Grab a Shower Cap! It's April Again.

We've been in business around here for about nine years and for the past seven, we've marked the coming of April the best way we know how, with a parade of movie and TV stars in the shower. As you can guess, it gets harder and harder to come up with new entries after what will now be eight posts on the subject, but we do try. (And, let's face it... it's not like the research for this is unduly strenuous!) Our delectable cover boy for this post is none other than the late, great football hero and commentator Frank Gifford. We usually start things off with some early days and work our way forward so here goes!

You can be forgiven for not immediately recognizing this gent because he's very young and the picture isn't all that clear. What a CRAMPED way to take a shower for Mr. Bing Crosby!

We're going way back for this next series. This is William Boyd, who was a silent era leading man who later became a household name as cowboy hero "Hopalong Cassidy." The shower he's experiencing here isn't the point (and, sadly, we never see him in one...) I just wanted you to see him.

In the 1927 silent, Two Arabian Knights, Boyd and his fellow WWI soldier Louis Wolheim are captured and sent off to a German POW camp.

As we watch them in a comedic scene (Wolheim is making a cartoon caricature of one of the guards), take a look at the background. An endless sequence of captive men is parading through a decontamination process.

The men, made up of a variety of ethnicities, are stripped naked (their fronts being strategically hidden by a thigh-high barricade.)

Then the prisoners are disinfected/deloused by men wielding some large brushes...

...and finally sent into the shower room behind them to get hosed off. Sadly, we are never treated to the sight of Boyd undergoing this treatment.

Prior to the censorship of the Hayes Code in the early-'30s, you never knew what you might find in a major Hollywood movie, including some plentiful rear nudity!

It was something of a tradition - one we love - for Hollywood stars to have a photo snapped while they were showering. We've covered many over the years and here are a couple more. This is James Stewart.

And here we find a rather serious-minded Scott Brady.

Comic French actor Louis de Funès has a moist moment in Crazy in the Noodle (aka A Hair in the Soup, 1957)

This is the handsome (brief) actor and son of Errol Flynn and Lili Damita, Sean Flynn.

Shy newlyweds Yvette Mimieux and Richard Chamberlain in the charming Joy in the Morning (1965.)

Richard Johnson has the threat of an epidemic on his hands (perhaps literally!) in 80,000 Suspects (1963.)

Mmmmm... Kent McCord of the late-'60s/early-'70s police series Adam-12.

Sir Michael Redgrave (father of Lynn and Vanessa) took a shower in the atmospheric Fritz Lang mystery Secret Beyond the Door (1947.)

Not that anyone could see anything, but it was still a reasonably potent image in 1947.

Frosted (or steamy) glass has vexed many a shower scene through the years. LOL

This is Richard Todd as the title character in 1953's The Story of Robin Hood (aka The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.)

At one point a couple of Todd's "merrie" friends are bathing at a pool near a waterfall and Todd joins them.

True, he still has his pants/tights on, but...

...we're not one to quibble over details when it comes to providing beefcake.

Remarkably, for a Walt Disney production, the poster for this movie has a shirtless Robin Hood (in a moment I don't know for certain happens in the movie) firing off an arrow as a suitably impressed Maid Marian looks on! I like Todd's smile here.

Todd was a nice looking man and, also rare for the hero of a 1953 movie, he didn't have to shave his chest.

This lobby card depicts Gary Merrill (at the time the husband of Bette Davis) ostensibly naked next to a tub of water. No shower, right?

However THIS card shows him in the same exact pose, but now with not only a shower head aimed squarely at his back (and the tub moved), but now an audience of female admirers!

With these repeated disparities in mind, I just HAD to find out what in the hell was up with this 1957 movie, Navy Wife.

Turns out (and my apologies for the low quality of the screencaps - They're the best I could do), Merrill is shown in the bathroom of his home, soaping up with that tub of sudsy water, while a group of folks is gathered outside his open window...!

This is because when it's time for him to rinse off, one of them is using a hose on him from outside! The spectacle of it has drawn a crowd... So this is his "shower."

The scene affords a quick glimpse of Mr. Merrill's tan line.

1962's Convicts 4 has a compelling scene with Ben Gazzara as a prison inmate. He's forced to disrobe before a surly assortment of guards.

The shower head is straight out of the ceiling in a large room and Gazarra is made to scrub up in the direct company of his captors. (The guard second from the left in the lower picture seems intrigued by what he's looking at...)

In fact, by this point most of the guards seem to be enjoying their work pretty well.

Gazzara is taunted by one of the guards (though we know it isn't over any of his physicality!)

Gazarra's reaction is to collect water in his mouth and spit it onto the guard! Kinky...

As he's on Death Row anyway, he doesn't demonstrate too much fear of reprisals. Gazzara had another memorable shower five years prior in The Strange One.

Once I caught a glimpse of this lobby card for Baby Love (1968), I just had to know more...

Turns out that the bare bum in the card belongs to Derek Lamden. In the movie, Linda Hayden is a sexy teen who winds up seducing members of a family she's living with (though she doesn't seem to be initiating the encounter depicted here by the son!)

The inside of the magazine shows another angle of the scene. Mr. Lamden could have used a few pounds on his frame... Hang out with me, kid, I'll show you how! LOL

This is Sir Roger Moore in 1969's Crossplot in which he played an advertising executive having to help hide a model who's being sought after by some killers.

Al Pacino, an actor not particularly known for his beefcake scenes. This shower sequence is from Scarecrow (1973.)

The tightly-framed sequence is fairly long, but almost all done in close-up.

You can actually see more of him in the medium shot of costar Gene Hackman, both behind the curtain and in the mirror.

In the plodding "thriller" The Terrorists (1975), Sean Connery suddenly perks things up a bit with an unexpected shower scene.

He's still working on the case at hand with an associate but - thankfully - took time out to clean up.

Mr. C. really shouldn't have been permitted to wear costumes in his movies. (Well, in Zardoz, 1974, he practically didn't!)

Last year we zeroed in on Ryan O'Neal's shower in Love Story (1970.) This time we turn our eyes to his shower in the sequel, Oliver's Story (1978.)

1970s Ryan O'Neal needed to have as many showers in the movies as was possible.

This time out he has some sort of bruise/blemish that no one in makeup volunteered to fix for the camera... another scenario in which I could have helped had they only called me!

Can anyone hazard a guess as to who this backside belongs to?

How about now?

This is Sean Penn in 1983's juvenile delinquency drama Bad Boys.

Perhaps Madonna went to see this one in theaters and it's what lead to their stormy relationship and marriage?

I have to confess that I've never once found the man attractive, but he did evolve into a good actor, with Milk (2008) a particular favorite of mine.

Elsewhere in Bad Boys is this exchange between Esai Morales and Clancy Brown in the same bathroom/shower room with an extra soaping up in the background. We need more movies with sets like this. You can keep your "impressive" CGI backdrops...!

This is from the 1989 film An Innocent Man, in which star Tom Selleck takes two showers.

This first one is at home and is clean and (semi!) private.

After emerging, his home is mistakenly invaded by vice cops and he is shot when they think his hair dryer is a gun. Then he's framed and sent to prison!

The prison showers are a far cry from the white-tiled one he had before. This sequence (as well as his indoctrination scene at the prison) contains flashes of frontal nudity from extras. Do you know that this part was filmed mere footsteps from my house at a nearby school?! I didn't live there then, though... not till 14 years later. I understand that Selleck was very nice, but that some of the local gals became way too vocally overheated in his presence, which led him to stick close to the set...

Anyway, his next shower is far less solitary. He's surrounded by fellow inmates.

One of them is hardened criminal F. Murray Abraham.

Abraham advises him on how to handle would-be assailants in the clink. Though Selleck is reluctant at first, before long he's left with little choice but to stand up for himself.

The comedic redux Baywatch (2017) found John Bass singing his head off in the shower...

...until confronted by fellow (female) guard Kelly Rohrbach!

She gives him his assignments for the upcoming lifeguard shifts and eventually he begins to overcome his shyness in front of her.

She then informs him that the showers there are "co-ed" and that the lifeguards typically wear their suits while showering (which is about the most idiotic thing ever...)

If you happened to watch American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2017-2018) then you saw Darren Criss give a chilling portrayal of the disturbed young man who killed several victims including the famed designer. One of them was an object of desire of his played by Australian actor Cody Fern.

Before things turned sour, the two of them shared an expensive hotel room and a steamy shower together.

Nice as this was, the true thrill for me with this series was watching some actors unearthed who I hadn't seen in a while like Cathy Moriarty, Michael Nouri, Terry Sweeney, Mike Farrell and Judith Light, several of whom were quite excellent!

This is a rehearsal for a shower scene on the sitcom Baby Daddy. No water.

In the actual episode, Jean-Luc Bilodeau bursts in on his hockey-playing older brother Derek Theler (and a couple of others) in the shower.

Here's the laugh... Not only had I never seen (6'5" model) Derek Theler before this, but Baby Daddy ran for six seasons (on ABC Family) and I had never in my life heard of it!! LOL

I'm beginning to think I really missed something, though.....

The End!