Fun Finds: November 1968 Inside Movie Magazine

Well, here we are once more with a recovered fan magazine of the late-1960s. I love digging these out of boxes and bins at local flea markets and/or antique shops. I had to fork over $4.00 for this one (the 1968 cover price was $0.35!), but it was so packed with pictures I didn't feel in any way cheated. The official title of the mag is Inside Movie, but it's been awkwardly amended on the cover to be called “TV and Inside Movie.” What an odd name.

Apart from an alluring photo of Barbara Parkins and a paparazzi shot of Jacqueline Kennedy, there is a headline above the title concerning Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens and then a list of somewhat tantalizing names. As with most of these fun find posts, you may have to right-click and open in a new tab or window to read the text more easily or view the photos without distortion.

Inside the issue, a single page story (imported over a large photo) announces the upcoming film version of folk singer Arlo Guthrie's song Alice's Restaurant. I must say that I know next to nothing about Arlo Guthrie and precious little about Alice's Restaurant either. I know that the sole photo I can ever remember seeing from the film was of U.S. Army draftees lined up in their jockey shorts for inspection, but I have never come across the actual film. (And Mr. Guthrie, with his longhair and floppy hat, is the antithesis of what I am drawn to physically.) Sometimes the waters of The Underworld run shallow indeed... He is alive today at sixty-five and was still releasing recordings into the late-2000s. Oh, and here is that photo I am talking about, which was in a film book I had read as a teen.

Another music legend (one arguably even more famous than Guthrie) is Janis Joplin, shown with the band she fronted, Big Brother and the Holding Company. At the time of this article, the band had scored a hit with “Piece of My Heart” and was to be shown in the movie Petulia though Joplin departed for a solo career right about this same time. (The magazine is the “November” issue, but no doubt came out many weeks earlier than that.) She would go on to solo success (notably with “Me and Bobby McGee”) that was cut short by a fatal heroin overdose in 1970 when she was twenty-seven.

Look at this fun ad for a book called Hollywood and the Academy Awards. It could be yours for $2.95 (which included postage and handling. For another quarter you could rush it.) It boasted 200 pages and 200 photos!

Here's a shot of the original female stars of Laugh-In, Ruth Buzzi, JoAnne Worley, Goldie Hawn and Judy Carne, with Worley in one of her customarily “big” and amusing reactions to something or other. These gals are still with us today. Buzzi is seventy-six, Worley is seventy-four, Hawn is sixty-six and Carne is seventy-three. Maybe laughter is the best medicine after all!

I always love these tidbit sections and this magazine in particular seems to have especially clear and well-taken photographs (sometimes they lean towards the dark and blurry in these old rags.) Up first is a blurb about Milton Berle enduring an accident and being one of the few people in his latest film who didn't appear in the nude. (I've never seen the movie, whose full title is actually the unwieldy Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, but based on what I've heard, he may be right! Plenty of people, though, even if sheerly out of morbid curiosity, would like to have seen Uncle Miltie in the altogether since he was reportedly one of Hollywood's all-time “big guns.”)

The column also suggests an affair between Brigitte Bardot and Stephen Boyd and makes note of Carroll Baker's exit from Hollywood after a divorce and an up-and-down film career. There's also a report of Miss Judy Garland pulling a concert no-show. Photos include Mike Christian (who was then a costar on Peyton Place), Eartha Kitt, Walter Matthau and his second wife Carol (who he was married to from 1959 until his death in 2000) and Roger Smith (husband of Ann-Marget from 1967 to the present.)

The second page of the “Flash from Hollywood” section discusses the thievery of White House china by as distinguished a personage as Gregory Peck. Then there's the U.S. Navy's alleged objection to nurses being perceived as being as unappealing as Phyllis Diller for fear that enlistments might go down! A note that Adam West would be remarrying his ex proved not to be the case. Here we have photos of Will Hutchins (recently the subject of a Claudelle Inglish post), Ben Gazzara (whose wife Janice Rule, an actress of note, isn't even mentioned by name! Their marriage was from 1961 – 1982), musician and actor Dean Paul Martin (who, sadly, died in a plane crash in 1988 at only age thirty-five and after having been married to and divorced from both Olivia Hussey and Dorothy Hamill.) Also pictured are John Davidson, Robert Morse and Lost in Space's Mark Goddard.

The cover story on Jackie Kennedy speculates on her possible future marriage to a British lord (which didn't happen) and ruminates on her sadness over the assassination of her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy. There's also the suggestion that she might coerce Ted Kennedy to move to England, primarily to prevent him from ending up as two of his older brothers did, dead at the hands of assassins.

Another blurb section is called “Don't Print That!”and it contains more fun photos of the stars of the era. There is chit-chat about Dustin Hoffman's decision to do Broadway over movies (he won a Drama Desk Award for the part in question) as well as tidbits about Judy Garland, Ryan O'Neal and others. The pictures of Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Sally Field and Michael Crawford are fun, too. Crawford, by the way, was married to this wife Gabrielle from 1965 to 1975 (and they had two daughters together. He's never married again since. There is also, by the way, a third daughter from another relationship that is deliberately kept quiet by the wishes of all involved.)

The next page offers up nuggets about Richard Harris, Katharine Ross, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Frnak Sinatra and Peter Deuel. Incidentally, Deuel (who later went as Pete Duel) never did marry Beth Griswold (someone I am completely unfamiliar with.) Photos on this page are of Tom Smothers, Dyan Cannon, Lucille Ball, Lucie Arnaz, Glen Campbell, Marlo Thomas and Robert Hogan. The wife (his second) shown with Glen Campbell, Billie Jean, had been married to him since 1959, but he would leave her in 1976 for the wife of his “best friend” Mac Davis. They split in 1980 and he's been married to his fourth wife Kim since 1982.

The article on Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens discusses their turbulent marriage. If you read Fisher's second autobiography, then you know he said that the only thing good between them was the sex (which resulted in two daughters.) The headline mentions “The New Man In Her Life,” but there isn't one! No man is ever mentioned, named or anything else within the article. It just speculates about her past and what her prospects for love are now that she's twice wed and divorced and has seemingly trashed her career and reputation by abruptly exiting the Broadway success The Star-Spangled Girl, which costarred Richard Benjamin and Anthony Perkins. Incidentally, their daughter Joely's name is misspelled throughout the article!

There's a lot of debate as to whether Valley of the Dolls' Barbara Parkins should remain on the hit series Peyton Place or depart for a movie career (the way Mia Farrow did) and she apparently turned to this magazine's readership for career advice (or as a publicity stunt!) The response was overwhelmingly in favor of her sticking with the primetime soap. As it turns out, she did stay with the series, though it was finally cancelled in 1969 anyway. She had appeared in 441 episodes since the show's debut in 1964. After that, she did go on to make several movies of varying quality and success, among them were The Kremlin Letter (1970), The Mephisto Waltz (1971). Asylum (1972) and Shout at the Devil (1976.) Retired since the late-'90s, she is seventy years old now.

Another TV beauty was Linda Cristal (of The High Chaparral, 1967 – 1971.) Having just broken up with Adam West (the title character in Batman), she was now dating Christopher George, who had spent the previous two years starring in The Rat Patrol. I do love her duded-out hair here (take note that these photos are from two separate occasions.) In 1968, she'd already had three marriages, two of which were very brief, and, in fact, would not marry again.

She retired in the early 1980s and is seventy-eight years old. West (who had purchased Cristal a huge ring, which she refused to accept as an engagement ring, but merely as a token of friendship!) would go on to marry his third wife, Marcelle, in 1970 and they remain wed to this day. As for George, he too would wed, for the first and only time, to another “Linda,” Lynda Day, and they stayed married until his premature death in 1983 at age fifty-two.

Earlier, I mentioned the movie Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? This article about Christopher Connelly parodies that film's title in its own headline. It discusses the recently ended relationship that Connelly had been in with his Peyton Place costar Patricia Morrow and his apparent new one with Carol Lynley. Connelly did marry for the first and only time in 1969 to Cindy Carol (who was one of the screen's Gidgets in Gidget Goes to Rome in 1963.)

They divorced in 1988. Connelly died that same year of cancer at only age forty-seven. Morrow went on to marry the son of Frederick Brisson and Rosalind Russell in 1975, though at some point that union ended. She is still alive now at age sixty-eight. Lynley had already been married once from 1960 – 1964 and had a daughter. She never married again, though there was an eighteen year association with David Frost, and is now seventy.

There's a piece on Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom who were wed at the time and being presented here as a threat to the popularity of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Though it's quite possible that they had the acting chops to beat the Burtons, there was no way anyone was going to top the squalid goings on in Liz and Dick's tempestuous lives! This article was just prior to The Illustrated Man, a not-very-successful 1969 film they did together. That was followed up with Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), which concerned adultery.

Steiger and Bloom, in fact, ended their decade-long marriage in 1969 (having one daughter together) and he went on to wed three more times making (with his wife before Bloom) a total of fives wives in his life. The last one, who he wed in 2000, was widowed when he passed away in 2002 at the age of seventy-seven of kidney failure. Bloom wed twice more after Steiger, her last marriage being to author Philip Roth. She is eighty-one at present.

Patty Duke has an article that examines the way her early success in The Miracle Worker (1962) and on The Patty Duke Show (1963 – 1966) made it hard for her to transition to adult roles. The still-recent Valley of the Dolls (1967) is cited as not having worked thanks to the way she was still looking like and being perceived as a youth. She is noted as wishing that her next film, Me, Natalie, will be the one to help her be taken seriously as a young adult actress. As it turned out, she only did a handful of feature films during the remainder of her career, many not very strong, though she stayed very busy on TV and found great success there in series, TV-movies and miniseries (with three Emmys and five additional nominations to prove it.) She is sixty-five now.

A new British starlet was on the scene named Jacqueline Bisset and she was still being groomed and promoted by 20th Century Fox, the studio that brought her to America. One of her more high profile roles came in The Detective (1968) when star Frank Sinatra divorced Mia Farrow and thus took her out of the film. Bisset was in (wearing a short wig), though she didn't get much of a chance to know Ol' Blue Eyes. He was a one take type of guy and not one to linger around the set unless absolutely necessary. At the time, she was dating Michael Sarrazin (her costar from 1968's The Sweet Ride) and in time she would enter a lengthy relationship with ballet dancer-turned actor Alexander Godunov, but she has never married. She is sixty-seven today.

Next up is a feature on Don Matheson, costar of the Irwin Allen fantasy series Land of the Giants. A Korean War veteran with both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, he'd belonged to the Detroit, Michigan police department before segueing into acting in 1962. Having guest-starred on two other Allen shows, he landed his Giants part in 1968.

At the time of this article, he was married (since 1964) to wife Maxine, but their union only lasted until 1969. In 1970, he wed the actress pictured with him here, Deanna Lund, and they had a daughter together, who is an actress herself (Michelle Matheson.) When he and Lund divorced is not clear, but it was definitely after 1976. He is now eighty-two and has been retired since about 1999.

I think it's quite unusual to pick up a movie and TV fan magazine and see a feature on Marge Redmond. Surely these are rather rare photos of the longtime stage and TV actress, assuming various staged tasks around the house. She was costarring on The Flying Nun at this time (and had just lost a Supporting Actress Emmy to Marion Lorne of Bewitched) after having guested on many popular shows.

She was also married (since 1950) to solid character actor Jack Weston, but they divorced at some point after this. Though she is probably best known for playing Sister Jacqueline on Nun, she was just as famous to my generation for playing the fictional Sara Tucker of Tucker Inn in a long-running series of Cool Whip commercials! Now eighty-one, she retired from TV in 1999, but has done occasional voice work and a short film in 2007.

These next two pages are continuations of the earlier gossip segments. First is more of “Flash From Hollywood,” with the latest career and/or romance data on Alejandro Rey, Dick Clark, Twiggy, Lee Marvin and others. Of particular interest to me is the blurb about Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and the continuation of Anne Welles' story. As we know now, the decision to directly link the two films was abandoned and the role meant to be Anne was changed to Susan Lake and played by Phyllis Davis. There's also fun speculation about nude scenes, the casting of Myra Breckinridge (none of which came to pass), a musical film that never was made and singer Charles Aznavour's decision to focus on acting. The chief result of that was the major dud The Adventurers, though he did rebound with some smaller pictures.

“Don't Print That!” continues on the next page. It notes a drug arrest for Terence Stamp, a foundation started by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, a way-off blurb about Diana Ross, documentation of Anne Francis' treatment in Funny Girl, a tidbit about Burt Reynolds' career and “nude” scenes (Reynolds only ever did one real nude scene and it was brief and from the rear) and still more hype about the casting of what would be quite a debacle, 1970's Myra Breckinridge.  The Reynolds movie, by the way, was eventually retitled Sam Whiskey.

As you can see from this issue of TV and Inside Movie, Peyton Place was white hot at the time. Not included in this issue is the color photo here of several of the ladies of the series.  I thought it would be fun to post it here to show off all their fun, crisp clothes and fun, crisp hairstyles.  On the floor are Susan Oliver and Lana Wood.  In back are Barbara Parkins, Dorothy Malone, Pat Morrow, Evelyn Scott and Ruth Warrick.

Of course, this issue is of special value to me because it features pull-page photos of three ladies who costarred in 1970s disaster movies, making them members of my own special little club.

I've been trying to post as much as possible, but my summers are always very busy, what with it being swimming season and all the various events that crop up when the weather's nice. In fact, in just a couple of days, I'm off for a three-day weekend to Put-In Bay Island, so it may be another lengthy pause between posts, but I promise to be back in action ASAP with more reflections on vintage TV & movies and the stars that worked on them!

Booking 'em Again!

One of my earliest posts here had to do with books and my love of almost all showbiz related ones. (If you click on Suzanne Somers’ name in the column to the right, it will take you to that blurb.) I can’t resist picking up rare or strange hard or paperbacks that have some sort of Hollywood information or tie-in, even though I have no room for all of them! For intance, did you know that the infamous 9 1/2 Weeks was based on a 1978 novel? I thought I was bad until a friend of mine introduced me to one of his friends who has turned his entire basement into a wall-to-wall, stacked to the ceiling pop culture library with copies of practically every TV and movie related book ever published! I was strangely awed, somewhat appalled and yet jealous of this eye-popping collection. Sometimes when I’m out and see something odd, I’ll say, “I need to by this so that X can’t get it first!” LOL

I always have several books going at once. My pool book, as I mentioned a few posts back is “From Here to Eternity.” It may last until summer 2012 at the rate I’m going. Despite a whole subplot about homosexuals that was cut from the movie for obvious reasons, I just cannot seem to apply myself to reading it the way I’ve devoured other novels. Then I have a treadmill book. I try to do hardbacks for that because it’s far easier. I read a bio on James Mason, written by Robert Morley’s son and now am reading the novel version of “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.”

In the car, I keep a book on hand to read at restaurants or in the park or what have you. For this, I always like something with short chapters that I don’t have to stay too invested in. Right now that book is “Life is a Banquet,” Rosalind Russell’s unsentimental, but amusing and affecting, auto-bio. Then I have books in the family room, usually coffee table style or other picture-filled books to read during commercials or whatever. You’d think I’d be a little bit smarter after all this, but unfortunately the subject matter isn’t really all that widening, mentally! Still, I used to amaze my Aunt Sharon during Jeopardy when I could answer obscure questions. She’d look at me as if I was a genius and I’d reply, “Oh, that was in a movie called 55 Days at Peking” or some other title!

One of my recent reads was one I was really not looking all that forward to, but I’ll usually give anything a chance. I needn’t have worried. The book was funny, informative, charming and, quite surprisingly, very touching! “Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me” was an account by Bob Hope of all his many, many shows to entertain the troops from WWII on up to The Gulf War.

I have found some of Bob’s stuff to be amusing at times, but couldn’t really count myself as a significant fan. To me, probably because of my age, he was sort of an older, rather stiff, man who told jokes in front of a blue curtain with little animation or enthusiasm. I also had seen some of his fairly ruinous 1960s films (and, of course, there’s his appearance on The Golden Girls as the imaginery “father” of Rose Nylund!)
Hope kept a massive catalogue of all the jokes he’d ever been given (and he freely admits to having writers concoct practically all of them), recounting them here as they were delivered to each of the many different occasions, shows, makeshift camps, hospitals and every other place imaginable. But there’s more. As Hope describes the shifting tides of world peace and disharmony, the reader gets an unexpected lesson in history, with disarmingly concise appraisals of what was causing the (seemingly never-ending) conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in during his lifetime.

I’m always a sucker for self-deprecating people who display humility and, though I know Bob Hope did have confidence deep down, he isn’t afraid to poke fun at his lack of courage and his general persona. What’s really surprising is that the book contains several anecdotes and/or situations that were so touching, poignant or other wise heart tugging that I had tears welling up in my eyes at least half a dozen times! (Now, I will admit that, despite wanting to believe that I’m an acid-ridden cynic, I am really a hopeless, sentimental slob. Just the other day, I had to watch the A&E Biography of Betty White through a river of tears because I admire and adore the woman so much that I could hardly stand being confronted by all her stunning accomplishments and endless personal warmth in the show! How humiliating is that?!)
Hope worked closely with a person I really knew almost nothing about. (Less than nothing, actually!) Singer-actress Frances Langford was along for a large number of his tours and she comes across in the book as a deeply caring and seriously committed person. It was she for whom the song I’m in the Mood for Love was written in 1935 for one of her movies. As late as 2002, she (who had enjoyed a successful and well-appointed life) counted entertaining the troops as the highlight of her existence. Her life was endangered on several occasions during these tours, but she never faltered. In fact, her final public appearance in concert was in Vietnam in front of the troops she adored.

It’s just a charming, interesting book, far a field from the typical, glitzy type of auto-bio I am drawn to. I felt, all at once, educated, entertained and enriched after having read it and plan to give a copy of it to a high school friend of mine who’s son is in Afghanistan right now. One thing that cannot be deined is that, whatever he thought of the conflict at hand, Bob Hope loved his servicemen and women.

Now, to get back to the dirt! Ha! I stumbled upon a paperback at a thrift store. (I love to make a beeline to the book departments at such places because often there are items there that no one else but me could possibly care about! This is where I found an old copy of the little-known sequel “Around the World with Auntie Mame” by Patrick Dennis and the British novelization of The Thomas Crown Affair.) This tome cost me, literally, pennies, because it was 50% off books day and the book was already $0.50! "Not This Time, Cary Grant" was written by Shirley Eder, a gossip columnist I had never heard of, though she was apparently quite prominent during the late 50s and the 60s.

There was a point (primarily in the 1970s) in which leading (or once-leading) columnists would publish collections of their most memorable interviews or otherwise relate their experiences from their days amongst the stars of Tinseltown. Adela Rogers St. John, Rex Reed, Earl Wilson and Rona Barrett were among the names of folks who did this. And, thus, so did Shirley Eder. Shirley was a very close friend of Barbara Stanwyck and was also quite close to Kathryn Grayson, though she hobnobbed to some extent with practically anybody who was anybody at one time or another.

One of the more amusing stories had to do with her inviting Miss Carol Channing (along with her husband Charles) over for dinner. Beforehand, Charles called up and had an unbelievable litany of questions and qualifications. For example, he wanted to know what type of carpet she had because Carol was allergic to wool. Then he asked about her water, stating that Carol was only permitted to drink bottled water and only that sold by a company called Mountain Valley. (He added that Carol drinks two gallons of the stuff in the period between dinner and bedtime, and according to Eder, she did just that.)

He then said that Carol couldn’t eat anything cooked from a gas stove and that they would be having no cocktails, only cranberry juice! Shirley ran down the menu to him, fearful of whatever allergies Carol might have only to be told that Carol was allergic to every single item listed, but that there was no concern because she’d be bringing her own dinner anyway!! He had only asked about the stove in case something of hers needed to be reheated!

The night of the dinner, Carol brought a picnic basket and pulled out two large Mason jars. One was filled with some sort of boiled, dried meat and the other one had half a dozen specially baked, organically grown potatoes inside. Eder claims that Carol ate every single bite of all that she brought (and maintained that friendship with Miss Channing was worth any amount of inconvenience or unusualness), but when she finally could resist no more, she asked Channing what in the world that meat was that she had been scooping onto her plate. Channing reportedly replied, in a tone that seemed as if it was as natural as anything, that it was “Moose meat!”

Eder really had nothing bad to say about (almost) anyone, though most of the stories were somewhat amusing and, occasionally, reflected a little on the person’s character (such as when Lana Turner announced that she could have Eder’s husband if she wanted him!) She also recounted a situation in which Joan Crawford ordered calves liver for her and Stanwyck’s lunch one time without asking if they’d even like it and Stanwyck eating it anyway despite loathing the stuff. Later, however, the stars’ friendship was tested when Joan wanted Barbara to meet her for dinner in L.A. at 5:00 because her stomach was on “New York City time!” Stanwyck refused to go at that hour and that was that.

But the one person Eder profoundly disliked, and spelled out that fact very clearly in her book, was Raquel Welch. In 1968, Eder met Welch for the first time and they got off on the wrong foot. At a press junket for The Biggest Bundle of Them All, Eder remarked, “How does it feel to be appearing in a movie with two great actors, Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio De Sica?” to which Welch allegedly replied, “You mean, how does it feel to have them appearing in my picture? I am the star.” Eder, after having Welch walk away right then, later discovered that Welch was indeed billed above the title (and her astounding body was the key component to the advertising.)

Had she read her press kit beforehand as any seasoned reporter should have and worded her question differently, she might have gotten a different response. (And in her book, she states that De Sica got top billing over Welch, but that is not the case.) Still, Welch obviously was not the world’s most humble person! Eder snarkily wrote about Bundle that it, “seemed forever waiting to be released. And when, at last, it played some theatres (not too many), it bombed!” She added, “Every once in a while, if you have insomnia and are willing to stay up to watch just about anything on TV including test patterns, you might see (it) on the ‘late-late-late show.’” God, I love catty remarks like that!

About a year later, after an Academy Awards ceremony at which Welch was a presenter (prompting Eder to remark in her book, “God, you and I know she was not a nominee!’), Eder made another faux pas. She somehow talked herself in to believing that Welch had won the much-ballyhooed role of Jennifer in the upcoming Valley of the Dolls and congratulated her on it! Welch allegedly responded, “Obviously, you don’t know your business. I was offered over two hundred thousand dollars to do the role, but I turned it down.”

The two just weren’t meant to hit it off. There was another incident in which a mutual friend tried to heal the damage, but it didn’t work out. Finally, Eder recounted a story in which Welch reportedly showed up an hour and a half late to a manicurist’s appointment at The Beverly Hills Hotel, expecting to be taken in within moments. The manicurist asked her to wait fifteen minutes, but after five she pressed the woman to take her immediately. When she was informed that it would be at least ten minutes further, she allegedly stormed out, but not before flinging a magazine back into the salon, hitting the receptionist in the face with it!

Is Welch this haughty and impossible? Her reputation is not the hottest. I want to like her (and find her 1960s looks to be absolutely unbelievable!), but there have been many folks who have tangled with her over the years.

Earl Wilson’s book “Hollywood Laid Bare” had a story in it about Carol Lynley and her loathing of her The Poseidon Adventure costar Red Buttons. For whatever reason, in 1972, Lynley was not endeavoring to endear herself to much of anyone, really! She had remarked to Roger Ebert that two-time Oscar-winning actress Shelley Winters had “always been that fat” in response to Winters’ talk-show assertion that she had deliberately gained thirty pounds in order to play Belle Rosen.

Then she started in on Oscar-winning actor Buttons, claiming he had been unprofessional, a scene-stealer, a person who hogs the camera and, best of all, called him “a cunt!” She referred to him this way time and again during their chat. Wilson, unaccustomed to this sort of thing, asked her to repeat herself  because he was so taken aback. He asked if he could quote her on it and she took no issue. He didn’t quote her in the story, but only in the book, which came out later.

Afterwards, at the premiere of the movie, he questioned how two people who despised each other so much could enact scenes with so much convincing tenderness and intimacy (they were paired up very closely throughout the film.) He was befuddled by the dichotomy of this gentle, affectionate work on screen in relation to the violent reaction of Lynley towards Buttons in the interview. Finally, he asked Buttons up front about it and felt he had to use the same word that Lynley had given him when describing her attitude. Buttons offered no comment, but according to other reports, Lynley had developed something of a crush on him during the arduous filming, in which his character protected and coddled her character always, but that he (a married father of two) had spurned her affection, thus leading to a feeling of rejection and anger in her.
In any case, this seems like only a blip on the radar screen now. The costars have since buried the hatchet and have appeared at functions over the years (including the premiere of that dire remake, Poseidon) looking happy and chummy. Membership within the cast of Adventure is like a fraternity. The rabid fans of the film hold annual screenings of it aboard The Queen Mary and it just doesn’t do for people associated with it not to just embrace it and get along, though Gene Hackman won’t even so much as discuss or mention the picture.

I mentioned Kathryn Grayson above. She figures into one of my favorite tales contained in the book “Hollywood Talks Turkey” by Douglas McClelland. This gem of a book contains lengthy quotes of stars dissecting those motion pictures that went terribly wrong.

The mid-50s were a tough time in the movie business and Grayson, who’d headlined many colorful musicals in her day, was let go from MGM. Paramount believed there was still some life left in her, so they hired her to play in the classic operetta The Vagabond King. Featuring Rudolf Friml music, it would seem right up the soprano’s alley. However, they costarred her with a Maltese tenor named Oreste Kirkop (who, for the film went simply by Oreste.)

Grayson, who’d had no tremendous love for her prior operatic costar Mario Lanza, nonetheless would surely have had him back rather than contend with Oreste, who spoke no English and had to have his lines dubbed. He was also rumored to have urinated whenever and wherever he felt like it! (It must be said that Miss G. didn't perptuate that part of the story, anyway.) Already, experiencing the major difference between filming a musical at MGM and now filming a musical at Paramount, the star was really regretting having taken the project on. Used to working alongside the stellar MGM orchestra, at Paramount she had to sing along with prerecorded music, the way Bing Crosby (one of their top stars) preferred to do it.

This is the hilarious part to me. Having decided that it was going to be a turkey, the top-billed songstress claims that she decided to turn her face away from the camera as much as possible during filming and to show her back as much as she could in makeshift effort to disguise the fact that she was even IN IT! I find that riotously funny. Fortunately, I had read this book long ago and so, when I found myself in a really shitty play once, I opted to utilize this technique, though I don’t think I was any more successful at obscuring my participation in it than she was in this film! She later got to know Oreste through mutual friends and grew to like him much more. It was to be, however, her final feature film.

I just love to read biographies and autobiographies of famous Hollywood actors and actresses. Sometimes I’ll even read one on a performer I have no particular affinity for maybe because they worked with so many people I like and I can find out more about them from it! You can never know what you’ll find in an account of one’s life. Gloria Swanson’s 1980 auto-bio “Swanson on Swanson” was positively gargantuan and somewhere, nestled deep in the pages and not easy to find if you didn’t mark it, is her story of suffering from all sorts of serious and painful female problems following the birth of her daughter. Nothing was working until she asked one of her doctors about “the healing power of the sun.” Thereafter, she took off to a secluded country estate with one of her female staff in tow and proceeded to sit in the lawn with her naked legs spread to the skies, dribbling sterile saline into her private parts in order to mend herself!!!!!!! (I am not making this up.) She did this for a considerable amount of time until she was back to (almost) new. (Incidentally, this is the book she was writing when she appeared as herself in Airport 1975 - in 1974! It took her that long to get the lengthy thing finished.)

Then there’s “Gary Cooper, An Intimate Biography” by Hector Arce. Not only does the book reveal that one of Gary’s earliest movies, 1929's Wolf Song, originally contained a nude bathing scene with him showing some amount of his body (the scene was removed when censorship cracked down soon after and is now not shown in all of the remaining prints of the film), but there are still photos around that shows a fragment of it, one of which is in the book. 

The photos here are the one from the book and another one taken on set during the filming. (Still another shot, not represented here, depicts him covering himself with an Indian blanket between takes.) They prove that the scene existed, but wouldn't it have been great to see a star such as Gary Cooper frolicking nude in a lake?!

Better yet, the same book casually drops the bomb that Gary Cooper, at least prior to daughter Maria being born (and I know nothing about any changes that were or were not made from then on!) was a practicing nudist at home. The minute he hit the door, he was fond of taking it all off until time to go back out the next morning!

If you are very familiar with Cooper, you know that he was known for being rather significantly endowed. His one-time live-in lover, Mexican spitfire Lupe Velez was famously (and hilariously) quoted as saying: “Gary Cooper has the biggest dick in Hollywood, but no ass to push it with!” The mere idea of Coop wandering around au naturel when in his prime is scintillating. In his early years, he was one VERY handsome man.

I’m sure I’ll be unearthing more thoughts on books I’ve enjoyed as time goes by. Lord knows I have heaps of them. Somehow, knowing that most out of print books are unlikely to be replaced, I feel an odd sense of obligation to rescue them before they are lost, burnt, tossed away or otherwise destroyed. I’m an avowed declutterer, so I often worry that I’m gathering up too many and will become a hoarder, so it’s a constant struggle to know when and when not to bring one home!

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For those interested, I present part of the chapter on Carol Lynley from Earl Wilson's Show Business Laid Bare, Signet Books 1974: