the same year his son was born. But the biggest bit of gossip was yet to come. He divorced his wife in 1954 and in 1960 married his ex-mother-in-law! So now his son's grandmother was also his step-mother! But the union was a lasting one. Cameron developed cancer and died in 1983 at age seventy-three. At that time the two were still married after twenty-three years. Thanksgiving and Christmas had to have been quite interesting holidays amongst the family members on his wife's side...
Gloria Grahame's escapades are slightly better known thanks to her more prominent career as a femme fatale and Oscar-winner (for
The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952.) Her nine-minute turn in
Beautiful held the record for briefest Oscar-winning performance until Beatrice Straight won for
Network (clocking in at about 5 minutes! Judi Dench later won for
Shakespeare in Love, 1998, for 6 minutes of screen time...) Already married once, Grahame wed director Nicholas Ray in 1948 the day after her divorce was final. She was stepmother to his nine year-old son Tony during the union while also bearing a son of her own. The couple divorced in 1952 and she married writer-producer Cy Howard, which lasted from 1954 to 1957 and produced a daughter. Then she stunned the world in 1960 by marrying Tony Ray, her former stepson, who was by now twenty-three! They proceeded to have two children together, making for yet another crazed family tree with Tony Ray as step-father to his own half-brother while raising his own two sons by Grahame. When the couple divorced in 1974, that was the end of Grahame's marriages. (Tony Ray also refrained from any further nuptials.) Gossip surfaced that Grahame had entered into a sexual relationship with Tony back when he was her thirteen year-old stepson and that her marriage ended when her husband discovered his wife and son together, but this was later called into question by Grahame's biographer. (Though her ex-husband Howard did sue for custody of his daughter after she married the younger Ray and the stress of the whole situation led to a nervous breakdown and dire career woes for her.) Grahame died at fifty-seven of cancer in 1981, having led a roller-coaster life of great ups and serious downs.
Next comes Dolores Gray, whose career was marked by interesting little details. For instance, when Ethel Merman declined to reprise her title role in "Annie Get Your Gun" in 1947, Gray auditioned but was warned that she was too glamorous. So she dressed down for the callback, won the part and utterly wowed the British theatregoers. Later, back on Broadway, she costarred in a show ("Carnival in Flanders") that closed after only six performances, yet won her a Tony! Her movie career was very short-lived, though she is often the most vivid and memorable part of the films she was in (including
Kismet, 1955,
The Opposite Sex, 1956 and
Designing Woman, 1957.) When movie opportunities waned, she went back to Broadway for "Destry Rides Again" opposite Andy Griffith. During one matinee, a stage curtain caught fire and she managed to keep the 1,500 member audience from panicking while it was quickly, if loudly, extinguished by some firemen. She sang a love song to Griffith, "Anyone Would Love You" louder and louder to cover the fracas and wound up with a hearty applause (with the show resuming after an extended forty-minute intermission and some clean-up!) Even that was less eventful than her set-to with the show's director Michael Kidd. She only took the role after being assured by producer David Merrick that she'd have at least some small part in the big "whip dance" production number, but Kidd refused to allow her even a moment in it and an argument led to him calling her a slut! She responded by slapping his face and he hit her back! Later, her mother attended the show and she let him have it across the face as well, even threatening to kill him. Merrick, savoring all the publicity, even if bad, never intervened. She had some legal battles in the 1960s, being called to testify in a trial that her ex-fiance was involved in over land fraud and then a suit (which she lost) to get her $55,000 engagement ring back from him. Gray wanted to play "Mame," but lost the role to Angela Lansbury, though later replaced Lansbury in the London run of "Gypsy," once again charming the London theatre crowd. Appropriately, she eventually played Carlotta in "Follies" singing "I'm Still Here," and still in good voice. Though she came to regret focusing more on stage than screen (because, as a result, most of her work was not recorded on film or video for posterity), her trio of films and her recordings testify to her unique talent. Gray died of a heart attack in 2002 at age seventy-eight.
I had never even heard of Silvana Pampanini when I read this book, but she was apparently Queen of the Italian cinema for a time and a hot pin-up for American gents as well. An aspiring opera singer and a Miss Italy contestant of 1946, she got off to a splashy start when there was an outcry over her loss. She soon caused a sensation with her various curvaceous photos and movie roles in her home country. No less than Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren were hired as extras in Pampanini's films during their early years. Soon, Pampanini was circling the globe as a sexy ambassadress for the Italian movie industry, though she made waves in Hollywood of 1952 when she described American men as "too old and decrepit" as lovers! Gable, Tracy, Coleman, Cooper and Bogart were highly unlikely to have her appear with them in a film after that one...! She fared better with performers such as Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean Gabin and Vittorio De Sica, among others. She led such a sensational existence that she once received an extortion threat for 8 million lira (about $13,000) or her house would be blown up, prompting her to depart to Spain with bodyguards. She also had her bosom insured by Lloyd's of London for $48,000. She seemed to be mired down in court cases including one against a Roman duchess whose dog bit her leg, a breach of contract suit from a Mexican producer and a suit for the return of engagement gifts that a Greek ex-fiance filed. Then there was an incident in 1958 at the Venice Lido Film Festival in which Ms. Pampanini began hitting a female journalist who'd written unkind things about her previously. She had a string of romances with folks like Tyrone Power, Orson Welles (which ended with several slaps across his face!), Italy's popular actor Toto and singer George DeWitt, who was the first host of TV's
Name that Tune, but she never did marry... She lived to be ninety and only passed away because of complications from abdominal surgery in 2016. She was laid to rest in a white coffin with a gravestone reading "Silvana Forever," her houseful of luxurious personal items from jewelry to artwork to ornate gowns being sold at auction. (Her briefly-clad pal in the photo is opera star Mario Petri.)
Finally, we have Monique Van Vooren, who was a Belgian born starlet who rode the wave of hunger for buxom blondes during the 1950s that was led by Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Sheree North and others. Van Vooren had the distinction of a foreign accent to go with her looks. An exchange student in the mid-1940s, she swiftly began to attain publicity and the occasional movie role (the first American one being
Tarzan and the She-Devil, 1953, with her in the title role -- not Tarzan!) 1959 was a good year for her, not only thanks to a supporting part in
Happy Anniversary with David Niven and Mitzi Gaynor, but also for her participation on
I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth. She fell into that Gabor-ish category of one who is famous for being famous, though she did study acting with Stella Adler and toured with various theatre ventures including "Sweet Bird of Youth" and summer stock including "A Shot in the Dark" (with George Reinholt!) Her most notorious credit is surely Andy Warhol's
Flesh for Frankenstein in which she's shown cavorting with Joe Dallesandro. However, the weirdest credit of hers is her participation in the 1975 Broadway musical "Man on the Moon." Van Vooren had worked in a Broadway revue back in the early-1950s, but this was her first full-on musical. But it was crazed from the get-go, with songs by John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) and meant to star him as well until he was yanked from it (replaced by fellow "Papa" Dennis Doherty!) Costarring Phillips' non-singing girlfriend Geneveieve Waite, who was put through lessons in order to emerge alive, there was palpable tension between the ladies over the number of songs given the neophyte. Van Vooren ultimately exploded with "...even Ethel Merman never took them all!" (which might not have been wholly accurate if you asked Betty Hutton! And what solo songs did any other female have in "Annie Get Your Gun?!") Anyway, the much-troubled production hobbled onto Broadway and then closed within two days after devastating reviews. Most fascinating tidbit of all? Phillips slipped an early copy of the script to George Lucas regarding a possible film version after Lucas had directed his daughter MacKenzie Phillips in
American Graffiti (1973) and then later claimed Lucas used it as inspiration for a little movie of his called
Star Wars (1977!) Can we consider the diminutive actor in the photo here a prototype for R2-D2?? Ms. Van Vooren is still alive today at ninety-two, though the victim of some decidedly horrendous cosmetic surgery (the pics of which you won't find here...!)
BONUS PHOTOS
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| Jess Barker |
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| Charlie Barnet |
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| Rod Cameron (LOVE the hair...!) |
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| Gloria Grahame |
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| Dolores Gray (There was no way I could resist this shot with some truly insane wristwear!) |
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| Silvana Pampanini (Displaying one or more of her attributes.) |
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| Monique Van Vooren |
Hardly anyone would argue that 1939’s The Women isn’t a sterling, star-filled, classic dream of a comedy. Opinions differ greatly, though, when it comes to the 1956 semi-musical remake The Opposite Sex. Chief differences between the two films include the presence of men (the original had a completely female cast), vivid color photography and several musical numbers (done as performances, not in musical theatre form.) It almost goes without saying, too, that the caliber of stars is reduced a bit in the remake, though the ladies featured were (and in most cases, are) notable names in the cinema.
Closely following the basic plot outline of Claire Booth Luce’s Broadway play (though augmented to include the male characters and the showbiz 
background), the story concerns June Allyson, a happily married woman with a young daughter, who was once a big band singer, but who now is happy to be the wife of her producer husband Leslie Nielsen. She has a clatch of friends, most of who delight in exchanging every nibble of gossip they can get their hands on. Ann Sheridan, in a voiceover, kicks things off before introducing us to herself and her catty environment.
Alice Pearce plays a manicurist at one of the chic New York salons these ladies frequent and is a heavy distributor of the latest dirt. One of her juiciest items is that Allyson’s husband Nielsen is carrying on with saucy showgirl Joan Collins. She repeats this tale to anyone who’ll listen while painting the listener’s nails with the hottest new color, Jungle Red! When Allyson’s pals Dolores Gray and ever-pregnant Joan Blondell hear the rumors, they head to the theatre to catch a glimpse of Collins, who is part of a deliriously garish show with a production number set in the islands and all about bananas.
The ladies get an eyeful of Collins while she's on a quick break at a nearby coffee shop to call Nielsen. Then she and Gray exchange a few barbs. They don’t tell Allyson of any of this, however, nor does her other steadfast friend Sheridan, one of the more pragmatic members of the clique. Once Allyson discovers the affair, the day of their tenth anniversary, she starts to come a bit unglued and decides to take a quick trip to Bermuda.
Unfortunately, this only allows mantrap Collins to slither in and make things worse. Once Allyson is back and putting on a huge charity show, she discovers who Collins is and that she’s also been in contact with her daughter. Collins baits Allyson with her “sexy” moves, leading to a confrontation. As in the original film, there’s a showdown between the injured wife and the mistress in a changing room (here, a backstage dressing room.) 
In The Women, it was, of course, Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford exchanging words. Here, June Allyson and Joan Collins have it out, though, this time, there’s a climactic slap across the face. (Due to a misunderstanding – possibly deliberate on the part of the director or stunt coordinator – Allyson wound up walloping Collins so hard that her earring flew off and her face was left with a red handprint!)
Allyson flees to a ranch in Reno, Nevada to get a divorce and meets up with the owner, limber-limbed Charlotte Greenwood and fellow future divorcees including Agnes Moorehead and Ann Miller. Much-married Moorehead and already-engaged Miller lift her spirits somewhat and they become good friends. Before long, Gray shows up, loaded for bear, and the ladies find themselves duking and clawing it out in a rip-snorting, hat-ripping, sleeve-pulling catfight!
Also on hand to take their minds off their troubles is ranch hand with a guitar Jeff Richards, who has a reputation for getting the ladies off their feet and into a hand built canoe! He tries to put the make on Allyson, but she, still pining for Nielsen and too ladylike to indulge anyway, tries to ward him off. Others aren’t so fortunate and before long, he is back in the city, married to one of the fresh divorcees!
who has a private phone line installed in her bathroom so that she can converse with gentlemen in secret while soaking in her bubble bath. The glitzy bathroom with prominent tub and plenty of breathing room is a far cry from the dingy, cramped one she had in her apartment prior to landing Nielsen. The new bathroom, by the way, is the scene of a mini tête-à-tête between Collins and her new stepdaughter Sandy Descher, who
knows that her father already regrets losing the saintly Allyson to the more flamboyantly sexy Collins.
(Rosalind Russell got to show off a previously obscured slapstick side that served her well ever after and Joan Crawford got to play a true villainess with new edge.) It was not the box office bonanza, nor the memorable classic, that its predecessor was, but in the wake of the disastrous 2008 remake with Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Eva Mendes, among others, this version may begin to look better to some viewers! It’s probably best to look at it as some sort of alternate universe version of the Claire Booth Luce yarn. If anyone is a fan of one of the stars, it is well worth seeing.
She has a flashback number showing her character singing Young Man with a Horn that is one of the better songs in the piece, the rousing style suiting her particular talents. (The jump in time of more than a decade reveals her looking precisely the same, hair and all.) Now, Baby, Now is somewhat less successful, but does have a bit arresting choreography (and what a coy outfit…a blue, chaste, full coverage jumpsuit with her trademark Peter Pan collar.) Her slow song, A Perfect Love, was preposterously dubbed by a ghost vocalist (Jo Ann Greer) and very badly lip-synched by Allyson.
dowdy, unflattering hairdo is also a debit and most of the clothes given her are atrocious, including some awful hats. (Practically every major MGM contracted actress was considered for or offered this part before it trickled down to her. Doris Day was said to be interested in it, but wasn’t available. It’s a terrible part anyway and its allure always eludes me. The villainesses and the funny roles are so much better.) Her final gown is a pretty one, at least.
and Powell’s relationship and marriage, but things remained polite, if cool, when they were on the set. They only shared three scenes, two of which were brief and involved little or no interaction. The one larger scene together was mostly shot in separate close-ups to avoid them being in the same frame for too long. (The shot of them here in Allyson’s dressing room is from the first part of a scene that was trimmed and shown from a later point.)
She sort of danced a little in one song and merely sat in a wagon in the tropical flavored number. Harry Belafonte had made a splash a couple of years before this with his Calypso album (one hit being The Banana Boat Song) and this number capitalizes on that. Though the lead male dancer claims that Belafonte was sought for this part initially, the truth is that he was far too established and hot a star by then to settle for a brief cameo in a number aping his popularity. He’d already won several film parts and was given a featured role the next year in Island in the Sun as a potential love interest for Joan Fontaine, 
causing all sorts of controversy despite there being little to it. Joan Collins was in that film as well.
Collins suffered a terrible reaction to the bubbles used in her lengthy bathtub scene and had to sit in the uncomfortable stuff for days during the shoot. Eventually, she was rigged up to where only her top was in bubbles and the rest of her was under a board, covered in Vaseline and bandages from the blisters she received! Director David Miller, however, considered 
her “the perfect actress” due to her commitment level and professionalism in all respects.
opposite John Raitt and within one week, all forty-five(!) cast members were unemployed. She made a couple of little appearances in the movies before hitting the “three-fer” Kismet, The Opposite Sex and the nonmusical Designing Woman, but she was finished right after that. While she was indeed “big” and extremely “on,” I have always enjoyed her and think she was an underrated screen personality. Certainly she looks phenomenal in this film in a wide variety of jaw-dropping gowns and get-ups. Her figure is amazing in The Opposite Sex and I like her performance a lot.
when he called her a slut in front of everyone, she slugged him in the face and stormed away. Considering how long she had been out of the cinematic limelight, it was a treat to see her once on TCM in a Word of Mouth interview snippet, looking older, but still attractive. (In truth, she sometimes resembles a drag queen in this, but so what?! I also have to admit, despite my worship of Eleanor Parker, that Gray might have made a decent, if a bit obvious, Baroness Schrader in The Sound of Music had the opportunity been presented to her.)
Her rail thin figure meant that she could carry off most any look and she is easily the most elegant and chic looking actress on hand here. Her character is mostly used to spout advice and smooth things out (it’s a combination of the authoress and the mother character of the original.) But for the last minute appearance of a male date at the final shindig, she could easily be read as a lesbian! Sadly, she would be felled by cancer a little over a decade later.
Tap-a-holic Miller looks very pretty here, though she isn’t called up on to dance one iota. Like most of the other actresses, she gets to show off some eye-popping clothes. Moorehead has fun with her glitzy part and has at least one really fun hat. Greenwood, probably best known now for her role as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!, made this her last film, though she lived another twenty years. Blondell 
eventually segued into TV, earning two Emmy nominations for the series Here Come the Brides, though she also worked in films up until her death in 1979. Pearce, of course, played the hysterical role of nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched (and winning an Emmy) before succumbing to cancer at only age forty-eight. Barbara Jo Allen appears in the film several times as a take-off on Hedda Hopper. Known during much of her career by the name of a very popular character she herself created, Vera Vague, she eventually left the business when the characterization seemed to limit her from doing anything else. About fifty years before Paris Hilton thought she was creating a trend, Allen carried a teacup Chihuahua named Pancho in a plastic purse, allowing him to breathe through an open clasp at the top!
Other performers in the film include Carolyn Jones as Collins’ showgirl pal and confidante. She makes the most out of a small role. There’s also dancer Barrie Chase, 
who seemed to get featured billing in every fourth movie in the 50s and 60s for her terpsichorean talents. Here she even gets to say a line. Her number is a reprise of the title song, this time sung by Dick Shawn (with Jim Backus on hand for part of it) as she, Collins, Jones and a fourth lady slink around and pose languidly. The song The Opposite Sex is actually rather catchy. The version sung over the credits was done expertly by Gray, who had no numbers in the body of the film, and Shawn’s rendition is wacky but sort of fun. The lyrics would make most feminists or other politically correct people wince these days, but you have to consider the era.
of course, and he is often accused of being a non-entity in this film. Collins claimed he appeared to be bored with her. It’s a thankless part, one that was initially only referred to and never shown, with compassing-swinging changes in direction, but I think he does as good a job as anyone could, considering what he had to work with. As I’m finding out with many films, things meant for a cinema do not register the same way on small TV screens and often a bigger viewing area displays expressions and nuances that are missed on small ones.
Richards was formerly a minor league baseball player before winning some small roles in films. A torn ligament had ended his sports career and his rock solid face (he wouldn’t have made a bad Dick Tracy!) fit in well with 1950s expectations of attractiveness. (He isn’t shirtless in the film as shown in this picture, but I never miss the chance to show off handsome men whenever I can!) His biggest splash probably came when he played Benjamin in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. His song here, Rock and Roll Tumbleweed, is rather excruciating though it isn’t his fault. He displayed some degree of comic timing here that, sadly, was never exploited to its full potential. His career was over by 1966, though he lived until 1989.
Little Descher was, for a time, a very busy child actress, having been discovered while on a vacation with her family and later dispatched to Hollywood for a new life as the onscreen child of many stars including Van Johnson, Elizabeth Taylor, Gregory Peck and Loretta Young. While she was in some ways the pert, sickly sweet type of child that proliferated in the 50s, she actually acquitted herself well in this film as it was dealing with divorce, infidelity and so on, subjects not every eleven year old was informed about back then. In any case, she was popular enough to receive kidnapping threats from deranged fans! After a brief stab at acting as an older teen, she left show business behind.
As is often the case at The Underworld, most of the still photos and lobby cards shown here do not do the actual film full justice. It’s a wildly colorful movie (for example, this black & white shot of Allyson with the four basses – is that what they are? – doesn’t show that her getup was periwinkle blue, the background was sea foam green and the basses were a vibrant fuchsia!
Most of the U.S. posters leaned towards the dull with an unflattering and uninviting shot of what appeared to be five wrestlers’ bare backs in a row with the stars’ faces pasted on! Foreign release posters tended to play up the color, sex appeal and glamour a little bit more. (Even if this shot to the left puts Joan's dress - in the wrong color! - on Dolores' body!) Also, considering the gossipy nature of the story, telephones and/or whispers were incorporated into the artwork, giving a more realistic (and possibly more inviting) idea of what to expect.
It may not be a perfect movie, but it’s still a lot of fun and is always filled with eye-catching people, clothing and settings. What’s really a shame is that a “real” DVD with a Joan Collins commentary couldn’t be produced instead of it merely being made as a barebones, pressed-to-order item through the Warner Brothers Archive (despite being an MGM film) due to an apparent lack of interest in it? Interest in it still runs high in The Underworld!
