Fun Finds: Movie Stars Magazine, March 1968

This edition of Fun Finds was made possible by a grant from one of our loyal readers. A surprise care package arrived in the mail with several vintage magazines and this was one of them! On the cover are Miss Nancy Sinatra and the four popular Lennon Sisters. (This is one rare time in which I actually prefer Peggy's hairdo to Kathy's - and look how dark Dianne's is! I wonder if someone colorized it incorrectly...) Let's dig in and see what we find within its covers.

There's nothing at all unusual about a feminine protection advertisement in a magazine of this sort, but usually the models aren't wearing huge sanitary napkins themselves! LOL I hope the poor dear doesn't spill any red wine on this dress at dinner (though it will probably soak right into the "soft impressions" and no one would notice...)

This gossip section, authored by famous columnist Army Archerd, touches on the then-fresh split between Tony Curtis and his second wife Christine Kaufmann (the girl he left Janet Leigh for.) He would wed four more times before his death in 2010. Army refers to Sonny Bono's "high-powered" music! James Coburn's wife Beverly hung in there until 1979. What about the "date" between Lainie Kazan and Richard Chamberlain (in mime makeup)? 

Interesting to note that Frank Sinatra offered Candice Bergen the Mia Farrow role in The Detective (after he fired - and divorced - her for not leaving Rosemary's Baby to report to his movie.) The part was ultimately fulfilled by Jacqueline Bisset. Interesting that Roman Polanski's name is misspelled with a "y" on the end. Susan Hayward actually didn't make another movie until 1972, five years after Dolls. The previous owner of the magazine filled out this contest entry chit, but didn't clip and mail it in!

It's interesting to read the take on Lee Marvin and Michelle Triola's live-in arrangement when you know that six years after they broke up in 1970, she sued him, in a landmark case, for what became known in slang as "palimony." She wanted $1.8 million as well as $104K for "rehabilitation purposes," but wound up with $0.00.  It remains a tough row to hoe for those who pursue it with "cohabitation agreements" a common bit of advice to unmarried couples living together. Marlo Thomas never did marry this man. She wed for the first time in 1980 (at age 43) to Phil Donahue, who she'd met on his talk show three years prior.

This chatty section is far cattier than Archerd's column, picking at celebrity relatives who aren't as successful as their kin and taking Debbie Reynolds to task for her style choices. The wedding referred to in the caption for George Hamilton's photo was that of President Lyndon Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird Johnson, who Hamilton dated for a time.

The column continues onto this page, with another feature "Talk to the Stars" beginning as well. Pics include the kids from Family Affair and a trio of Kings (thus representing but a fraction of The King Family!) The Q&A section kicks off with a couple intended for then-hot Sajid Khan (whose Hollywood career only extended a few years after this, though he continued to act sporadically up to the millennium.) Incidentally, if you're curious about Barbara Bain's answer, she said that they had a pact to always work together and held out for the opportunity. Also, that the difficulty came in trying to keep up with his marvelous talent.

As "Talk to the Stars" continues, there's a question for Roger Ewing, an actor I'd never even heard of. After looking him up, I see he was a recurring cast member on Gunsmoke, appeared on several other shows and in some movies before concentrating on photography from the early-'70s on. He was reportedly a contender for the title role in Midnight Cowboy before Jon Voight won the part.

This periodical is big on slipping the text in-between columns of ads versus the more common method of lumping ads together on whole pages. For those that enjoy the vintage advertisements, this is a plus in your book! This continuation of the earlier gossip column reflects on Miss Dina Merrill's loss of social standing when she married an actor and has a Star Trek era pic of Leonard Nimoy, minus the pointed ears. Interesting that as early as 1968 Newman and McQueen were debating billing should they ever team up (which they memorably did in 1974's The Towering Inferno.) Donna Reed's husband at this time only lasted until 1971. Three years after that, she wed for a third and final time.

Ending on this page, we read about Eve Arden's children who may be pursuing show business careers. Connie doesn't appear to have gone on to much, but her youngest son (Douglas Brooks West) did a fair amount of writing, directing and producing as an adult. On a happy note, Mark Slade did indeed marry Melissa in 1968 and they remain together still today!

Robert Culp's marriage to France Nuyen lasted less than three years. He wed two more times while she remained single after 1970. At the bottom is a pic of Lynda Bird Johnson and her groom Chuck Robb. They remain wed to this day.

Having wed in 1960, Sammy Davis Jr. and Swedish actress May Britt faced a considerable uphill battle. (In fact, interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 states, eventually being accepted in 14 of them until 1967 when a Supreme Court ruling allowed for them countrywide.)

Having created one child and adopted two more, one might think they had a chance for enduring happiness, but it all fell apart in 1968 (Davis had become involved with frequent co-performer Lola Falana, though May gets all the blame in this article.) Britt (who had been wed once before him and did marry again after Davis) is still alive today at eighty-three. Davis had a successful third marriage in 1970 which lasted until his death in 1990 at age sixty-four. As for the bottom of the sidebar, Dean Martin rather foolishly ended his marriage to Jeanne in 1973 and married once more directly after, but it was over in three years. Joey Bishop stayed with his wife until her death in 1999.

Most folks, especially those who've read this blog (or as noted above!), know that the biggest fissure in Frank Sinatra & Mia Farrow's marriage came when she failed to report to The Detective because Rosemary's Baby was running over schedule and she (rightly, in retrospect) sensed it was going to be a landmark film while her part in The Detective could have been done by virtually anybody. 

The angle in this piece is that both Frank and Sammy were facing down divorce at virtually the same time. She had actually taken time during Baby to visit him on Detective, trying to keep their union alive, but when she missed the start date for her supporting role, she was served with divorce papers almost immediately after.

Say it isn't so? Cissy from Family Affair a slut?

Of course it's not true. One of the guys was a man she was paired with on The Dating Game and the other two were her brother (!) and his friend. Typical bait & switch headline.

Actor Frank Converse

Converse had been the lead on a failed amnesia-centered series called Coronet Blue before doing the show referenced in this article, N.Y.P.D., which focused on three police detectives: Jack Warden, Converse and Robert Hooks. He arguably became better known from the mid-'70s trucker series Movin' On with Claude Akins, but enjoyed a long career that extended to 2012. He's seventy-nine today.

Who knew that at one point Davy Jones and Sally Field enjoyed a series of dates together!?

The angle on this story is that he was the guest brought in to crown a Miss Teen International during a pageant in which she was taking part (but didn't win) and gave her a kiss then. But later during The Flying Nun they went on some dates. It didn't last terribly long because she wed first husband Steve Craig in 1968. Jones also wed in '68, but it was kept under wraps to avoid upsetting his teen fans from The Monkees. He had been married three times by the time of his death in 2012 at only age sixty-six.

Here's Davy Jones sidled up to two of Dean Martin's daughters!

Dean was proud of all his children, but Dean Paul Martin (who, for a time went by Dino and was in the music act Dino, Desi & Billy) was a particular favorite. Dean Paul had been married and divorced from both Olivia Hussey and Dorothy Hamel when he died in a National Guard-related plane crash at only age thirty-five. His father was never the same after that. Deana Martin had a thriving music/acting career in the 1960s, later turning to live performance (in Branson, MO, for example) and then recordings produced by her husband.

Here we find a splashy, two-page spread of paparazzi photos featuring Peter O'Toole and then-wife Sian Phillips.

The text refers to her as "ex-actress" though she wasn't exactly idle! She was raising their two children, but still worked occasionally and, in fact, had two films released in 1969. In 1976 came her most striking work, likely, as Livia in I, Claudius on the BBC. They divorced in 1979 after two decades of marriage and Ms. Phillips is eighty-four now. (After O'Toole, she was wed for a dozen years to actor Robin Sachs.)

Now, the cover story, about Nancy Sinatra and The Lennon Sisters (two acts you typically don't associate with one another!) "leaving the men they love. Though it is carefully done, Nancy was NOT in the middle of the sisters during this photo. She's been sneakily cut and pasted in!

The gist of the story is that The Lennon Sisters were departing The Lawrence Welk Show, where they began, to star on Jimmy Durante Presents The Lennon Sisters. The variety show was marred by the uneasy combination of costars, compounded by the horrifying murder of their father by a deranged fan in 1969. And as it turns out, Nancy wasn't leaving anyone! Her collaborator Lee Hazlewood was striking out on his own and moving to Sweden. After many 1960s hits, they reunited in the early-'70s to less fanfare.

Maureen O'Hara kicks off a two-part feature about her life and beliefs.

I thought it was fascinating that in 1968 she says about too much idle time for young people: "There are many, many conveniences, too. What it used to take hours to do, it now takes only minutes." Good lord, it must be seconds now! I've seen sweeping changes since I came along in 1967! She later goes into how she won a screen test at age sixteen and eventually came to Hollywood.

This feature, a continuing series "Complete Pocket Guide to Hollywood," offers photos and little thumbnail bios of any and all stars of movies and TV at that time. Equal weight is given to people whether they were Oscar-winning legends or regulars on a TV show.

As this installment only goes from Kellerman to Knotts and appeared in a monthly magazine, one assumes it took quite a while to amass the entire "pocket" guide! (They must have had bigger pockets than me...!)

Lynn Loring was a child soap actress (on Search for Tomorrow) who grew up and found much work on television. Thinnes also began on a soap (General Hospital) and later starred in the short-lived shows The Long, Hot Summer and The Invaders. And, of course, had a role in Airport 1975, making him a member of our "Disaster Movie Club."

The couple (who, according to the text met in 1964, though Thinnes was married until 1967 to his first wife!) seemed to have a successful union, working together often in the late-'60s and 1970s, divorced in 1984. She didn't remarry, but he did two more times.

I'm sorta doubting it...

I have to say I've never seen either of the movies featuring these two stars together. Anyway, all the text is just a bunch of gibberish to provide a reason for these press shots taken upon Rock's arrival in Rome for filming.

Wrapping up, I close with a couple of ads and one page that had more writing on it from our magazine's original owner. Again, he didn't clip and send it in, but maybe he was ashamed of his mess-up and scratch-outs. LOL

Kicky, '60s bargain fashions.

Finally, this lunatic ad that promises to increase cleavage to an eye-popping degree with Mark Eden exercises using a clamshell-like device... The company was indicted for mail fraud and these ads (and the "product") were withdrawn by the early-1970s.

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I'm in the midst of learning a new position at work (after 17 years in the same one!), so it's been tough to gather time for posting. I hope that I'll be able to keep everything rolling as 2018 dawns, though it may result in some briefer, less-involved postings. I'll be back as soon as it's feasible!  Thanks.

Fun Finds: Modern Screen Magazine, November 1965

You wouldn't believe what surface-dwelling minutiae has occupied a hefty chunk of our time as of late... Your friendly webmaster Poseidon is planning a Yard Sale this coming Saturday! I've been burrowing through the house, slapping a price tag on practically anything I no longer want or need and have been making signs and otherwise organizing for the big day (which is going to be a city-wide event.) So in the meantime I give you another of my infamous Fun Finds, this one a movie rag from one of my favorite time periods, scored at an antique mall for the unbelievable price of $2.00! Hopefully, I'll make that back (and then some!) on Saturday. Ha ha!

First up is this movie review section which will give you a cross-section of the films that were released in the same general time frame of one another. (Also of interest is the bobbed model for Nestle hair colorant. Not to be confused with Nestlé, this company's name was pronounced like the verb "nestle.")

More movie reviews, but also a makeup and beauty Q&A column, so that you can achieve your best 1965 look.

I went ahead and skipped to page 88 so that we could round out all the film reviews. I found The Hallelujah Trail (1965) to be a cumbersome, long, unfunny bore, but I disagree that cutting out Burt Lancaster's bath time is the answer!

The famed Louella Parsons was still kicking it (albeit with the aid of Dorothy Manners) in 1965. In fact, this was Parsons' next to last credited column in Modern Screen as she retired in December of 1965 (and reportedly Manners had been doing most all the writing for a year prior anyway.) Jane Fonda's first marriage was the top story this time out.

The movie (not referred to by name) in this blurb on Warren Beatty was That Funny Feeling (1965.) It was initially to be directed by Gene Kelly with Beatty as the star, but ended up with Richard Thorpe behind the camera and Sandra Dee's husband Bobby Darin as (the second-billed) costar.

Needless to say, Natalie Wood did not end up marrying fiance Ladislow Blatnick. Divorced from Robert Wagner in 1962, she wed British producer Richard Gregson in 1969, though they were divorced as well by 1972. That same year she re-wed Wagner.

I LOVE the fun, glitzy photos on this page. At a premiere party for the all-star drama Ship of Fools (1965), we get glimpses of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Miss Rita Hayworth.

The glamour continues on the next page as we find Tommy Sands escorting a young Barbara Luna while hunky Doug McClure (Luna's ex-husband!) squires Sands' soon-to-be-ex Nancy Sinatra. Television legends Lucille Ball and Milton Berle are also on hand, as are Stuart Whitman and the darkly attractive Wende Wagner, who'd costarred with Whitman in 1964's Rio Conchos.

Get a load of the sleek, pert Candice Bergen, just about to make a splash in The Group (1966.) Her high-profile debut was greeted with some degree of confusion, though, when her role in the film turned out to be surprisingly small (perhaps trimmed, thanks to its then-daring Lesbian aspect.) We adore Diane McBain, but this was the year that her film career took a slide that became irrevocable as she worked more and more on TV and in lower-budget movies.

The movie referenced in the caption for Elke Sommer "Any Tom" was later changed to Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) and starred Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller in addition to Sommer.

The line from Steel Magnolias (1989) goes, "When it comes to sufferin', she's right up there with Elizabeth Taylor!" However, Patricia Neal was no slouch in that department either. Having barely survived a tumultuous affair with Gary Cooper in the 1940s, she later had a string of tragedies beginning in 1961 with one child being struck in his carriage by a taxi, resulting in severe injuries and eight brain operations, followed by the death of her seven year-old daughter the following year from measles encephalitis. Then while working on 7 Women (1966), she suffered a succession of strokes while she was pregnant, fell into a coma and later required intensive recovery treatments! So, this was indeed a miracle baby. When she finally did learn to talk, walk and memorize again, her husband left her, though she did resume her career with success.

This article, more than most, seems wholly fabricated and all about nothing. It makes it seem like there are all sorts of rumors surrounding Annette Funicello regarding her behavior.

In reality, she was having a bit of morning sickness (she wed Jack Gilardi in January of 1965 and had their first of three children that October) and, thus, was experiencing a little discomfort during the shooting of How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965.) Her career in those teen-oriented flicks tapered off completely by 1967 and she concentrated on motherhood (though she divorced in 1983, marrying a second time and final time in 1986.)

We were THRILLED to have this article on The King Family (really The King Cousins), but have to laugh that the text says they "use too little make-up!" Whaaa??

We've harbored a bit of a crush on cousin Ric (with the guitar) ever since getting our hands on some DVDs of their never-ending series of holiday specials.

We dearly love Ric's white trunks and would have loved a better look at them. Consequently, our mind wanders over what could be dangling from the right leg of them during his guitar playing and how they appear to be gaping open a little during his turn on the surfboard!

Tina is another favorite and, despite the clan's fresh-scrubbed reputation, does show off a healthy heap of cleavage in her two-piece.

This is David Janssen of The Fugitive and his wife Ellie.

The article is just more made-up piffle about how she has to deal with things written about him (probably some by Modern Screen and many more by the other tabloids) while enjoying the fruits of his acting labor. Incidentally, the text cuts off while looking like Richard Diamond, Private Detective "wasn't" a smash. The sentence actually continued on page 77 to say, "wasn't any slouch either." Janssen and Ellie divorced in 1968 after a decade of marriage and he rewed (to Dani Crane) in 1975, which lasted until his premature death in 1980 of a heart attack at age forty-eight.

I enjoyed this portrait of Miss Doris Day.

In the article, she bemoans the fact that so many fan mags use attention-grabbing headlines (that often people in line at the grocery mentally-absorb without ever reading the fluffy, unrelated story found within) that paint an unfair picture. And she was absolutely right. One of the episodes of That Show which I watched recently had one guest, a magazine writer, freely admitting to fellow guest columnist Earl Wilson that she would take one small seed from a story of his and fabricate an entire article out of it, complete with fake conversations, and then generate a grabber of a headline to go with it.

I LOVE Mia Farrow's hairdo in this series of photos (and on the cover, which is a slightly more elaborate version.)

The man in question for this article, the man who allegedly taught Mia Farrow how to love the three decades older Frank Sinatra? Her FATHER John Farrow!  LOL I bet Ol' Blue Eyes just loved his one...

Another actress whose hair I often loved (with its thick, curly locks) is looking a bit weary here.

Dorothy Malone married Ginger Rogers' ex-husband Jacques Bergerac in 1959, had two daughters with him, then divorced him in 1964. A nasty custody battle resulted in her obtaining primary possession of the girls, though she nearly died soon after of a gallery of afflictions including pulmonary embolism, blood clots in her lungs and pneumonia! A second marriage in 1969 was annulled after a few months and a third one barely made it to two years. She's been single ever since and is currently ninety-three!

This article, about Ryan O'Neal and his actress wife Joanna Moore (parents of Tatum O'Neal) discusses the important religion played in their lives while the lean years before O'Neal's series Peyton Place loomed heavily.

I don't know where all this religion was (or went!) when the squabbling couple divorced in 1967 over (among other things) Moore's drug and alcohol dependency. He immediately wed Peyton costar Leigh Taylor-Young and they proceeded to a successful custody hearing of Tatum and her younger brother Griffin when Moore was arrested for drunk driving in 1970.

I didn't know that David Hedison (of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and Barbara Parkins had once been a couple. Tim O'Connor and his wife Mary are listed in a few spots as having divorced in 1974, yet other places have them still wed! The big news is that he is ninety-three and she is ninety-one, whether they're married or not.

Chris Connelly and Pat Morrow didn't end up wed (he married Cindy Carol in 1969 and she married Rosalind Russell's son Lance in 1975), but Ed Nelson and his wife had a very successful union. Marrying in 1951, they stayed together until his death in 2014, sixty-three years later!

It seems so unusual to see Dyan Cannon dressed in such staid clothing. After her divorce from Cary Grant, she always seemed to be in very mod '60s get-ups that showed a lot more bod.

The couple's fairly brief union (1965-1968) resulted in Grant's (and her) only child, Jennifer Grant, who maintained a moderate acting career as a young adult. Fans of Grant must have been agog when he became a father for the first time at age sixty-two (beating fifty-six year-old George Clooney by quite a bit, but not Tony Randall who was in his late-seventies when he fathered two children!)

Quite a worried shot of Debbie Reynolds...

...meant to coincide with an old story of hers from the dawn of her career in the late-1940s when she had been prescribed the use of a sunlamp to help cure a bad cold. The automatic shut-off didn't happen and she was blinded by UV rays for 36 hours!

Fans of The Beatles ought to enjoy this series of pics from their heady days as a top musical act. (LOL at Leonard Bernstein and daughter plugging their ears at a concert!) John Lennon and Cindy divorced in 1968.

George Harrison wound up marrying Pattie Boyd in 1966, but they separated in 1974 and divorced three years later. Ringo had married Maureen in 1965, but they were divorced in 1975 (both unfaithful, she'd had an affair with Starr's band-mate Harrison!) Starr more successfully wed Barbara Bach in 1980. Paul McCartney never wed Jane Asher, but in 1969 he wed Linda Eastman, his future Wings collaborator.

Patty Duke is the subject of this article over an apparent romance with... wait for it...

Troy Donahue! I sure never knew about this (if it even happened), but Patty married for the first time in 1965 to a man other than Troy. And Troy married for the second (of four) time in 1966. None of his marriages stretched beyond a couple of years.

Sean Connery and his marriage to Australian actress Diane Cilento is profiled here.

Whatever the arrangement, the union had petered out by 1973. She wed again in 1985 to playwright Anthony Shaffer and that lasted till his death in 2001 and Sean wed Micheline in 1975, to whom he's still married today at age eighty-six.

Carroll Baker was at or near the peak of her productivity and popularity at this particular time...

However, it was not long after this that the wheels came off. She became identified with blonde, buxom types of roles, engaged in a legal battle with her studio and saw her marriage fall apart. In time, she remarried and also rebounded career-wise, but never again to the heights she'd once experienced.

Jacqueline Kennedy (later Onassis) was a constant subject for tabloid magazines and so much of the content was mindless, unsubstantiated babble.

The angle of this article is that young Mia Farrow could learn grace, etiquette, composure and so forth from Kennedy in order to measure up better as a possible wife to Frank Sinatra. As it was, their marriage only lasted from 1966-1968, though it seemed pretty doomed from the start.

Glamorous Gila Golan, a 1961 Miss Israel, was hot off the hit movie Ship of Fools (1965) and went on to other movies such as Our Man Flint (1966) and Valley of Gwangi (1969) before departing the biz for marriage and three children.

Her life got off to a calamitous start as she was left abandoned in Poland during The Holocaust and taken in by a Roman Catholic family. (Sources vary as to whether she was three years old or an infant in a bundle.) She's still alive today at seventy-six, though long retired from performing.

Robert Vaughn was currently enjoying the success of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran from 1964-1968.

Though he and Joyce Jameson did enjoy a long relationship, it didn't end in marriage. He wed in 1974 to a woman who remained his wife until his death last November. Sadly, Jameson, who suffered from depression and chronic insomnia, committed suicide in 1987 at age fifty-four.

We may never know the exact circumstances of this quickie marriage. It's a fact that Edwards and Kersh wed, the divorced after the briefest of unions.

She had his child. Then a year later, while guest-starring on Batman, she met Burt Ward and soon married him in 1967, though they too were divorced by 1969. Kersh had once been the key fascination of producer Martin Ransohoff, who planned to give her a star build-up, but before that happened, he met Sharon Tate and turned his efforts towards her instead.

The happy little family unit shown here unfortunately didn't last beyond 1969.

This was Alain Delon's only marriage, though he had several lengthy relationships (and two additional children, much later.) The text states that the couple were expecting another baby, but unfortunately that never came to pass in this instance.

Our last little feature is a hair-do how-to with Marianna Hill. At the time known for much television work, she was also breaking into movies like The New Interns (1964) and Red Line 7000 (1965.) The movie noted in the caption would ultimately be called Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966.) Hill later worked in Medium Cool (1969), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Godfather, Part II (1974) and is still with us today at seventy-five. This particular magazine seemed to have a bigger dose of colorful or interesting ads than many, so I will end with shots of those!

Check those razor-like eyebrows! Blue eyeshadow later became the target of derision for a whole generation. Ha ha!

This is SO 1960s slick. Love it.

I am obsessed with slim, sleek skirt lines like this! I don't care how cheap they were or what they were made of. I also cannot get enough of the gal on the left's makeup!