Designer Double-Dip: Cape-ability

As you can imagine, we know every frame of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) by heart and have each perfor- mance, vocal nuance and costuming detail practically memorized. Thus, we are quite familiar with the almost iconic clothing that designer Paul Zastupnevich placed upon the shoulders of his cast during their fiery and watery ordeal. We recall Ernest Borgnine's pink tux shirt (later to be found on Stella Stevens!), Shelley Winters' chiffon dress, Carol Lynley's hot pants and so on. Then there are the earlier, more brief, scenes such as the church service given by Gene Hackman up on deck.

For this windy occasion, Pamela Sue Martin donned a yellow and white cape with a distinctive closure at the neck.

You'll recall that earlier in her cabin, she was seen wearing a yellow blouse and white skirt as she and her brother Eric Shea tussled around about a telegram from their parents, not to mention about going to the church service itself ("Why don't you SHOVE IT!"), so this cape was a fully coordinated accent to her ensemble.

Without realizing it, though, Ms. Martin was being quite fashion forward in her selection of this cape. You see, it was not just a run-of-the-mill item from a store in 1972, but actually a piece of clothing from the far-flung future of 2053, a time we haven't yet reached even now!

The year before Poseidon, Irwin Allen produced a TV pilot called City Beneath the Sea (1971.) The futuristic series, about an underwater compound run by Stuart Whitman and a variety of other subordinates, was not picked up, but the pilot saw release as a feature film in the United Kingdom.

One of his undersea cohorts, Rosemary Forsyth, sports a variety of candy-colored mini- dresses, such as this yellow one with cut-out sleeves.

When she's traipsing through the presumably nippy hallways of the underwater city Pacifica, however, she sports a coordinated cape that fits over her yellow dress. Yep, you guessed it! The very same one that later turned up on Martin in Poseidon.

Here's a close-up look at the detail on that neck-closure.

Forsyth blames Whitman for the accidental death of her husband, which is why she appears so dour in this series of shots.

It's fun that we can take a look at costumer Zastupnevich going green and recycling a bit of clothing from a prior project. As the shipboard church scene in Poseidon is comparatively brief, it was likely determined not to spend too much time or money on clothing for Martin in that fleeting instance. We end with a candid photo taken aboard the Queen Mary (stand-in for the S.S. Poseidon) on the day that scene was filmed.

A Brief Camp-ing Getaway!

Oh, duckies... We've been overwhelmed by the final rehearsals and opening of our latest stage show (and positively pounded at work as well!), so we can only arrange for a little "camp"-ing trip until things let up a bit. A round of photos that tickle our camp sensibility for one reason or another. We hope you find them interesting or entertaining! Thanks to our cover boy Mark Damon (and his twirling, whirling friend!)

You know that we like vintage ads, especially vintage underwear ads, so we kick things off with four of them from a series of popular ones that have hooty camp characteristics (as well as some beefcake) now.

Hmmm... I like underwear ads that start off with a man naked but for a towel!

I beg your pardon??

The (cut-off) title of this one was "The Long and the Short of It" (and they were allegedly talking about their briefs...)

This publicity portrait for the kiddie show Space Patrol (1950-1955) has Lyn Osborn receiving some attention from gal-pals Virginia Hewitt and Nina Bara while Ed Kemmer and Ken Mayer look on. Are they jealous of Lyn or of the girls?  LOL

The plot and cast of The Girl in Black Stockings (1957), a murder thriller, has built-in camp value that this rather awkward publicity portrait only emphasizes further. Shown are Mamie Van Doran, Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft and Marie Windsor (though a scenery-chewing Ron Randell isn't depicted here.)

Presumably a portrait taken for a TV special (?), Chita Rivera brings along the camp and a trio of hirsute safety gays.

Populating the TV-movie High School U.S.A (1983) with a plethora of former child actors and sitcom stars past their "best if sold by" date was already a recipe for corniness, but this bizarre photo, in which Gilligan's Island's (1964-1967) Dawn Wells head is quite larger than anyone else's and looms over Michael J. Fox like a Carnival or Mardi Gras decoration seals the deal. Also shown are Father Knows Best's (1954-1960) Elinor Donahue and Make Room for Daddy's (1953-1965) Angela Cartwright. (The movie also included Bob Denver, Dwayne Hickman, Tony Dow, David Nelson and Dana Plato!)

In 1950's Return of the Frontiersman, velvet-voiced Gordon MacRae is serenading Julie London, but Rory Calhoun seems to be taking just as much, if not more, interest in what Gordy's got to offer!

This staged portrait is from the middle of Barbara Stanwyck's career (maybe around 1952's Clash By Night?), not the early days, so it is quite rare to find her doing swimsuit/cheesecake poses. The actress was resistant to anything of this sort from the very beginning of her film career, which started in the very late-1920s.

In the 1962 peplum adventure My Son, The Hero, Giuliano Gemma seems to be positioning himself for something more than a fight with Serge Nubret! Make love, not war, I always say...

I couldn't resist sharing a better view of Gemma's li'l get-up. Look closely at the cute construction of it, how it wraps around his torso. (P.S. - the King's outfit on the right is just the sort of thing that I would - and have - been put into in a show!)

We recently mentioned Vince Edwards' career start during our tribute to The Seduction (1982) and here he is (blond!) in Mister Universe (1950) with a collection of cohorts that includes Bert Lahr, Jack Carson and an unrecognizable Janis Paige.

Sal Mineo, during one of his films such as Tonka (1958) seems to have been caught with his pants down or over a barrel...

What an odd composition of humpy Van Williams for his series Surfside 6 (1960-1962), but then if I looked the way he did, I'd gaze at myself often, too!

Williams' pal and fellow TV hero Adam West had it far worse with this campy shot from Batman (1966-1968)  From the soaked-through chest sweat, we can surmise that the costume was an absolute furnace on that hot beach!

Talk about weird (but not unwelcome!), we have this promotional photo of 4/5ths of the cast of The Rat Patrol (1966-1968), a desert-set WWII action show that starred Christopher George, Lawrence Casey, Justin Tarr and Eric Braeden (then known as Hans Gudegast.) Missing from this uncharacteristically-undressed shot is Gary Raymond.

Here during a break in filming Planet of the Apes (1968), Charlton Heston enjoys a moment with a diminutive actor portraying one of the ape youngsters. We hope it's not an actual child, considering he's having a smoke - through a holder to avoid damaging the extensive make-up!

Even crazier is this shot of a couple of gals grabbing their masks, but not the rest of their simian get-ups!

What, you may ask, is happening here?! No this isn't a snapshot from Fire Island, but a publicity photo for the TV miniseries Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (1979.) The examination of the demise of six male friends' relationships starred Billy Crystal, Tony Musante, Ted Bessell, David Ogden Stiers, Robert Conrad and Jeff Conaway.

Look at him go! Gregory Harrison portrayed a male stripper in the landmark TV-movie For Ladies Only (1981)

You might recognize this couple, but do you know what the project was? No cheating! I'll tell you their names in any case:  Jean Simmons and Bert Convy. Answer a little later below.

The unfortunately silly disaster flick The Concorde...Airport '79 issued this press photo of the plane spinning upside down (something it did over and over, even after the passengers survived it and disembarked... they got back on for more!!)

Just for fun, here's that same press photo upside-down so you can see the flip side!

We really do love Jane Seymour, and she may very well warrant a tribute here one of these days for her stunning work in miniseries TV and Somewhere in Time (1980), but remember in the late-'80s when she was shoving her intensely romantic life down our throats?

She even prepared a coffee table book on the subject, as if members of her general fan base were going to in any way be able to live in a castle with swans floating around and bedeck themselves in jewels and voluminous gowns!

This over-the-top display of home perfection and romantic ecstasy did backfire a bit when she and her husband divorced about six years after the publication of her guide...

Look who we have here! Linda Rogo and Reverend Scott from The Poseidon Adventure (1972)?

Well, not quite, but sorta... this pair of models are wearing the film's costumes in order to demonstrate some of Paul Zastupnevich's work during the presentation of the Best Costume award at the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony!

In a trend that went on several times over the course of about a decade, music played while the clothing was shown off by models (or some years, making it even more fun, actresses!) Campy and tacky, but SO MUCH FUN! You can view the whole spectacle here. Do note that the same piece of John Williams music - from The Poseidon Adventure's New Year's Eve party - is reworked for each of the five vignettes!

And now we'll leave you with the answer to our earlier question about what Jean Simmons and Bert Convy were doing, gussied up and in an embrace. They were costars of the fabulously horrendous, thus captivatingly compelling, TV miniseries Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1981)! Seen here is David Birney as Lyon Burke and a gaggle of nautical chorines.

Someone somewhere felt the need to cast Bert Convy as the medically (and mentally!)-challenged Tony Polar and Jean Simmons as the fire-breathing diva Helen Lawson. They are shown in the program performing a number from their latest alleged spectacular movie musical! True, both had sung before - he in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and she in Guys and Dolls (1955) - but they were hardly the types to portray hit musical stars of 1981! Pictured with Simmons is the movie's costumer Jean-Pierre Dorléac, who wrote to me once after reading a blog entry concerning Pamela Hensley, (whose costumes on Buck Rogers he'd designed!) but whose e-mail I accidentally deleted not long after receiving it! My apologies, Mssr. Dorléac!

Thanksgiving Dressing

No, not the food kind! We instead offer up this hooty two-page spread from (I think!) TV Guide in which The Young and the Restless' Jeanne Cooper is given a vintage version of What Not to Wear by none other than Irwin Allen's very favorite costume designer and close friend Paul Zastupnevich.

Sadly, the next page of text isn't included/available, though what's there is choice. Zastupnevich gave each one of these get-ups a name! Ah, the '50s and early-'60s. There is a bit of misinformation in this brief article, though, but leave it to The Underworld to snake out the truth. Zastupnevich was not the costume designer for Cooper's musical. He was her co-star! Under the name Paul Kremin, he and Cooper did "Plain and Fancy" at the Riverside Tent Theater in North Hollywood. But Cooper's husband's client (the man was an agent) needed a dress for an event and in desperation turned to Zastupnevich, who had several years of experience in costume design.

The client was Rhonda Fleming. She was so happy with what he came up with that he was touted by her as the full-on designer for her next picture, The Big Circus (1959.) He presented his ideas to the producer, Irwin Allen, and the rest is history. Once grand showman Allen witnessed the flair with which the young designer presented his work, he utilized him forever after. Even then, Allen had assembled an all-star cast. Seen below are Vincent Price, Gilbert Roland, Rhonda Fleming, Victor Mature, Red Buttons, Adela Mara, David Nelson and Peter Lorre.

Surely one of the delights of costuming this mammoth motion picture would have been the fitting of hunky David Nelson (son of Ozzie & Harriet and brother to teen crooner Ricky) for his trapeze leotards!

Under Allen's supervision, Zastupnevich went on to design countless clothes for TV shows like Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel along with movies like The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Swarm (1978) and When Time Ran Out... (1980), among others.  Prudish Allen and he tangled over Stella Stevens' cleavage during Poseidon, resulting in a sizable brooch being plopped into the lowermost regions of it.  One of my favorite quotes of his about Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was that the show was "... all men and monsters, and some of the men were monsters!"

Zastupnevich was also nominated for Oscars with these films, losing to Anthony Powell for Travels with My Aunt, Anthony Powell for Death on the Nile and, yes, Anthony Powell for Tess!  (What are the chances?!)  One presumes that Zastupnevich's office had an Anthony Powell voodoo doll dangling over a lit candle with needles in its head!

Of course he wasn't even nominated for The Towering Inferno (1974) which contained one of my all-time favorite dresses in cinema history, that of Faye Dunaway's. The dress was the subject of my sixth ever post here!

Mr. Z passed away at the age of seventy-five in 1997, his final project having also been Irwin Allen's, a TV-movie called Outrage! (1986), which was uncharacteristic for the duo in content (the trial of a man who killed his daughter's rapist and murderer), but not casting. The parade of names involved included Robert Preston, Beau Bridges, Burgess Meredith, Mel Ferrer, Anthony Newley and Linda Purl!  It was a long way from both Jeanne Cooper and Rhonda Fleming.