Poseidon Quickies: It's Really Cole in Here Today!

A few years ago I made a passing remark that I doubted I would ever be doing a tribute to Dennis Cole and there was a hearty round of disappointed sighs as a result! I don't know if I changed my perception of him or if I am running out of people (!) or if I just wanted an excuse to inject a little tan, blond hunkitude into the blog to celebrate recently passing the 12-year mark (on August 24th.) I never had anything against Mr. Cole, he just had not, for whatever reason, risen to the top level of my celebrity obsessions. But I was recently looking him over and thought I would share some photos of him with you today.

Born on July 19th, 1940 in Detroit, Michigan, Cole was the son of two alcoholic parents. (His father eventually committed suicide after the couple had divorced.) He sought escape in athletic pursuits and developed a strong, lean physique. Later, after moving to Los Angeles, Cole's body would be his first step on the way to notoriety.

Cole supplemented his income by posing in almost nothing for famed homoerotic photographer Bob Mizer.

The young man appeared in Physique Pictorial magazine. He also began to earn money as an extra in movies. In 1961, he was seen a young man attending a dance in The Comancheros. Married in 1960 and father to a boy the following year, it was time to make it for real.

Things began to come together for Cole in 1965 when he won a role on the daytime serial Paradise Bay, which starred Keith Andes and Marion Ross. His hair, almost white blond from the California sun, was darkened for the part.

It was with this same darkened hair color that Cole won his next role after the serial folded. In 1966, he costarred with Howard Duff on The Felony Squad. The series premiered in black & white.

Squad, which ran until 1969, eventually shifted to color and Cole reverted to his towhead of blond locks.

Cole swung from Squad right into a new prime-time series called Bracken's World, all about the inner turmoils of a fictional Hollywood studio. Seen with him here is Linda Harrison (known best as Nova from Planet of the Apes, 1968.) Note the way her dress echoes the pattern of the tree bark next to her!

Handsome Cole played not an actor on the show, but a stuntman. The series underwent creative tweaks (and the departure of its star Eleanor Parker) causing its cancellation after a season and a half. It remains, however, a sought-after collectors' item due to the people involved in it and the fashionable era in which it was made.

Ever able to land a job on TV, Cole next costarred with Rod Taylor in Bearcats!

The title referred to their vehicle, a Stutz Bearcat, while the adventuresome story took place prior to WWI. Unable to sustain a consistent audience, it was canned after 14 episodes.

Now in the early-'70s and with a few short-lived TV series under his mod belt, Cole tried a new tack with his career...

He starred in the Broadway romp All the Girls Came Out to Play in 1972.

In it, he played a composer living with a buddy named Angel. When neighbors hear him referring to his roommate as "Angel" they mistake the pair for homosexuals. This causes a stir in the apartment complex, but also leads to Cole seducing several nearby wives! His bare chest looming over some snug trousers couldn't help the piece play beyond a handful of performances.

Despite this setback, Cole epitomized the bronze California stud, with clingy polyester pants, gold necklace and shirts open to the waist. He was a busy guest star on multiple TV series like The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Police Story and Medical Center.

During a guest spot on Charlie's Angels, Cole (who'd gotten divorced in 1965) met and fell for Jaclyn Smith. The telegenic couple dated for over a year before walking down the aisle in 1978.

Most of the wildly popular Angels experienced severe marital difficulty while on the show and Smith was no exception. This magazine cover (trumpeting Jaclyn Smith "and her husband") illustrates the way Cole was paling career-wise next to his spouse.

By 1981, their wedded bliss was completely over. His career limping along, he tried yet another shift to reignite it.

In 1980, the hit daytime drama The Young and the Restless expanded to an hour. Popular hunk John McCook, who played Lance Prentiss, exited the show and Cole was hired to take his place in the Y&R firmament.

Though Cole's participation received plenty of promotion, his stint there was over by 1982.

Cole appeared as a guest on many 1980s series such as Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, Trapper John, M.D., The A-Team and Simon & Simon. He also took starring parts in straight-to-video action flicks which did nothing to raise his position in Tinseltown. But he was soon to be dealt an even more horrible blow from which there was little chance of fully recovering.

In 1991, Cole's only son Joe, who was a sometime actor and a roadie with the band Hole, was living with his close pal Henry Rollins. One night, the two were held up and as Rollins attempted an escape, Joe Cole was fatally shot at close range in the face. It was a crushing experience for Rollins, but a near-crippling one for Cole.

He landed the James Garner role in the national tour of Victor/Victoria, which starred Toni Tennille, but received little to no promotion or publicity for it. In an unfortunate turn of events, he sustained an injury during the tour which took years from which to recover and called for several surgeries. I was in the second row of this show when it came to Cincinnati and it was interesting to see him (and her), but he had by then receded from the screen and his acting career was nearing its halt.

He married for a third time in 2004 and was working in Florida real estate, generally outside the world of show business, but unfortunately had slid into a period of heavy drinking. A DUI arrest in 2007 put his name in the headlines for a brief while again and this last marriage dissolved in 2008. In 2009, Mr. Cole died of liver failure at only age 69.

The fresh-faced youth who'd made a splash in L.A. had faded from the limelight. But he remains an object of interest for many lovers of classic TV. Part of the reason is his early physique pictorials, but there was also a memorable 1977 spread in the magazine Ultra.

Cole was shown showering, exercising and applying aftershave, wearing revealing white bottoms or sometimes even less than that! These tennis shorts show off plenty...

...but a little dark tint over the pic makes things even more obvious. I recently saw Mr. Cole in a season two episode of Medical Center and he was just plain striking to behold... all golden skin, pale hair and while teeth. Time (and gravity) are rarely kind to hunks of that type, and he surely dealt with some significant disappointments and tragedy along the way. Hopefully he also knew of the pleasure he provided to many fans as well.

The End!

Top Ten Anniversary: Female TV Leads

Top Ten Leading Female TV Characters

Continuing our celebration of one decade of Poseidon's Underworld, we now turn to our all-time favorite leading female characters on television. Again, there aren't likely to be many surprises since these ladies have most all been featured here one way or another over the course of this blog's history, but we're using the occasion of our ten year anniversary to create some Halls of Fame, if you will. Interestingly, my tastes seem to run to the polar opposites, very good gals or very bad! The ladies are listed alphabetically according to their characters' first names.

ABBY EWING of Knots Landing -- Donna Mills was brought in after the show had already been airing for one season in order to shake up the famous cul-de-sac. One can safely say she did so! That Mills was known for playing put-upon victims and soft romantic heroines helped make the whole thing that much more dynamic. Abby arrived as a middle class single mother that the other women felt they could trust, but she was soon unveiled as a man-eating, money-hungry vixen who let almost nothing prevent her from reaching her high-flung goals. Yet, there was also a vulnerable motherly side that kept the character balanced. Mills, and her stunning eyes, made an indelible impression.

ALEXIS CARRINGTON COLBY of Dynasty -- Much like Ms. Mills above, Joan Collins was brought onto Dynasty after its brief initial season in order to add conflict to the show. From the very start, Collins strove to have input into the character's presentation from the style of clothing she wore to the insertion of sarcastic humor amid all the turmoil. The result was an international sensation. In the process, real life businessmen wondered whether they ought to have discarded their first wives so cavalierly lest they return to the fray, scorned and ready to wield their own power. Collins also, along with costar Linda Evans, made cat-fights into a much-adored spectator sport among prime-time soap opera buffs. For my own part, Collins work on the show crystallized an already fervent adoration of her that began when I was a tyke and continues to this day!

BLANCHE DEVEREAUX of The Golden Girls -- When this sitcom was put together, the producers gathered a positively perfect cast of ladies. Ironically, Rue McClanahan was initially hired to play ditzy Rose while Betty White had been tagged for the outrageously sexual Blanche. The two wisely opted to swap roles, playing against their established types, and the rest is history. To me, Blanche was always funniest in the first four years or so of the series, when McClanahan was actually less overtly attractive and shapely and the character wasn't written as severely bitchy as she later emerged. Somehow that made her antics more amusing. All of her saucy remarks were delivered in a hooty accent that the director of the pilot wouldn't allow the actress to use, but thankfully she was able to utilize it thereafter.

JAIME SOMMERS of The Bionic Woman -- Lindsay Wagner guest-starred on The Six Million Dollar Man as an old girlfriend of Lee Majors who is severely injured and repaired with bionic parts, but then dies when her body rejects them. Wagner, however, was so popular in the two-part episode that a series all her own was built for her, revealing that she hadn't truly died. Wagner's innate charm and down-to-earth style made the superheroine relatable and believable (and, like any idealistic heroine, Jaime was humane and just.) Legions of little girls (and not a few boys!) duplicated her hand-to-the-ear gesture on the playground, pretending to be able to hear faraway events. I know I also, even at sixteen, hardly put my foot out of a car without thinking of the time she stopped one from rolling away with her bionic leg!

JENNIFER HART of Hart to Hart -- "This is Mrs. H. She's gorgeous!," said Max, the Hart's chauffeur and Man Friday as Stefanie Powers' face appeared in the opening credits of this stylish mystery series. Sometimes chemistry just soars off the charts between people and such was the case when Powers was paired with Robert Wagner as two wealthy socialites whose lifestyle somehow always places them in the proximity of a crime, usually a murder. Having toiled in an endless string of movies and TV shows, Powers really found her wheelhouse with Jennifer, who had the most distinctive way of calling out, "Jonathan!" to her husband. Actually, everything she said and did, each expression, was distinctive and also intoxicatingly captivating. Ten years after its five-season run, the duo returned for a series of eight popular TV-movies.

KELLY GARRETT of Charlie's Angels -- Jaclyn Smith (one of only two ladies here who hasn't received a tribute of her own, though it's often been considered) came to the trendsetting and wildly popular detective series with the least experience (and third-billing.) Her good girl private eye, ever earnest yet firm when necessary, won audiences over and led to her becoming a household name. Smith is the only Angel to have stayed for all five seasons of the show, which means that she is the only one who appears in all cast photos no matter the line-up. She stayed the course and achieved top-billing, then parlayed her fame into a plethora of successful TV-movies and miniseries. We always know that Kelly will do the right thing, whatever the cost.

MAUDE FINDLAY of Maude -- We adore Dorothy Zbornak of The Golden Girls, but practically every off-the-cuff insult or slow-burning grimace was taken for a test drive first on Maude. With All in the Family's staggering success featuring a far-right character like Archie Bunker, Norman Lear took the other tack and looked for comic gold in a far-left character with Maude. It's safe to say that TV viewers never saw anyone quite as outspoken or as aggressively opinionated as Maude, but even during the most controversial and touchy subjects, Bea Arthur delivered comedy with gusto. Her habits of saying people's names twice ("Oh, Walter, Walter...") or exclaiming "God'll get you for that..." were trademarks of the show. And though TV certainly became ever more topical and permissive, I just don't think anyone could ever top Ms. Arthur when it comes to an aggravated insult or even a startled gaze.

SABLE COLBY of The Colbys -- No dramatic TV character ever caught my attention more than Stephanie Beacham as Sable. Among the least known of a star-filled cast, she came out punching and swiftly became a standout, be it tangling with her craggy sister-in-law Barbara Stanwyck or with her actual sister Katharine Ross. Critics claimed that Beacham was merely playing an Alexis wannabe, but the characters were actually distinctly different. Alexis hadn't been able to cope with her husband's emotional and physical absences and turned to other men. Sable lived completely for her husband and family and was steadfastly faithful to him even though he inexplicably carried a torch for her dreary sister Ross. (Sable's history was unduly tampered with later on Dynasty.) Beacham imbued every line of dialogue with supreme weight and always looked eye-popping. The day she finally granted husband Charlton Heston his divorce ought to have garnered an award nomination, but by then the show was close to cancellation. To this day, youtube is filled with all of Sable's scenes strung together and they remain the principle merit of the show.

VICTORIA BARKLEY of The Big Valley -- The very definition of upstanding, Victoria (as portrayed by Miss Barbara Stanwyck) was the moral compass of the whole region near Stockton, California and the guiding force of its most prominent family, The Barkleys. Stanwyck made it clear from the start that she wasn't going to fret around the house in crinoline while the boys went out to fight. She played with a longer wig and plenty of dresses for one season before shifting to an anachronistic shorter 'do with more trousers and gauchos (not to mention false eyelashes!) She performed with gusto, hurling herself into all sorts of rigorous stunts while always somehow retaining a ladylike image (and behind the scenes running herd on her gaggle of young costars, making sure they behaved professionally!) I probably learned more about discerning right from wrong through Victoria Barkley than from anyone else in my own real life.

WONDER WOMAN of Wonder Woman -- If I approached the new Wonder Woman (2017) movie with apprehension, it's because I already had "my" Wonder Woman, the glorious Lynda Carter. (For the record, I did enjoy Gal Gadot and, for the most part, the movie.) No one will ever, in my opinion, match Carter for that combination of luminous beauty, altruistic innocence and iconic inhabiting of the famous character. It was just a perfect marriage of actress and role, though it must be said that the series itself was never up to snuff, writing-wise, with the performance Carter was providing. Oh, and if you think kids on the playground imitated Jaime Sommers, think about how many slinked towards a secluded spot and then reenacted Carter's legendary twirling transformation from Diana Prince into the red, white and blue heroine!

Bonus Pic

I just had to share this clipping I found while searching for the right photos of these ladies. I couldn't agree more with the text on it. I've watched a lot of TV over the last half-century and no one ever knocked me out the way Ms. Beacham did!

Sorry, Wrong Movie...

Woe to the poor young movie buff in the late-20th century, scanning the local TV guide in the hopes of stumbling across one of the classic films he'd been hankering to see for a long time. In those early-VCR/pre-TCM days, one had to become actively involved if he wished to actually see a particular movie. You had to be in front of the set at the given time and pray for no pre-emptions, power failures or static on-screen. So imagine the horror that awaited young Irvin or Marty, settling in with the 27" in his grandma's basement to catch the great 1948 classic Sorry, Wrong Number with Miss Barbara Stanwyck only to discover....

The 1989 TV-movie Sorry, Wrong Number starring Loni Anderson!

This is most likely the only time one would find Anderson and (a slumming) Hal Holbrook in the same airspace, unless perhaps it was at her then-husband Burt Reynolds' house for a dinner party! The on-screen husband in this movie, Carl Weintraub, has a considerable number of credits considering I've never heard of him before in my life! Turns out he also appeared in another one of Anderson's re-dos, Coins in the Fountain in 1990! Anderson had also done A Letter to Three Wives in 1985. The only reason I didn't put those two in this post was because I've already noted them here.

Or how about the nail-biting classic Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum, redone in 1991 with Richard Chamberlain as the sadistic phony preacher in search of some stolen loot?

This redux lacks the atmospheric direction of the great Charles Laughton, has Diana Scarwid in Shelley Winters' old role and doesn't even bother trying to cast an actress of any notoriety in Lillian Gish's part...

Now, granted, the 1965 William Castle shocker was no sterling screen classic, but it did offer the ferocious charms of Joan Crawford to help offset some of the teenage inanity on display. This 1988 remake, I Saw What You Did, offers no such recompense.

Instead the movie enlists two Carradines, Robert and David, for "star power" and hopes in vain that the two young stars (and an even younger Candace Cameron as the sibling of Shawnee Smith) can carry the rest of the dramatic load.

While we have you on the line, let's take a peek at Dial M for Murder, not the 1954 Hitchcock thriller with Ray Milland a Grace Kelly, but a 1981 remake with Christopher Plummer and Angie Dickinson.

Stepping into the roles once essayed by Bob Cummings and John Williams are Michael Parks and Anthony Quayle. (This venerable tale was done once more as a feature film with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998 and called A Perfect Murder that time.)

Another Hitchcock movie, the revered 1954 suspense drama Rear Window, was given a redux in 1998. Now we aren't about to pick on the severely injured Christopher Reeve and actually applaud the fact that he, in his disabled state, was able to continue working as an actor and director...

However, like so many remakes of good movies, the end product just didn't quite do it. And the less said about a dressed-down Darryl Hannah in a rendition of Grace Kelly's role the better.

On paper this one looked fascinating. A remake of the 1962 Bette Davis-Joan Crawford thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with real-life sisters, Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave.

In execution it was a dour, dreary, wrong-headed mess, completely lacking the delicious tension and high-pitched emotional flourish of the original.

One nearly always thinks of Doris Day and Mary Crosby in the same vein, right? WRONG. Somehow the slinky babe whose character was responsible for seducing and shooting J.R. Ewing on Dallas wound up as the frantic target in Midnight Lace, a redo of Day's 1960 melodrama.

Stepping into Rex Harrison's (!) shoes was Gary Frank of the TV series Family.

This glitzy 1988 pairing, of Robert Wagner and Lesley-Anne Down, was brought about for the TV remake of 1958's Indiscreet.

The original got by on it's star power (no less than Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman), not on it's thin story of forbidden romance. So this pale imitation really didn't stand much of a chance from the get-go.

If Wagner and Down in any way fell short of Grant and Bergman, imagine John Shea and Jenny Robertson stepping into the pair's shoes for a 1992 remake of one of their more enduring works, 1946's Notorious!

This time, once again, someone was doing over a Hitchcock film that had been a tremendous hit. WHO was even asking for these pale remakes?!

At least this one, 1984's Sentimental Journey, was a remake of a film that wasn't exactly a blockbuster the first time around (in 1946, with Maureen O'Hara and John Payne.) Here, Jaclyn Smith and David Dukes played a married couple faced with the oncoming death of the wife.

Smith insists upon adopting a young boy (a girl in the original) so that Dukes will have someone on-hand to love after she's gone (this was pre-Tinder and possibly even pre-Great Expectations dating service?) Smith later did a lacking remake of 1950's Three Secrets in 1999.

This one was rough. 1985's The Bad Seed was a remake of the 1956 camp classic that had netted Oscar nominations for several of its participants. This pallid, pastel update starred Blair Brown and an utterly resistible Carrie Wells as the title figure.

In Henry Jones' old role of the skeptical and cantankerous handyman, David Carradine took over. Lynn Redgrave also appeared as the smothering landlady (only in this instance, bedecked in horrible '80s clothing, including some gaudy aerobic gear!)

Now the 1939 film Jamaica Inn (yet another Hitchcock redo) was not exactly an indelible classic (in fact, it's the one sound film of Hitch's that I've never been able to get all the way through), so perhaps this 1983 one isn't all bad.

One thing going for it is the fact that Jane Seymour (in Maureen O'Hara's old role) was often highly watchable during this part of her career. Also, apart from Patrick McGoohan in Charles Laughton's part, the movie boasted some great character actors like Peter Vaughan and Billie Whitelaw, so this one might be worth a look.

Jane was back at it the following year, this time in a double dose, for Dark Mirror (the TV title eliminated the "The" no matter what this artwork says), a remake of the 1946 Olivia de Havilland thriller The Dark Mirror.

In the 1980s, pre-Dr. Quinn, Seymour was an EXCEPTIONAL bad girl in a slew of projects, the highlight of which was East of Eden (a remake done as a miniseries.) This movie was a camp hoot but, since it costars Stephen Collins, it isn't likely to be popping up a lot on the tube.

Still going "dark" for a moment, I give you 1976's Dark Victory, starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Anthony Hopkins! Note the way the advertising imposes a smiling, long-haired Montgomery over the short-haired photo of her after enduring a brain tumor removal. What the hell were they thinking? "Samantha Stevens Does Cancer?"

This was one of several serious telefilms that Montgomery made in the wake of Bewitched to reinvent her screen persona and avoid being typecast as a sitcom spellbinder. Note Michele Lee in the inset as her best friend. It may have been an okay film (I don't recall seeing it), though I doubt it made anyone forget Bette Davis' famous 1939 tearjerker!

Christmas is nearly upon us, so I may as well begin to wrap things up in that vein. You say you don't recall 1977's It Happened One Christmas ever being a feature film beforehand? Well, you'd be right if you were going strictly by the title...

The story, however, was a re-envisioning of 1946's immortal It's a Wonderful Life, which starred James Stewart and Donna Reed. Here, we have Marlo Thomas as their grown daughter, about to commit suicide off the side of a bridge until an angel (Cloris Leachman) comes to save her. So it's both a distaff remake and a continuation all in one!  (Or to some, a rip-off!)

I end for good with one more television remake, this time of the musical Kismet (filmed sans music in 1944 with Ronald Coleman and Marlene Dietrich and then in its musicalized form in 1955 with Howard Keel, Ann Blyth and Dolores Gray.)  Here, the headliner is Jose Ferrer.

You see, I promised I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden that she could have equal time with Bewitched's Elizabeth Montgomery. Here she is in yet another belly-baring, Arabian-flavored role! (And don't miss her shirtless pal in the background.)

In fact, that's a great place to end this post. It's getting warm in here! This might be one occasion in which the remake is (in at least one way) more "entertaining" than the original. We know there are more of these (Tuesday Weld's 1981 take on Madame X comes to mind), so share any recollections you might have if you wish!