Going Conway

Though the Irwin Allen TV series Land of the Giants only ran for two seasons in the late 60s, it made an impression on quite a few little boys at the time and continues to inspire a following even now.

During a brief re-airing on cable TV in the late 80s or early 90s, I finally got to see the show that several men had remarked to me was their childhood favorite.

Instantly, I found the leading man attractive, though it’s no surprise since I almost always fall for the stereotypical handsome leader type. Cary Conway starred as Captain Steve Burton, a strong-jawed hunk with a winning smile, whose transport ship (in the far-flung future of 1983!!) containing a total of seven passengers and crew (plus one dog) crashes onto a planet in which all the inhabitants are almost 15 times taller than they are.

Conway was born Gareth Carmody in Boston, Massachusetts before his family moved to Los Angeles around the time he was fourteen. Gary was a highly athletic youth with an impressive figure, but was a creative and artistic young man as well. He balanced an active and successful interest in sports with studies in painting, something at which he excelled. At some point, he moved away from his art studies and took up theatre at UCLA (supplementing his income by posing in a strap as a physique model, something quite a few fit young men who later became famous did as well.)

While at UCLA, he met the woman who would not only become his wife, but would be named Miss America 1957, Marian McKnight. They were married in 1958 and remain together to this day. The beauty queen and the gorgeous fledgling actor would go on to have two children together and later on manage a successful business.

Before that, however, Conway found work in some pretty dire films. First came the hysterically titled Roger Corman extravaganza The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, the title almost taking as long to read as the sixty-six minute film took to watch. 

Herman Cohen then cast him in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, a corny low-budget flick that had the nerve to hide Conway’s face under ghoulish prosthetics.

Sadly, he was back in monster makeup again in another Herman Cohen gem, How to Make a Monster, the following year.

Saved from further humiliation by a contract with Warner Brothers, he then hopped on the same acting treadmill that all his fellow WB actors existed on: a slew of guest spots on the cookie cutter series Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye. This work, however, granted him experience and exposure on network television and led to his being hired on the Aaron Spelling-produced show Burke’s Law.

Burke’s Law concerned Amos Burke, played by Gene Barry, the wealthy chief of detectives in L.A. who solved a murder mystery each week, with each episode featuring a plethora of glamorous and well-known performers. (This format would be utilized many times afterwards, most successfully in the less glitzy, but still very well appointed Murder, She Wrote.) Conway played Barry’s right-hand man, but, in actuality, the two men didn’t get along at all, thus Conway wasn’t particularly devastated when the series format changed after two years and he was written out. (The show was cancelled, too, soon after, when the new format was rejected by many viewers.)

Which brings us to Land of the Giants. Produced by adventure (and later disaster) lover Irwin Allen, the series was the most expensive one ever seen to that date. The format required many oversized props and special effects, which also made for a tight and busy shooting schedule.

A lavish pilot was shot and the series was prepared for airing as a midseason replacement. However, no series needed replacing and so the show didn’t air until the fall. This accounts for the noticeable differences in the cast’s appearance between seasons one and two. In particular, the boy of the show, Stefan Arngrim (brother of Alison Arngrim, the immortal Nellie Oleson of Little House on the Prairie) grew a foot or more in between time!

The show also has to have set some kind of record for having inspired the most amusingly goofy publicity photos of all time. Time and again, Conway and his fellow cast mates were placed next to giant scissors, pencils, plugs, telephones… you name it! Conway and his female costar Deanna Lund appeared on the cover of TV Guide situated inside a laboratory beaker.

He was always kept busy running, climbing, ducking and darting and Conway was grateful for his athletic background, as were several of his costars who performed similarly challenging tasks themselves. In certain episodes, one can see how gaunt he is from all the exercise, but with little time for any sizeable lunch! He had to remember to eat heartily to keep his weight up.

Just as he composed the music for all four of Irwin Allen’s 60 s TV series, John Williams came up with the rousing theme song for Land of the Giants. In fact, he wrote two equally exciting themes, though the second one tends to become forgotten (especially since a recent set of reruns on The American Life channel superimposed the first theme over the opening credits of the second season! There ought to be a law…)

Though the show proved popular with children, inspiring various tie-ins such as View-Master reels, comic books and other items, it was cancelled after two seasons.

Conway then worked in the TV-film The Judge and Jake Wyler in support of no less than Miss Bette Davis in a pilot idea that didn’t evolve into a series in the end. He also took a small part in the Jim Brown blaxploitation film Black Gunn as one of the few “nice” white guys and played a murder victim on an episode of Columbo.

Then, in a surprising move, in an effort to generate interest in his career through a still-enviable physique, he posed semi-nude in Playgirl! Though a number of mid-level male stars did this in the early 70s, it’s not something one might expect from a father of two, married to a former Miss America. However, since he did no frontal (or even full rear) nudity, it wasn’t quite the eye-opener that some other stars provided such as Peter Lupus and Christopher George, to name two.

When the film version of Jacqueline Susann’s sultry and sexually explicit novel Once is Not Enough was made into a film in 1975, Conway was given a featured role. Sadly, his part is unbelievably thankless. He was featured on many of the posters, but some versions of it cruelly removed his image and replaced it with an image of the book! The film offered precious little titillation despite a sexy promotional photo, most of the raunchy scenes from the book never making it into the movie, but it remains a campy, hooty delight nonetheless. As gravy, Conway’s character jogs on the beach in some tiny, clingy and very sexy shorts. However, as an acting exercise it was next to nil.

Conway produced a film vehicle for himself in 1977 called The Farmer, a tough, violent revenge flick concerning a war hero who returns to his spread only to see his friend and his girlfriend victimized by some criminals, thus kicking off a quest for blood on his part. It was one of many, many films of its type that came out in the wake of Death Wish and it made little box office impact and is very difficult to find these days.

Since then, Conway has concentrated mostly on his successful (and in several ways progressive) vineyard, an enterprise his wife and daughter work hard on as well. He has occasionally done a dot of TV or film work here and there, and has even dabbled in writing and directing (though it must be said that he is responsible for the storyline of the execrable Sylvester Stallone film Over the Top!)

He also makes appearances at occasional sci-fi conventions and/or reunions of Land of the Giants, remaining friends to this day with his male costars Don Matheson and Don Marshall.

Jennifer Jones: March, 12, 1919 - December 17, 2009

Farewell Mrs. Mueller, wherever you are!

This Hurricane REALLY Blows...

In the wake of Avalanche, Meteor and such other creatively titled TV-movies such as Fire!, Flood! And Cave-In!, by 1979 there were few places left to go except to dig into Hollywood's past and remake The Hurricane. Thankfully, the cycle finally burnt out before such epics as Landslide, Hail or Mud Puddle could be produced!

No less than John Ford had directed the original film in 1937, about the misunderstanding and mistreatment of a South Pacific native-turned-sailor who flees to his home island in order to evade a rules-oriented governor and a sadistic jailor. He’s just in time to meet a ferocious tropical cyclone that wipes everything practically clean. The film boasted a fine cast that included Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor and a roster of character actors such as C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell, Raymond Massey and John Carradine with special effects that remain jaw dropping even today. It's exotic-looking stars Lamour and Hall remain iconic to cinephiles (and who cares if they were actually born in Fresno and New Orleans?!)

The Dino De Laurentiis-produced remake ran into rough waters from the start when original director Roman Polanski became embroiled in his (still not completely resolved, lo these thirty years later!) statutory rape case, causing him to withdraw from the project. He was replaced by Jan Troell, a Swedish director with limited experience in English-speaking films, though he had garnered a number of awards and nominations before and also has after this mess.

Chief star Mia Farrow (thankfully playing someone other than the native girl Lamour portrayed!) stuck with the film for reasons known only to her. She's the single daughter of a strict naval Captain (Jason Robards) who is in place in 1922 Samoa to uphold order. Once there, she catches the eye of a young native man (Dayton Ka'ne) who is in line to be King of the local tribe. When he tosses aside the bride who had been arranged for him in order to canoodle with Farrow, both his people and Robards (who nurses a barely concealed incestuous bent for his daughter) are up in arms. Meanwhile, young naval officer Timothy Bottoms, who has feelings for Farrow himself, and sneering Sergeant James Keach, who delights in looking down on the locals, set their own sites on Ka'ne as well.

As the passions and tensions reach a high point, the title event descends on the area with little warning (or even surprise, it seems!) and decimates virtually everything and everyone. Farrow, though only 34, is far too old for her role. She tries to inject some degree of feeling into her part and is sometimes ably photographed by cinematographer Sven Nykvist (with whom she was having an affair during filming), but it's pretty hopeless. A lot of actresses look great wet, but scrawny, fine-haired Farrow is not one of them. Also, her ill-fitting, unflattering costumes succeed in making her look even more bird-like and gangly than she already is. This is strange since Theoni V. Aldredge succeeded in making her look stunning only a few years earlier in the same basic time period of The Great Gatsby. Part of the problem must be attributed to her really bad hairstyling on his film.

Her emaciated (fans would say elfin or waif-like) figure is “shown off” in water logged skin-diving scenes while her porcelain skin is singed to a pink glow by the tropical sun. She and her lover, with their matching (but differently colored) fluffy hairdos ludicrously look at times like negatives of the same person! (See also Moment By Moment for lovers who are damn close to carbon copies of one another - Lily Tomlin and John Travolta!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robards is mostly one note and has a fairly ludicrous role to play in the first place. His final scene is particularly stupid. Hawaiian Ka'ne is actually not as bad as one might expect, though he needed a more intuitive director in order to give the role and the film its due. He was simply too green. At least he is very easy on the eyes at all times and seems to be giving his all to the part. He would partake in only one more role before disappearing from the cinematic landscape forever, one of many, many performers who were given the billing “Introducing ________ as ________” only to evaporate soon after.

Bottoms (who reportedly tangled with Farrow during filming) does all right and Keach, like Robards, is very one note, though not ineffective. Other notable names among the cast include Trevor Howard as an alcoholic priest and Max Von Sydow (there no doubt at the request of his frequent director Troell) as a doctor.

Every single other cast member performs as if it is his or her first-and-only time in front of a camera and, for most of them, it was. Also, none of the below the title actors seem to have any concept of how to move, look or speak like someone from 1922, a chief culprit being Nancy Hall Rutgers as a local society matron.

The scenery is lovely, the Nino Rota score is strong, but the story is hackneyed, the screenplay is disjointed, the editing is choppy and the direction is weak. In striving for convincing winds and waves, the makers forgot to a) allow the viewer to clearly see what is happening and b) make the viewer care about the people being tossed about and drowned. The movie is like a lumbering, deadened sea mammal that has been harpooned, but refuses to expire. The finale is unrealistic to say the least with NOTHING in sight except a few bits of debris and the besieged lovers. Where did the massive ship drift off to? Where are the bodies of the many, many natives and others? This is the least of the film's problems, though. It's just a big, expensive misfire that served as a way to wash $22 million out of its investors’ pockets.

No "Love" Lost...

Before one can delve into the camp wonders of today’s featured movie, Where Love Has Gone, a little back-story is in order so that the through-line of insanity, the kind that can only occur in Hollywood, is able to be properly followed.

First we have Miss Lana Turner, turning in an Academy Award nominated performance in Peyton Place, as the distressed mother of a child who is starting to form her own opinions and break free of the stifling restraint that she’s been held under since birth. Lana’s big moment occurred on the witness stand where she decried that her daughter tried to tell her her problems, but she wouldn’t listen.

The night of the awards ceremony, April 4th, 1958, Turner opted to take her teenage daughter Cheryl (and her own mother) to the event, leaving her moderately estranged lover Johnny Stompanato out in the cold. Having already been given what-for by Sean Connery during the filming of her latest movie Another Time, Another Place over in England, he was in the process of being eliminated from her life, though she was still drawn to the handsome (and reportedly well-endowed) hunk. By the time she realized that her swarthy lover was also a gangster, he’d already insinuated himself fully into her life!

Not long after, enraged over being passed over as her escort to the Oscars, Stompanato fought wildly with Turner in a house that she and her daughter had just moved into. Young Cheryl, fearful for her mother’s safety, went to the kitchen to get a knife and threaten (or scare) him. However, upon Turner's opening of the bedroom door and his lunging towards it, he was stabbed and fell to the ground dead.

Rarely (in recent years, anyway) had such a scandal rocked the film capital as this one. Speculation ran rampant. Had Cheryl stabbed Johnny out of jealousy? Had Lana actually stabbed Johnny and let Cheryl take the fall because courts would be more lenient on her than on the star herself? Did he walk into the knife as they reported or had he been deliberately stabbed? It was a major gossip fest and a horrifying chapter in Turner’s life.

In the climactic court hearing, she gave fretful, hysterical testimony (with cynics suggesting she was giving the performance of a lifetime!) and the ruling against Cheryl was deemed justifiable homicide. Cheryl, by the way, had already (according to her) lived through an ex-stepfather’s molestation and later came out as a lesbian, albeit a seemingly very comfortable and content one, so her life definitely had drama to match any one or two of her mother’s films!

Turner was understandably worried about her career and, in a genius move orchestrated by Ross Hunter, took the leading role in an opulent, no holds barred remake of the women’s film Imitation of Life, with a story that partly concerned a famous actress’s issues with her daughter. The film was a blockbuster hit, earning Universal Studios (and Lana) millions.

Cut to a couple of years later when novelist Harold Robbins published a book, Where Love Has Gone, in which a young girl is incarcerated for filleting her rich sculptress mother’s sleazy boyfriend and no one seems able to get the truth of what happened out of her. Turner was appalled that Robbins would exploit her situation in this thinly veiled way and a Cold War developed between them.

The sensational novel was picked up by Paramount for the film version and this kicked off a whole other drama. Two strong ladies were chosen to headline the picture and there would be sparks flying practically from the start.

As the celebrated sculptress, Oscar-winner Susan Hayward was cast. In the supporting, but still very key, role of her domineering mother, Two-time Oscar-winner and cinema legend Bette Davis was chosen. Rounding out the cast were Mike Conners as Hayward’s ex-husband and the father of the accused teen, Joey Heatherton as the chisel-wielding daughter, Jane Greer as a frank, but concerned, social worker and Star Trek’s DeForest Kelly as Hayward’s agent and sometimes lover.

One of Davis’s own favorite films of hers was Dark Victory, the story of a young socialite who is dying of a brain tumor. (She famously fought a battle, and lost, over whether or not music would be played under her ascent up the stairs to her demise saying, “Only one person is going up those stairs, Max Steiner or me!”) Hayward had just done a remake of the film called Stolen Hours and this did not sit well with Miss Davis, though the remake certainly made less than a fraction of the ripple the original had.

Also Davis, who fancied herself a bit of a writer, especially when it came to beefing up her own roles or rewriting dialogue, took pen in hand to the script and began making changes to it. Though the script was not strong to begin with and some of her changes might have strengthened it, she finally went a little too far and Hayward pulled out her trump card. She had final script approval and insisted that the script be shot as it was originally issued! Thus, the ladies reverted back to a script that is peppered with many hooty lines throughout.

It remains to be seen whether Davis would have had the wherewithal to remove any of Heatherton’s exclamations of “Daddy!” Not only does she emit the word almost twenty times though the course of the picture, but also the way she says it is whiny and grating enough to send waves of pain down the spine of the listener. She does, however, have a surprising edge to her and enjoys a couple of decent scenes, usually when opposite the caring authority figures played by Greer and Anne Seymour.

As Heatherton’s lawyer, George MacReady gets a real zinger when referring to the deceased plaything, “He wasn't any good at double entry bookkeeping, but he was great at double entry housekeeping.” Later, when Davis blasts Hayward for her nyphomaniacal ways with indiscriminate partners, Hayward protests, “When you’re dying of thirst, you’ll drink from a mudhole.”

A significant part of the film is told in flashback. As the principle characters drift back 15 to 20 years in their lives, every hairstyle stays the same, all the clothes are still Edith Head designs from 1964 and virtually nothing is done to suggest a prior era!

Susan goes about her sculpting in hilarious headscarves, only able to provide decent output when she’s receiving plenty of sexual input. Once Connors begins hitting the bottle after Davis’s machinations, Hayward starts molding more than clay with the male models she works with.

It’s possible that Davis may have been miffed at playing the mother (bewigged in a sort of oddly becoming George Washington-esque coiffure) of someone only ten years her junior, though she looked as if the expanse was greater thanks to a life of cigarettes and assorted beverages. She claims that the white wig was necessary because otherwise, she looked too young to be Susie’s mom. Female costars were always a crapshoot with her, though. Some were embraced and nurtured, such as Mary Astor and Olivia de Havilland, while others were reviled and detested, such as Miriam Hopkins and Joan Crawford.

Hayward was not exactly a shrinking violet herself, having been born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Typically, after each scene was put in the can, she would retreat to her dressing room, giving Davis (and most of the others) the cold shoulder. Davis maintained that acting with Hayward was like acting to a “blank wall” and that she got nothing in return emotionally from her.

Needless to say, however, whenever the story called for these two to lock horns, little or no acting was needed! The enmity that is displayed in their confrontation scenes is palpable and the voices are raised with ease. Susan even gets to take a fireplace poker and shred the hell out of an imposing portrait of Davis at one point.

According to author Whitney Stine, who had collaborated with Davis on her (semi-auto) biography, the minute the film had wrapped, Davis tossed her wig at Hayward and said, “Fuck you, Susie!” However, Davis wasn’t through with her troubles yet. The makers decided that another scene should be added in which her character goes out of her mind and Davis (rightly so) fought against this, stating that she would have played her character differently all along had she known that that would be the character’s final outcome. Amazingly enough, she came out on top of this battle, thank goodness. Hayward did manage later to deal Davis another punch to the gut when she slipped into the just-fired Judy Garland's role of Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls. Davis had campaigned for it, all but begging to do it for free!

The film’s luxuriant theme song (sung by Jack Jones), playing against nighttime shots of San Francisco, was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar, but won neither. Jack would later perform the famous theme song for The Love Boat, crystallizing him into the 1970s pop culture.

The movie was a pretty big hit with audiences, though many critics carved into it with the same relish that Hayward had when she slashed up Bette’s painting. Available at present only on out of print VHS, it screams out for a DVD release.

Things came full circle only five years later when Harold Robbins sold ABC television a treatment for the lavish primetime soap opera The Survivors. Despite her pronounced loathing of the man, the price must have been right because Lana Turner starred in the very troubled program. Boasting the highest budget in the history of television to that time (with the sets alone costing four times more than the norm), the opulent show was a complete fiasco and a financial money pit that never got fully off the ground. However, as has been demonstrated time and again, when the money’s there, even the most hated enemies can find a way to work together!

Senta Baby

Tread carefully when watching certain mid-60s films, for if you stumble upon one featuring Senta Berger, you may come down with a fever you can’t ever shake off!

Born in Austria, Ms. Berger dreamt of being a dancer until her developing body was deemed inappropriate for that art form by her instructor. Already an accomplished singer, she then turned to acting and made her film debut while in her teens, with many of her early work occurring in musicals. Having acted in a number of German films, she appeared in Carl Foreman’s star-studded anti-war film The Victors as one of several beautiful and voluptuous European actresses such as Elke Sommer, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. She then guest-starred in an episode of the hit spy TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E as well as working in an installment of the anthology series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre.

Not long after, she made her way to the set of Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, a (troubled) Civil War drama. According to her, she was greeted by a grip as a “German pig,” the crewmember’s wife having lost her family in Auschwitz. The project was in a state of turmoil due to Peckinpah’s conflicts with the studio and star Charlton Heston ran interference to a point, but the film was ultimately hacked up and augmented with different music until a few years back when a restored DVD was issued.

Director Peckinpah was clearly taken with her and used her in his next film The Glory Guys (from which he was also fired and replaced during filming!) These back-to-back quagmires couldn’t have made Berger feel very secure about a Hollywood career. In any case, she married German actor Michael Verhoeven (whom she met when he appeared in her film Jack and Jenny a few years earlier) and returned to Europe where her husband later turned into a prolific director. In a rare example of show business matrimonial stability, the pair remains married to this day!

Always a stunning, jaw-dropping beauty, she could occasionally get rugged as in the Kirk Douglas film Cast a Giant Shadow, in which she played an Israeli soldier. The (sort of bloated and glossy) film was loosely based on the true story of US Colonel Mickey Marcus and Douglas had the enviable “problem” of having to choose between his onscreen wife Angie Dickinson and the sultry Berger. This was still another tense production with the director constantly squabbling with Douglas and tangling also with guest star John Wayne who filmed a brief role in it. It must be said, however, despite this gritty shot, that she appears most of the time in the movie looking well-groomed and sexy, which is how it should be!

In the mid-60s, Ms Berger finally reached the era in which her unbelievable looks were fully exploited and the films of hers that Poseidon enjoys the most were made.

First up was The Quiller Memorandum, a low-key, menacing spy story about agent George Segal attempting to uncover a neo-Nazi organization in West Berlin. Max Von Sydow co-starred as a prime suspect while Berger portrayed an enigmatic beauty who assists Segal in his investigation. The film is well served by sharp location shooting and a strong cast that also includes Alec Guinness and George Sanders. Berger is luminous and it’s a treat just to hear her say the word Quiller in her accent.

Next up is another spy film, but this one wasn’t at all firmly rooted in reality, but rather reveled in the ridiculous. The Ambushers was one of a series of four Dean Martin flicks that had him playing swinging spy Matt Helm, always with a drink close by and always with his battery of “Slaygirls” in the wings to help him out of a jam.

The opening credits to this film are so much fun and feature many false-eyelashed, big-haired beauties cavorting around while a kicky title number written by Hugo Montenegro beats along. It is later, during an Oleg Cassini poolside fashion-show that Senta makes her first appearance, sashaying around to even more infectious Montenegro music.

Senta Berger, who I have enjoyed in practically everything I have ever seen her in, could have done nothing else in her life and I would still worship her daily for the way she looks in her seduction scene with Dean Martin. Her lustrous hair piled high in that way that could only happen in the mid-60s, her skin burnt umber from the sun, her earrings so big that they could double as trivets for hot pots and pans on the supper table, she wafts around in a filmy, patterned, ice blue gown.

It’s a mystery that even Jessica Fletcher couldn’t solve as to why this woman was not shot to the highest highs of cinematic success. She radiates charisma and sex appeal with every glance and breath. Later, she turns up in a tiny lime green and purple ensemble with boots and, again, looks like a million bucks.

These Matt Helm films, however, were not taken seriously (in fact, they were derided and sneered at and, in many ways, deserve it at times for their tackiness and ludicrous scenarios.) However, they have attained a small cult following thanks to the sensational clothing, the striking female co-stars and the true comic ability of some of the leading ladies such as Stella Stevens and Sharon Tate. A DVD boxed set makes it easy to grab all four of them.

Later, Ms. Berger played the object of lust of Kier Dullea in De Sade, based on the life of the legendarily salacious and sadistic author. This should have been a dynamic pairing because Dullea was one good-looking man and it goes without saying how luscious Berger was.

Unfortunately, the film is mostly a dull, dreary mess, refusing to fulfill any promise it had of titillation. Stills from it are far more erotic than anything that actually appears in the final cut. Dullea, though pretty, is unappealingly styled during most of the movie and was entirely wrong for the role anyway and Berger, though she looks spectacular, is wasted horrendously.

Berger had a really “out there” role in the 1970 and 1972 Italian films When Women Had Tails and When Women Lost Their Tails. As comic takes on pre-history, she outdid even Raquel Welch in the fur bikini stakes (and did so when 31 and 33 while Welch had been 26) with a wild mane of hair and the tiniest of costumes.

In 1977, Sam Peckinpah (again!) utilized her in his devastating WWII film Cross of Iron as a nurse who falls in love with a wounded soldier. The film, starring James Coburn, James Mason and Maximilian Schell was noted for its downbeat, gritty approach to its subject matter, but has attracted a following of fans who consider it one of the very best films of its type ever made.

For all intents and purposes, American audiences lost sight of Senta Berger after this. She had two sons in the 1970s and began working on the stage as a result, though she was never without film and TV work for very long. Her German credits are extensive to say the least. Not only that, but she has evolved into a dedicated and heavily involved member of the German Film community.

She has more than once been on the jury of the Berlin International Film Festival and since 2003 has been the President of the German Film Academy. This position has kept her right in the thick of things there and has put her in contact with many major stars. Seen here with the towering Tilda Swinton, Senta looks every bit as good, if not better, at almost 70 years of age as Swinton does two decades her junior.

Berger’s two sons have established acting careers in German television and she remains a viable acting persona there, herself. It’s just a shame that she is so utterly unsung here, though any time Poseidon can wave his trident her way and awaken the masses who have never heard of her, he does so. The more recent photos of her here do not do her full justice and she remains an unspeakably chic, elegant and classy lady.