Tis the (Swimsuit!) Season

Finally! Though it isn't officially "summer" yet according to the calendar, it's good enough for me. Memorial Day weekend signifies the start of swimming pool season in there here parts and we always mark the occasion with a parade. A parade of male celebs wearing swimming attire, Speedos if we can manage it!  Our cover boy this time is Ken Clark, better known to most of us as Stewpot from South Pacific (1958) during an on-location wardrobe test. (In my opinion, he passed the test with flying colors!) You can read more about him (and see him even better) right here! Now, let's get the pool party started...

This article will tell you a little bit more about the movies' most famous Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, as well as present him to you in a suit versus the usual loincloth.

Another Olympian who played Tarzan (in a 1933 serial) is yummy Buster Crabbe, seen here flanked by two galpals.

One of the early sound cinema's rather unsung hunks, Chester Morris, giving a punching bag a nice going-over.

1940s & '50s leading man John Payne.

We don't see too much of screen villain David Brian (un)dressed this way. Swimsuits have changed a lot since the 1940s!

Almost unrecognizable in his island-flavored garb is none other than Robert Preston! This was during Typhoon (1940.)

Between set-ups of From Here to Eternity's (1953) famed love scene on the beach is Mr. Burt Lancaster.

A fairly scarce color photo of Farley Granger in some trunks.

Esther Williams with then-costar and then-lover hunky Jeff Chandler (during A Raw Wind in Eden, 1958), who she later accused of cross-dressing in her suspect autobiography.

Mercy! Take in the bronze, rippled glory of physique model turned actor Ed Fury 

Fury, seen horsing around here with an equine friend, was also in South Pacific, but not dressed like this. (Wonder if this horse was jealous?)

Richard Burton taking in the sun, sand & surf.

We've all seen the other picture of John Bromfield and Tab Hunter, but here's another angle (double! - so to speak, with the angling of the rod & reel and the angle that Tab is leaning!)

Here's another young gent who isn't that easy to readily identify. It's Gig Young in an early piece of "beefcake" publicity. (Methinks he didn't go around in shorts too often.)

William Holden models a trim physique (and a trim swimsuit!)

The young man seen canoodling here on the beach is one Mark Damon, 1960s actor turned producer.

Look out! John Saxon is making a splash in his summer suit.

I know that many of my readers have a fondness for Mr. Saxon, so I'm providing a whole little section of this post to him today.

Mmmm... We like him with next to nothing on.

And he seems rather eager to please in this last one.

Two of the young men from A Private's Affair (1959), Barry Coe and Sal Mineo. I think "A Private Affair" would have sounded more promising!

You lucky dog...! Getting to romp on the beach (and in the air!) with hunky Rod Taylor.

Hmmmm.... Looks like handsome John Gavin's got ahold of one of his balls.  :::snort:::

Last year we showed two pics of young Warren Beatty in the TV show Suspicion, a very early appearance by him, but here's one more we found.

This is a rather unusual shot of Tony Curtis and pal George Hamilton, enjoying the sun.

Here we find a bit more sullen Curtis on the deck of a boat.

Hey, if you caught those semi-nude black & white pics of Steve McQueen that surfaced a few years ago, now you can finally see what color his clingy swimsuit was before he undid it and tossed it away!  ;-)

This little strip of photos from a magazine are of Tom Jones and his family.

One of the all-time hunks as far as we're concerned, John F. Kennedy Jr.

Mr. Tom Selleck

Jack Scalia

David Hasselhoff aside a bubbling jacuzzi.

Always adorable Gregory Harrison.

It still surprises us that we don't hate Zac Efron! I'm even considering seeing his new film Baywatch (2017)...!

This is Darren Criss (once of Glee) who'll be portraying a famous killer in season three of the FX series American Crime Story.

The season's storyline will be "The Assassination of Gianni Versace" and Criss is portraying Versace's dangerous boy toy Andrew Cunanan.

This battered (and bulging) personage is Michael Fassbender in the 2015 adaptation of Macbeth. Hmmm... almost makes it worth giving Shakespeare another try.

And now a few of our infamous movie-specific photo essays. This first one features an unlikely actor to be wearing a rather unbecoming one-piece.

It's movie tough guy Lyle Bettger in Carnival Story (1954.)

He plays a daring high diver who climbs a tall ladder before hurling himself into a tiny pool below.

The suit is particularly revealing from behind... that's a lot of  ass flank for 1954!  LOL

And in case you're wondering, yes, he did think it was a humiliating costume according to his costar Anne Baxter, who said he'd belt back a drink or two between takes in the dreaded thing.

On to other things, we visit the college swimming pool of the movie High Time (1960.)

The Bing Crosby vehicle has the aging crooner heading back to school to earn his degree and rooming in the dorms with the younger guys.

In the foreground is Crosby's costar, the yummy li'l Fabian (but don't forget to check out the guys in the red swimsuits either!)

This is what Fabian looked like at the time. Hmmm... maybe I need to go back and get my degree, too!

And here we see Fabian emerging from the water himself.

In the 1966 spy flick Agent Joe Walker: Operation Far East, known in its U.S. release as "So Darling, So Deadly," star Tony Kendall is looking really good in his own flimsy swimsuit.

He's got a burly sidekick played by Brad Harris, whom he works pretty closely with and who also looks great in his trunks, too!

We've featured Bekim Fehmiu and his abbreviated trunks from The Adventurers (1970) before, but here are some new ones.

This hoot of a movie is a must-see, and not only for Fehmiu's teensy, clingy trunks.

Football hero turned actor Fred Williamson sure never played the game professionally dressed like this!

However, in the Blaxploitation flick Black Eye (1974), he romps on the beach with girlfriend Teresa Graves in this skimpy Speedo.

Williamson was in terrific shape (I mean, you can't exactly hide anything in this get-up!)

Sorry that the caps aren't clearer, but he was in motion and we do the best we can.

During our April Showers post this spring, we showed some shots of John Allen Nelson from Hunk (1987.) Here he is again, fulfilling the needs of another category.

The bronze, blond, buff actor struts around the beach, attracting the attention of practically everyone around (but, if you'll look behind him in the picture at far right, another bather has a Speedo on. They were rather commonplace for a time.)

Of course, not everyone looked as chiseled in their suits as Nelson did.

The (cheesy, if we're being honest) movie even treats us to a close-up!

Moving on to some TV for a moment, we find 1960s teen actor Michael Callan guest-starring on a 1974 installment of the detective series Barnaby Jones. As Penny Fuller darts to the pool to speak with him, he's emerging in a scant blue bikini bottom.

Barnaby Jones was hardly a hot series for showing off beefcake, so this was a startling sight! Callan is pitching a pup tent as he reaches for his nearby robe.

Look seriously at just how abbreviated this swimsuit is!

It seems a bit much for even Fuller to take in and she's playing his lover in the teleplay! Callan's wet arms have notable trouble sliding into the terry cloth robe, for which we're grateful.

I mean, seriously... CRACK on Barnaby Jones!  LOL  Incidentally, this third season episode is presented in its full, uncut glory while most, if not all, of the rest have been edited by a few minutes for syndication. It makes me wonder if this one was deliberately held back from reruns due to the scanty swimsuit and the fact that the show would likely be seen earlier in the day than when first aired.

By the way, I also have this little collage of Callan from the 1962 teen crime drama 13 West Street. The pool he's swimming in this time is the distinctive one that was used multiple times on The Colbys and in many other movies and TV programs.

Next we turn to Dallas, where star Patrick Duffy is taking a dip in the Ewing swimming pool with his almost-relative Kristin Shepard (played at this juncture by Colleen Camp, not the more notable Mary Crosby.)

As the two emerge from the pool, we find that Mr. Duffy is wearing a snug little red Speedo.

Make that a clingy, butt-hugging, Speedo. Duffy was still rather fresh off his cancelled sci-fi series The Man from Atlantis and, thus, was still in pretty decent shape from all the swimming he did in that!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the big finish. The pièce de résistance! As far as I'm concerned this is excavation research on par with King Tut's tomb and Al Capone's vault! I give you the television debut of one Gil Gerard (and what a day it was!)

Known to us more for Airport '77 (1977) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, these shots are from Mr. Gerard's very first day on the job of the daytime soap opera The Doctors in 1973.

Gerard played a surgeon who'd previously been a P.O.W. and was living in Hawaii with his controlling wife, but who was then offered a spot at the show's Hope Memorial Hospital.

I guess the producers wanted to make sure that viewers were drawn to him right away. His first three appearances on the show were shirtless!

Gerard (who'd only made one scant appearance in a low-budget movie previously) was bound to be nervous enough for the taped-live program, but then to have to do the whole scene wearing next to nothing...!

Anyway...we were thrilled to land upon this historical documentation of one of our beloved TV hunks, who was probably never leaner in his life than at this exact moment. We hope you enjoyed him, too!

So, with that, we (and Johnny Mack Brown) announce:  The End!

Fond Farewell: Merrill-y Rolling Along

When a person passes away at age ninety-three, one can hardly claim shock or tragedy, but it's nonetheless affecting to see yet another of one's treasured stars leave the earth. Miss Dina Merrill, who has her very own tribute here (from nearly eight years ago!), was an unspeakably elegant, tirelessly giving and surprisingly capable actress whose passing on May 22nd we mark with this additional little photo essay.

Nedenia Hutton, as a daughter of wealthy parents, could have spent her life lunching and hobnobbing with other socialites, but instead she craved work as an actress. After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts - and adopting the stage name Dina Merrill - she debuted on Broadway in 1945.

Marriage to a fellow heir the following year led to many years as a wife and mother of three, her stage career abandoned. Still, the embers burned and in 1955 she began to get her feet wet again in television productions. By 1957, she was working in The Desk Set opposite Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and being touted as the next Grace Kelly.

Many movie roles, opposite stars such as Jerry Lewis, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Glenn Ford (with whom, as seen above, she went brunette in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, 1963) followed.

The mid-'60s brought multiple appearances on the stalwart, elegant games shows of the era like To Tell the Truth, What's My Line? and Password. The glittering, but sharp, Merrill added beauty and sparkle to many a celebrity panel.

If we're being honest, the harshness of early black & white was a bit of an enemy to Merrill's tan complexion and blonde hair, bringing out a severity in her looks, but that was offset by her enthusiastic smile and array of terrific gowns and jewels. (Check that necklace in the upper right corner!)

Though she was rich enough to burn through several outfits a day and dispose of them immediately after, she was not above wearing a gown more than once, as evidenced by this purple number, which she wore on TV, but also appeared in during a public appearance on a different night.

What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth, favorites of mine and many others, did have the unfortunate aspect of pitting the celebrities against the players, making them fight to earn a quick $50.00 or so. Conversely, Password showed the celebs working hard for a contestant, striving to get them as much money for themselves as possible.

One could do much worse in the way of entertainment than watching the ebullient and sparkling Merrill play Password with a handsome man in uniform!

And every once in a while, as in this What's My Line? appearance, she went all out, ramping up the glitz to the nth degree in a way that knocks us out even now.

By this time, Merrill's twenty-year marriage was faltering. She also strove to break away from the serene, inert socialite roles that were so often handed her, yet it was always difficult for anyone to believe that she was anything but a refined woman of means.

During an episode of Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre, Merrill met Cliff Robertson and the two swiftly fell in love. They wed the day after her divorce was final (and with it went her standing in the "high society" she'd been born into.)

The Robertsons seemed like a match made in heaven and worked together frequently. Merrill relished the chance to play cornpone henchwoman Calamity Jane opposite her husband as Shame as guest villains on Batman. Together, they had one child and by 1968 Robertson was an Oscar-winning actor for Charly.

Merrill stayed busy on practically every TV series, even filling in for the departed Barbara Bain in a two-part episode of Mission: Impossible. She also returned to Broadway with shows in both the 1970s and the 1980s.

Merrill was never able to call a TV series her own, despite working on countless others. In 1984, she was thrilled to be playing a ruthless bitch in the on-the-run drama Hot Pursuit (with Kerrie Keane and Eric Pierpoint as her targets), but the show was cancelled after only a few airings.

She'd continued to film the occasional movie as well, including Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978), Sidney Lumet's Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), Anna to the Infinite Power (1983) and even the corny Caddyshack II (1988) as Robert Stack's country club wife. In 1986, a shock came when her twenty year union to Robertson came to an end.

Robert Altman utilized her again in his 1992 film The Player, as the knowing executive secretary at a movie studio, elegance still dripping from her every pore.

In 1989, she married for the third and final time to former actor Ted Hartley and the two became a glittering couple, arm-in-arm at many social and charity events. In addition to her acting work, Merrill and her husband took over RKO Studios and worked to make it a viable film-making company once more. She also served on several business and organizational boards.

When Miss Merrill died at ninety-three, her net worth was reported in some circles in excess of $5 billion. She never rested on that, forever donating time and money to various social and medical charities (while occasionally popping up in various film projects as late as 2009.) She also suffered the horror of burying two of her four children. A son died in a boating accident prior to his twenty-fourth birthday and her daughter with Robertson perished of ovarian cancer at age thirty-eight. Merrill's own demise came courtesy of dementia.

Merrill was one of the few socialites to really sustain a long-term, successful acting career.  Now fame comes to the rich when they merely play their own tacky selves to an adoring (and misguided) public. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

We will sorely miss the beguiling, tasteful and refined Miss Dina Merrill, but have countless hours of her work available to us to keep her memory with us!