Fun Finds: Photoplay Magazine, May, 1960

Today's Fun Find is a nearly sixty year-old magazine (can it be so?!) from May of 1960 (likely having hit the stands many weeks before that.) This was (at least seemingly) a fresher, more innocent Hollywood than would be in evidence as the 1960s progressed further. You'll see it in the nature of the celebrities who are profiled within. One oddity: Though they dominate the cover, there is no feature story inside on either Tony Curtis or his then-wife Janet Leigh! (And check out the eyeliner "flick" she has going here.)

Sidney Skolsky's column is a long series of brief blurbs, sometimes snippy, about all the current stars. He does fortell that "Someday she'll (Joan Collins) get the right role and be a big star." (Only took two more decades...!)

Although his name is never bandied about on the level of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, Skolsky was an influential columnist at or near their level. Photoplay was considered the premiere movie mag of its time.

A recap of what's going on in music... 90% of it is regarding hunky male teen idols!

Take a gander at the elegant soiree this article is about. HUGE taper candles on every table, chilled fruit compote at each place setting...

Despite all the smiles, the clock was ticking on Dinah Shore and George Montgomery's twenty-year marriage. They would be history by 1963. The Louis Jourdans, on the other hand, enjoyed a sixty-eight year union that only ended when she passed away in 2014!

On this page, a black & white version of the exact same pic from the cover. No one could snap a different shot of Tony and Janet? I wonder what was on Lucy's mind... (And I never did find out what in the hell that actual party was!)

Who is it that might not have wanted this bundle of joy....?

...Brigitte Bardot. Regardless of the grin on her face here, she in fact (after having gotten pregnant during Babette Goes to War, 1959, with her pretty boy costar Jacques Charrier) quickly married, then divorced her husband in 1962 and scarcely saw the child again until he was an adult! In her memoirs, she reported that she had tried repeatedly to self-abort the baby and considered him a "tumor," preferring to have birthed a dog instead... Nice.

This "in-ing" article focuses on Sal Mineo making a long-distance call to someone named "Jane" in Manhattan, who he'd taken to dinner and reportedly struck up a romance with...

Mineo was just appearing on movie screens in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), hence the puff piece.

This is a rather fun (and vibrant!) picture of Miss Annette Funicello.

Annette was still three years away from 1963's Beach Party, which would create an indelible image of her as a sand and surf (and shellaced!) bathing babe, cavorting with Frankie Avalon and engaging in kooky hijinks. Her buddy here is fellow former Mouseketeer Tommy Cole. Cole had worked in 8 episodes of Funicello's 1958 series Annette, but ceased acting in the mid-'60s, turning to professional make-up work in Hollywood. He won an Emmy for 1979's Backstairs at the White House.

"Another bride...

...another groom." But it truly was a "sunny honeymoon," for former Miss Denmark Evy Norlund and actor James Darren are still married to one another today, fifty-eight years later!

I wouldn't dare keep them separated in the face of that news, so here is the spread of them facing one another. Congratulations on a successful union! (Norlund may or may not have had a secret... they were wed in February and their first of two sons was born the same year. Don't know the date...!)

Darren had been wed before to a young sweetheart of his and they had a son together, but the union suffered from differences in religion (he was Catholic, she Jewish) and only lasted from 1955-1958. The alleged problem at this wedding turned out mostly to be fears of Norlund's understanding and speaking of English.

Talk about a "bait & switch"...!

This is (then-twenty) Frankie Avalon's SISTER on her wedding day. Frankie was merely a groomsman.

Everything possible that the photographers could think of was done to make it appear that he was marrying someone himself! This was a foreshadowing of 1963 when teen idol Avalon went against everyone's advice and married Kathryn "Kay" Diebel, but they proceeded to have 8 children together and are still together today fifty-five years later!

Young actor friends out on the town one afternoon, enjoying the results of a handwriting analysis. At right is one Dolores Hart, who would later become Mother Dolores, a well-known nun. (Hart called off her wedding to an architect shortly before her entrance to the abbey. He never married and visited her every Easter and Christmas until his death in 2011.)

I wonder if Rose Rosella detected any secrets in Merv Griffin's autograph...

I went ahead and scanned the latter part of this article, which offers individual analysis of the stars' handwriting. Hart's continues very briefly on the last page stating that she has warmth of feeling and is "methodical, moral and controlled." Maybe there was something to this! No one could have known her path, including she herself!

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and that's four year-old Stephanie Zimbalist next to him.

Fortunately, Zimbalist (who'd been widowed with two children from his first marriage) was able to patch things up with his second wife "Steffi," though it was AFTER they'd already divorced in 1961. They re-wed in 1962 and were together until her passing in 2007.

George Hamilton with his All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) costar Susan Kohner. (You recall her as Sara Jane from Imitation of Life, 1959.)

Kohner was the daughter of movie producer-turned-agent Paul Kohner and 1930s Mexican leading lady Lupita Tovar (perhaps best known for the Spanish-language rendition of Dracula, 1931.) Tovar, by the way, died in 2016 at the age of one-hundred-six!!

What was the "secret" that Kohner allegedly asked of Hamilton? It was in reference to a sliver of space between the kitchen and dining room of her childhood home, in which she used to spy on stars such as Lana Turner, Tyrone Power and Audie Murphy, among others! She wound up acting with Power on tour in the play "A Quite Place" and with Murphy in his autobiographical film To Hell and Back (1955.)

Victoria Shaw, then the wife of Roger Smith.

Columnist Sidney Skolsky apparently had an office that overlooked the interior of Schwab's Drugstore. Woe to any stars that strolled in to buy condoms! LOL In the top pic, he's seen chatting up...

...Shirley MacLaine, as noted here.

That ride Annette Funicello is on looks fun as hell! I've never seen little individual cars like that for a water ride. Is that Ina Balin at the bottom in some grungy dive? Marilyn is dancing with Arthur Miller, I believe?

Sort of tough to identify some of these uncaptioned star pics. Is that Ty Hardin on the left with the shopping cart? The couple swimming is Gigi Perreau and Paul Anka in publicity for the hoot-filled screamer Look in Any Window (1961)!

Victoria Shaw (Vici, to her friends, apparently!) is shown in a two-page spread with husband Roger Smith of Auntie Mame (1958) and 77 Sunset Strip fame.

Unfortunately, this seemingly happy marriage hit the skids and they divorced in 1965. In 1967, he wed (and began to manage) Ann-Margret. In a rare scenario for the time, Smith was eventually awarded primary custody of his three children by the Australian-born Shaw, meaning A-M inherited a whole family when she wed him!

From the looks of the pictures selected, either "aspiring model" Elva Newman either didn't take Doris Day's advice to heart or the snaps were taken prior to the sage wisdom having been revealed...!  Day met the young fan while filming parts of Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) in Connecticut. Perhaps Newman went on to model shoes?

The always effervescent Miss Doris Day.

Oh dear...

Pat Boone and his wife Shirley had four daughters. Cheryl ("Cherry"), Linda ("Lindy"), Deborah ("Debby") and Laura ("Laurie".)  I take it they didn't call him "Patty" around the house...? Anyway, the heating unit caught fire and smoke was coming in the vents of their house, but Cherry saved them all by waking up (after a little midnight shove from God!)

This is actually a continuation of the "Inside Stuff" column from earlier (the glamorous party), but I still have no clue what the party was about!

Hmmm... everything in this particular section of the column is made up! It's "April Fools!" I can't complain since I've been known to celebrate that holiday myself, such as here and here.

In case you can't live without it, this is the upside-down picture on the page above...

This is actress Joan Caulfield and her newborn son. She found out she was pregnant with him a few weeks after her divorce from director Frank Ross was final!

About a hot minute after her son's birth, she wed again, this time to a dentist, had another son and was divorced again by 1962! Caulfield had a "homey, wholesome" image that she personally loathed. I don't know that I ever saw her in anything but Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and she certainly didn't wipe me out in it. That's the end of the articles.

Here is a full-page ad for Doris' aforementioned comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960.)

And here's another one for Jerry Lewis' 1960 opus, Visit to a Small Planet.

Rounding out a trio is this ad for Jane Fonda's debut, Tall Story (1960.) I found it interesting that these three ads, all in a row in the magazine, are very similar in style but were made by three different studios! By the way, I don't know who is behind that towel with Anthony Perkins, but the nude guy in the movie was beautiful Van Williams and that is not he!

We'll finish up with a variety of eye-catching color ads that dotted the magazine. I was always disappointed (still am!) when black and white magazines devoted mush or most of their few color pages to advertisers instead of the celebrities! Note how the Ivory soap package used to have a little red ribbon tied into a bow printed on it.

This gal is looking pretty pulled together for just a phone conversation. Hopefully Brett is coming by later to take her out for shrimp cocktail and a dry martini.

I have my doubts about this product, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, the disembodied heads, with hairstyles in varying degrees of wonder and wretch, are fun.

LOVE the instructions on how to achieve Lily Munster-like eyes. Of course, you need all those Max Factor products in order to do it.

Hmmm... I wouldn't mind feeding this gent with my own chopstick! LOL Instant Whip indeed...

Finally, I do hope Miss Thing isn't IN the aquarium and is merely looking inside from behind the glass. Check out those dazzling talons! And she may have bought the Max Factor eye makeup items a while back, too!