Stand-Up Comics

If you've been wading through the waters of The Underworld for a long time now, you know that I periodically do a little feature on classic comic book covers, ones that I find either amusing for some reason or that feature stars I like or that I happen to find appealing in some way (or feel that maybe one of my readers will enjoy.) In my many travels through the worldwide web, I come across these things from time to time and stick them away for a future grouping. I very well may have come to the end of this sojourn (which may delight some people out there who are sick to death of hearing about them!), but I do have enough for a third go 'round! Some of these shows are repeats, but not the covers themselves.



I have long sung the praises of these vintage comic books, sometimes dotting my tributes with them, not so much for the (often pedestrian) art and storytelling inside), but because they offer a wonderful chance to own a keepsake of a favorite celebrity, TV show or movie. Often, the photographic cover is a rare picture that is difficult to find elsewhere. Look at this vivid cover featuring Chuck Conners and his TV son Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman.



Take this comic book based on the popular series Bewitched. Made during the earliest stages of that show, it clearly plays up the supernatural, almost scary, aspect of the (then) black & white program. It's a far cry from the colorful, campy, light-hearted product that the show eventually morphed into. How can anyone not love that shot of Agnes Moorehead's imposing face?





Less imposing (I guess!) is this shot of Miss Eve Arden. Known to millions of younger fans for her role as the school principal in Grease, she was, prior to that, an indispensable feature film supporting actress (in Mildred Pierce, to name only one) and then the star of her own television situation comedy, Our Miss Brooks.







The show first saw life as a radio program in 1948. Shirley Booth and Lucille Ball were considered for it first before Arden was signed. A big hit from the start, it was adapted for TV in 1952 and ran through 1956. Then a feature film version was put together in which Miss Brooks was finally married to her longtime object of affection Mr. Boynton, a fellow teacher. This particular comic book even gives readers a photographic backstory page that makes sure they understand the premise of the series prior to reading, making it even more fun and collectable!





The portraiture of actors and actresses on these covers is one thing that gives certain issues special meaning to collectors. Look at the striking shot of Jonathan Frid (as Barnabas Collins) on this issue devoted to Dark Shadows. The mysterious, gothic soap opera amassed a sizeable cult following during its relatively brief five-year run. Note, too, the ornately carved handle on Frid's walking stick. When the series was revamped for prime-time TV years later, there was another round of comic books issued.



Back when comics were big, westerns were big, too. It was rare for a western series to not be represented in comic form, for one issue at least. These gave young fans a great opportunity to have pictures of their favorite cowboy heroes (in color, too, when so many shows were in black & white.) Nowadays, they give fans of good-looking cowboys and wranglers a chance to see them in their prime. Wagon Train ran for eight seasons and included several shifts in the regular cast over the years. This shot (I believe from season seven) has a nice shot of Robert Fuller's trousers (which couldn't get too much “fuller!”)



I all but worship Clint Walker, but I prefer him with some more meat on him than he displayed in the early seasons of his hit series Cheyenne. This shot is from his lean days, but I'm including it because it shows a surprising bit of crotchery. (Yes, I made that word up!) I also like the caption, “It was a different kind of MANHUNT, with Bodie the hunted.” Indeed, many men had been after Walker during his heydey, but he seems to have escaped their grasp (most of 'em anyway!)



During Walker's contract dispute with Warner Brothers, a couple of other cowpokes were brought in to fill up the missing space. One of them, Bronco, was played by Ty Hardin (who is profiled elsewhere here) and the other was Sugarfoot, played by Will Hutchins. Hutchins was not my type, per se, but he definitely had (and has) fans out there. Hutchins' time in the sun was relatively brief and by the early '70s he was playing unbilled pit parts. For four years in the late '60s, he was Carol Burnett's brother-in-law (married to the “real” Chrissie, who was played in a fashion on The Carol Burnett Show by Vicki Lawrence.) In time, he became a professional clown (!) and made only the most sporadic appearances as an actor. Still with us today, he is eighty-one as of this writing.



You know, I have always wanted to like The Lone Ranger, but I just can't seem to get there. I love his li'l blue outfit and this particular cover shot is pretty, but somehow the popular series always winds up leaving me kind of cold. One of these days, I'm going to get around to seeing the horrifically dismal feature film redux The Legend of the Lone Ranger with Klinton Spilsbury. I have a feeling its hapless ineptitude will appeal to my love of bad movies.



This comic book based on the TV western Laramie gives folks a chance to see actor John Smith. Born Robert Van Orden, he was a client of notorious talent agent Henry Willson, who gave most of his young, male clients snappy new names like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Dack Rambo, Rad Fulton and so on. When it came to Van Orden's turn, Willson was almost fresh out of ideas and, instead, pendulumed the opposite way, giving him the most generic name ever, John Smith! This resulted in a certain amount of publicity in its own right, though. A Native American named Pocahontas Crowfoot was in attendance when he signed the papers to change his name and he also got mileage at Thanksgiving with publicity pictures in line with his pilgrim-ish moniker. Like a lot of his peers, his screen career petered out in the mid-'70s. Smith passed away of cirrhosis in 1995 at the age of sixty-three. Shown with him is Robert Fuller, from the aforementioned Wagon Train. It's surprising that Laramie isn't a more popular western in reruns (especially given the anatomically correct pants shown on this eye-opening DVD cover, from Smith in particular!) I'd rather see some of it than the never-ending Bonanza and Gunsmoke currently running (and re-running) on TV(Waste)Land.



Speaking of tight pants, check out Lee Majors' on this cover from one of the few The Big Valley comic books. This was my own favorite western for a variety of reasons. I did a tribute to it way back in the early days of The Underworld (before I started doing posts that rambled on and on and ON!) Likewise, there's a tribute to Majors himself here, which can be found by clicking on his name in the column to the right.







One of TV westerns' most beautiful men ever was the tan, tightly-packed Robert Conrad of The Wild, Wild West. Every issue of that show's series of comic books cruelly places a block of verbiage over his crotch. This one is the same as the rest, but at least we get a nice view of that amazing, tan, chiseled face. You can find further info on Mr. Conrad by clicking on his name to the right as well. In his day, he was one very stunning specimen!





Segueing from cowboys to the Indian front, we move to film and to young Sal Mineo as White Bull in the Disney movie Tonka. Mineo, who was nearing twenty at the time of this film, but was able to stave off aging for quite a while thanks to his inherently youthful looks and build, played a brave whose love for a horse coincides with General Custer's conflict with the Sioux. Ultimately, the Battle of the Little Big Horn comes about with both Mineo and his horse coming into play.



Eve Arden and Sal Mineo are hardly the only movie stars to appear on the cover of a comic book. Many times, major stars can be found in this area whether they were on the way up at the time or, perhaps, on the way down. One who was entering the twilight years of his career was Robert Taylor. Once the dashing love interest of Greta Garbo and a major movie star in his own right, he eventually turned to TV as a means of keeping himself employed (his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck had done the same with her own anthology series and, later, The Big Valley.) This cover is from his moderately successful show The Detectives. If I were going to watch it, I'd want to do so in the second season when future Lost in Space star Mark Goddard was in the cast or the season after when a pre-Batman Adam West came on board as well.



A star who was on the up (up and away!) is Sally Field. She'd been starring in Gidget, which was prematurely cancelled before anyone realized just how popular she and the show were, and next rushed into The Flying Nun. To her dismay, Nun was a hit as well and ran longer than Gidget, making her something of a joke for a time thanks to its goofy premise. It wasn't until she won an Oscar (or perhaps, two, according to her own feelings) that she corrected her career trajectory and become an accomplished actress.



Popular TV shows were great fodder for comic books, especially ones that appealed to youth. When you consider the enduring fame of The Brady Bunch, it's really surprising that there weren't more editions published. I know of only two! Surely, the simple stories performed on the show could have translated into more books. This one has a rather fun publicity portrait on the cover, taken from the earliest days of the series' production, but there's a glaring error on it. Indicative of how meagerly known the child actors were at the time, Christopher Knight (who played Peter) and Mike Lookinland (who played Bobby) have each other's names placed next to them! Also, note Bobby Brady's dark wig, intended to drive home the fact that the boys were all related... God forbid that one's hair is lighter than the other two!



Another family show from that same period (as a matter of fact, it was scheduled in between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family!) is Nanny and the Professor. Juliet Mills and The Big Valley's Richard Long starred in the show, with one of the three children being little Kim Richards. Richards would later grow up to be one of the hot mess ladies starring on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with her sister Kyle, who had also been a child actress. The show has devoted fans even now, though it only managed to last for 54 episodes stretched across three different television seasons when it first aired.



A more topical program from that same era was Room 222, running from 1969 to 1974. (It eventually took over Nanny and the Professor's time slot, nestled between Bunch and Partridge) The quartet depicted on this cover stayed with the show for all five of its seasons with the show, Michael Constantine and Karen Valentine all winning Emmys in 1970. The high school setting allowed for a gallery of characters to rotate in and out while facing a myriad of social and political problems. Miss Valentine became almost as famous for her appearances on Hollywood Squares, cracking up at everything Paul Lynde said, as she did for her work here. (Strangely, she seemed to disappear entirely, long before one might expect such a performer to, with only the rarest of TV guest shots since the dawn of the 1990s.)



Richard Chamberlain as young, idealistic Dr. Kildare was a major player in early '60s TV, but not to be forgotten was the alternative Ben Casey. A slightly older, more combative and more hirsute figure, Casey (as portrayed by husky Vince Edwards) was decidedly more intense than Kildare. Both shows premiered around the same time and lasted just about as long as each other (from 1961 to 1966.) Pertaining to nothing, why does it bother me that Miss Ackerman spelled her name Bettye?



Fantasy shows translated very well to the form, too. There have been countless issues of Star Trek comic books made from a variety of publishers. I like this cover the best because, unlike so many others, it includes the entire primary cast (the ladies, in particular, never seemed to make the cover of the issues that featured photographs.) I can never say enough about how much I loved these original costumes/uniforms and how unaccepting I've been of virtually any others that have come down the pike since! I think I mentioned in a long ago post how, as a bored (and warped) sixteen year-old working the dining room attendant shift at Wendy's (back when such a thing existed!), I would picture the diners in these uniforms, deciding which color and style would best suit each person! HA!



Another very colorful and adventuresome (yet fun) science-fiction show was Land of the Giants. All about seven people and a dog stuck on a planet where everything was similar to Earth except that the inhabitants were ginormous (and often very threatening and dangerous), it was produced by Irwin Allen. Here, years before MacGyver, Don Marshall seems to be creating something out of a thimble and an aerosol spray can. Meanwhile, hunky leader Gary Conway poses next to a huge pocketwatch. The two-season show boasted a different, bouncy, John Williams theme song for each year it was on and I dearly love both of them.



My Favorite Martian was a sitcom that starred Ray Walston (of Damn Yankees! and South Pacific fame) as a man from Mars with extraordinary powers who finds himself stranded on Earth and passes himself off as the uncle of Los Angeles newspaper reporter Bill Bixby. The caption on this amusing comic book says “A real live Martian visits Earth and out-of-this-world things begin to happen” (such as being mounted from behind by a guy in a navy blue suit while a trio of soldiers looks on?? Sounds hot!)



Bixby went on later to star in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (the show itself being based on a prior movie that starred Glenn Ford and Ron Howard.) At the wonderful blog Stirred, Straight Up, with a Twist, there is a follower who delights in answering most any “Guess Who?” question with the response “Helen Twelvetrees.” Likewise, I have a friend who tends to toss out the name Miyoshi Umecki at the drop of virtually any showbiz trivia question. Thus, I couldn't resist posting this cover, which prominently features Miss Umecki.



Though it wouldn't be long before comic adaptations of TV shows fell out of favor (only to be resuscitated years later with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the trend did continue through the late '70s with Happy Days. The primary cast is shown here with Henry Winkler's The Fonz taking center stage. Back in the day, Fonzie seemed so cool. Looking at the show now during an occasional rerun, Mr. Winkler often comes off as one of the least cool things I have ever witnessed! Thank goodness he is surrounded on the show by comparative buffoons so that he can at least come off in a better light than they often do. Also, you can see the oncoming lack of charm and quality in the cover art as the classic era of comic tie-ins was drawing to a close.



Back to the movies for a bit, I give you the comic version of John Paul Jones, starring Mr. Robert Stack, the first of several epic films made by producer Samuel Bronston. I'm going to be watching this movie for the first time pretty soon as it is recorded on my DVR. It is there chiefly because Miss Bette Davis has a role in the film (as Catherine the Great.) Seeing as it is a two and a half-hour motion picture, I'd love to know how they whittled it all down into a single issue comic. I may be checking in again later with an update on the film once I've seen it.



Another lengthy film that I saw once long ago and doubt that I will subject myself to again anytime soon is The Happiest Millionaire. An all-star cast that included the promising cast of Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, Geraldine Page (!), Gladys Cooper, Lesley Ann Warren, Hermione Baddeley and John Davidson was rendered nearly unwatchable by the over-the-top antics and presence of Tommy Steele, a bouncing, braying Brit whose personality (an acquired taste to be sure, that I have yet to develop) soiled a few musicals in the 1960s. This one laid an egg upon release despite being the last personally overseen movie of studio founder Walt Disney.



You never know just who you will see on the cover of a vintage comic book. Why, here “I” am, Poseidon, Ruler of The Underworld, threatening the hell out of the Argos in the adaptation of the adventure movie Jason and the Argonauts! Ha ha! If you've gotta go, I guess there are worse ways than by a wet, shirtless, hairy-chested, salt 'n pepper daddy with an axe to grind.









More hysterical is this copy of David and Goliath, a 1960 Italian feature that boasted Orson Welles in a supporting role (with top-billing) as King Saul. Someone named Ivica Pajer played David while a person who went by the name Kronos (actually real-life circus giant Aldo Pedinotti) portrayed Goliath. Get a load of that hideous, fake muscle suit that he's wearing!! Interestingly, Pajer went on a couple of decades later to play Meryl Streep's father in Sophie's Choice... Folks, there is no other world like the world of show business.



Movie adaptations continue to this day, though comic books have changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. More traditional was this tie-in to the cinematic version of Annie (haplessly directed by a dispassionate John Huston), though it eschews a photo cover for illustration. I always wish for people to click to enlarge all applicable photos at The Underworld (for some unknown reason, those that are “centered” in the posts do not enlarge, but all others usually do), but in this case I demand it. Look at the ungodly shitty artwork offered up in the depiction of Sandy the dog! Someone basically chose a human face with hair on it, like Star Wars' Chewbacca, in lieu of a golden retriever or whatever type of canine Sandy was in the movie!! This Sandy looks more like Burl Ives or something. How tacky!



Our tour of vintage comic books is going to end on what I consider to be a high note. Perhaps I'll make believers of you yet! One of the most common subjects from the movies to be covered in comic strip form is that of Tarzan the Ape Man. Though Johnny Weissmuller is the actor most closely identified with the character, he was rarely, if ever, depicted on the cover of a comic book. By the time it became commonplace to use pictures on the covers, he'd departed the role. Here, we have the primary TV Tarzan, Ron Ely, trimly tied to a tree and perhaps about to be rescued by his loyal chimpanzee pall Cheeta.



Before Ely had taken on the role for TV, Denny Miller and, more importantly, Mike Henry had played the role in the movies, but they never made it on to comic covers for some reason. Their predeccessor, Gordon Scott, did though. Scott was one of the most muscular and stocky Tarzan's, but a very handsome one. (He was also the onetime husband of Miss Vera Miles!) It's not hard to picture him in this shot sitting naked in his little grass hut!





He was actually quite tall at 6'3”, but, strangely, seemed to come off shorter than that on film and in still photos. One reason could be that, unlike many of his fellow Tarzan's, Scott was frequently photographed in a crouching position and tended to be shot from below. Maybe because he was so broad, carrying all those thick muscles, it made him look less lanky, as 6'4” Ely certainly did.





One benefit of having Scott depicted crouching and from below was the great glimpses we sometimes got of his behind. In this cover, his ass is practically bare! No wonder someone held on to this issue for all time and kept it in such stellar condition. While I certainly appreciate Scott and most of his fellow Tarzans, my own personal favorite is Weissmuller's immediate successor, Lex Barker.







To most people, Barker may not have been the best Tarzan, either in acting or authenticity, but, for my money, he was the most beautiful. That face! He looked stunning from practically any angle. I never, ever tire of looking at his sleek, classic features. Of all the comic book Tarzans, Barker appeared on the most covers.





Some of his pictures were beautiful, some flattering, some sexy, but there were more than a few that were corny or even bordering on humiliating! Look at the coy, hilariously affectionate way he embraces Cheeta in this one. Not to mention it was rather rare in the staid early '50s to show this much male skin. No wonder he ran into severe type-casting issues when he finally vacated the role. A movie to Germany in the late '50s led to major stardom there. But we will end this post with some of his Tarzan covers, the glorious and the goofy. Do enlarge them in order to fully appreciate his handsomeness!

Checking in with Mysterious Merle

You know, I love my classic actresses… Joan, Bette, Lana, Ava, Olivia… even Liz. However, odd as it may be, I think I get the most pleasure out of them when I’m watching them in their later, declining years, years when they were more apt to headline some awful movie far beneath them. Maybe I just like traffic accidents, who knows? One star from back in the day did everything conceivable to avoid falling into the trap of becoming a horror battle axe or some other type of off-kilter hag, yet she still managed to turn in a couple of howlers near the end. I’m talking about the mysterious and ever-glamorous Miss Merle Oberon.

The facts surrounding Merle Oberon’s birth are still in dispute today. She went to such great lengths to hide her heritage and new information suggests that even she didn’t know the full story of her parents! For decades, she lived within the confines of a carefully constructed lie; that she was born of English parents in Tasmania. With her through many of her early years was a very dark-skinned Indian woman serving as her maid. This was actually Merle’s mother! Or was it? She always knew the woman (Charlotte) to be her mother; her father being a white man who she never knew.

It wasn’t until after her death in 1979 that biographer Charles Higham unearthed Oberon’s Anglo-Indian racial background in the book Princess Merle. Her own widower hadn’t even been informed of the fact! Yet, even later, it was brought forth that Charlotte was actually Merle’s grandmother and that her older daughter Constance (a woman Merle only ever knew - and distantly at that - as a half-sister) was Merle’s biological mother! It seems that Constance was impregnated as a teen and Charlotte took the infant as her own, leaving Constance at a boarding school and darn near forgetting her forever.

Adding to the controversy is that there are still people to this day who claim that they or their relatives knew Merle Oberon when she was a child in Hobart, Tasmania, even though there is no real record that she had ever even been there until many years later when she returned (petrified with fear) for an honorary visit. Yes, Merle’s life was one of extreme deception and familial pain glossed over with satin and jewels. Torn between living the life of a glamorous and successful screen actress or revealing the truth (which would have, in the 30s and 40s, been career suicide), she opted for the former and led a glittering, jet set life.

After working as a hostess in a swanky nightclub and winning walk-on roles in British films, she finally won a real part in Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII, starring Charles Laughton. She portrayed the doomed Anne Boleyn and her striking work made her something of a star. This was followed up a year later by The Scarlet Pimpernel, featuring Leslie Howard (who she was madly in love with and enjoyed an affair with for a time.)

Korda, however, continued to be her movie mentor and was eventually her husband in 1939. She made quite a few films in America, some nearly forgotten and some enduring classics such as These Three in 1936 and Wuthering Heights in that magical year of 1939. She and Olivier didn't get along at all during the filming, but did make up nicely years later. Despite her acclaimed work in these two films, her sole Oscar nomination came for The Dark Angel in 1935.

One of her potentially memorable roles was eliminated when a violent car crash nearly did her face in and the filming of I, Claudius had to be scrapped. She was partway through the shooting, playing Messalina to Charles Laughton’s Claudius, when it all went down the tubes, though the Josef Von Sternberg-directed project was fairly troubled all along.

Oberon was always in questionable health. A heart murmur made it difficult for her to adjust to certain altitudes and climates and she was in possession of a very sensitive emotional makeup. It was not uncommon for certain events or displeasures to send her reeling to her bed for long stretches at a time. That said, she did endure some really horrible circumstances in her life, many involving plane crashes that took loved ones from her. It’s uncanny how many people she knew who met their fate this way.

As her career proceeded forward and her marriages progressed to include a millionaire, she began to overcompensate for her poor, sometimes squalid, childhood by developing a strong sense of luxury. She owned several stunning homes, most of which she practically rebuilt in order to suit her lavish tastes. While married to said millionaire Bruno Pagliai, she fashioned an eye-popping, seaside, Acapulco showplace that was difficult to get to unless one knew the secret route. Her luxurious tastes also ran to exquisite art and mouth-watering jewelry. She evolved into one of the all-time international hostesses, not to mention a glittering attendee at various parties, banquets and (frequently) Hilton hotel openings.

The car accident, along with two horrifying allergic reactions to sulfa drugs and the special makeup she wore in order to appear more pale onscreen, left her with permanent facial scarring. She underwent excruciating dermabrasion to try to fix this with only mixed results. Her second husband, cameraman Lucien Ballard, developed a special light (dubbed the “Obie”) that went very far in disguising, first, her accident-scarred and, later, her pitted skin on film. The object soon took off for other screen goddesses wanting to disguise wrinkles and/or other facial issues.

In the mid-50s, with her shelf life as a cinematic leading lady eroding, Oberon began appearing in anthology television. She even briefly hosted the unlikely series Assignment Foreign Legion. In 1954, however, an unusual offer came her way. She was approached to play Empress Josephine in the Napoleonic romantic drama Desiree (which starred Jean Simmons as the title character.) Playing Napoleon was none other than the brash, new Method performer Marlon Brando. Onlookers fretted that the dignified and sensitive Oberon would clash with the notoriously unusual and indulgent Brando.

Surprisingly enough, they got along very well! He reined in his customary attitude and behavior and she, by then, had begun to loosen up a little bit. Her part was small compared to what she’d been used to, but she was extravagantly appointed in period finery and some folks feel that she walks off with the picture thanks to her skillful, sympathetic performance. Also in the cast was Michael Rennie, playing Simmons’ husband, and he would rejoin Merle again several years later in another project.
Her final feature film of the 50s, coming out in 1956, was The Price of Fear. This one costarred her with Lex Barker who played co-owner of a racetrack who finds out that his partner is involved with organized crime. He hasn’t even dealt with that not-so-little problem when Oberon enters his life as a beautiful woman who may have a secret agenda. People talk all the time (and I do understand why) about John Barrymore’s profile, but I see nothing wrong with Sexy Lexy’s myself! I do love that tan, blonde hunk (a former Tarzan in five movies.) This film did nothing to resuscitate her career in films, though.
In 1963, having lived a glorious life in Mexico amid the sea, the sand and all the exotic flora, Oberon decided it was time to stage a return to the silver screen. She secured a property with a plum role for herself (though, surprisingly, it was that of a needy nymphomaniac!) and utilized her own property for some of the filming.

Of Love and Desire concerned a beautiful woman with emotional difficulties who finds it hard not to take every available man to bed with her. The list of ex-lovers is long, including her half-brother’s business associate John Agar. (Agar was once the husband of Shirley Temple until their marriage fell apart amid rumors of mental abuse on his part.) Barely done with Agar, she soon has her eye on her half-brother’s latest acquaintance Steve Cochran!

With Cochran, she thinks she can finally settle down and stay monogamously involved with one man. They lead a blissful existence for a while (and in one scene, Miss Merle shows off her 53 year-old body in a two piece swimsuit and she’s lookin’ good!) Cochran wears a pair of brief trunks, too, that show he’s holding up all right at 46 himself. (Incidentally, Mr. Cochran looks quite a bit better in the finished film than he does in almost any of the promotional photos and lobby cards for the movie.)

Things head south when it turns out that Oberon’s own brother, Curd Jurgens, wants her as much as all the other guys do! The emotional turmoil of this revelation sends her reeling. One sidesplitting sequence has her located downtown, frantically trying to get away as man after man after man comes around her. There is scarcely a woman in sight in the entire city! This film, by the way, was directed by the same man who brought us the rapturously bad Bruce Willis thriller Color of Night.

Considering this storyline, the understandably nervous theatre exhibitors slapped a RESTRICTED sticker onto the posters, though there’s really nothing in the film that would raise much of an eyebrow today. As is often the case, the lurid posters promised more than they delivered. Notice the hilarity of the sticker that features a slinky black panther as a mascot for the adult content of the movie! I think there were probably precious few young (straight) boys trying to bust their way in to this Merle Oberon vanity project.
Steve and Merle allegedly got to know each other intimately in real life as well, at least during the making of the movie. Sadly, however, he was dead within just a couple of years. His private yacht drifted into port with several starved, hysterical girls on it along with his quickly decomposing body, which had been lying on board for ten days. Controversy surrounded the incident, but there was a strange tendency among the authorities to not try exceedingly hard to determine any foul play, even after Oberon strove to have her considerable contacts look into the matter further.

In 1966, Oberon had a cameo role as herself in the stunningly campy film The Oscar. The movie, sure to merit its own tribute here in time, concerned an actor hell bent on winning an Academy Award and Miss O had the distinction of presenting the Best Actor Oscar within the faux ceremony depicted. Done up in an Edith Head gown, hair piled to the rafters and dripping in sparkling jewels, she certainly adds the requisite dollop of glitz to the proceedings.
Having gotten one toe wet with that film, she then entertained an offer to take part in a multi-character drama based on an Arthur Hailey novel. Hotel focused on the goings on at a New Orleans hotel called The St. Gregory. Rod Taylor (who had years before enjoyed a clandestine affair with Merle) played Peter McDermott, the manager of the opulent hotel, who has to juggle a variety of issues from a hostile takeover to a cat burglar to a Duke and Duchess harboring some sort of secret. After briefly considering Joan Fontaine to play the Duchess, the director Richard Quine set his mind on Oberon. Her association with The Hiltons also helped make her seem a natural for the part. (If Peter McDermott and The St. Gregory sound familiar, this was later adapted into a hit TV show starring James Brolin.)

Warner Brothers had Wilfred Hyde-White under contract and wanted him to play the Duke, but Merle flatly refused to do the role with someone she didn’t feel would supply at least some degree of height, stature and handsomeness in order to help explain her devotion to him. She also didn’t want to appear like a trophy wife next to the aged and short Hyde-White. Her former costar from Desiree, Michael Rennie, was brought in to take his place and everyone was happy, for the moment.

For the film, Merle looked unbelievably stunning, especially considering that she was 56. Every time she appeared, there was another show-stopping outfit, another ornate hairstyle and shovelfuls of her own amazing jewelry. I do back-flips for the crazy, insane hairdos of the 1965-69 (give or take) era that frequently looked as if medium-sized furry animals have been decorated and adhered to the heads of the women. The ladies seemed to compete to see who could get her “hair” the tallest and many a neck seemed to bend under the strain! Miss Oberon was right in there swingin’ with a huge crown of dark curls.

Wardrobe still photos exist of her standing near a chair (for support?) as she demonstrates how her outfit will appear. In the color one, cropped at about the knee, she maintains the glamour and stature she was by then renowned for. Digging deeper into the archives, however, turns up a black and white shot that includes her all the way to the feet. Oddly, she looks squatty and somehow less regal. Her wrist looks really thick and she has on, perhaps, the world’s worst panty hose. (If you notice in the shot from Of Love and Desire above, where she’s draped in a sheet on the bed, she has her feet hidden under the covers. Methinks that maybe her ankles and footsies were among the first things to go?)

By this time, Miss Oberon had been taking expensive and controversial beauty treatments in Switzerland that required injections into her buttocks. According to Higham’s bio, the allegedly rejuvenating procedure involved the (unbeknownst to her) brutal bludgeoning of pregnant animals on site in a soundproof room, whose fetus’s cells were then transferred to her system. Reportedly, the results were spectacular, allowing her a whole new level of energy, vibrancy and physical “youth.” Oberon retained the Hindu belief that all life was sacred and never killed even an insect, so it is unlikely that she knew the details of the treatments. Then again, Charles Higham’s books have been known to include wildly out of control information that has later been disproven (such as the nasty and damaging tale that Errol Flynn sympathized with and worked for the Nazis during WWII!)

In any event, there was a disagreement between Oberon and the director Quine over a scene in Hotel that she wanted included. He felt that it was not only unnecessary, but also inappropriate, but she was insistent upon it. The melodramatic scene depicted Rennie and her discussing their relationship in the wake of the calamity that has befallen them. Quine filmed it but couldn’t bring himself to include it in the final cut. He escorted her to the glitzy premiere and could feel himself tightening as the moment where the scene ought to be approached. He turned to make some sort of apology to her for cutting it, but she was not in her seat. She had exited the theatre, flagged a cab, returned to her hotel, checked out and left, never to speak to him for any reason again! I’m ashamed to say I can picture myself doing something like that. Ha Ha!

Now soured on the entire idea of Hollywood filmmaking, she laid low for several more years, traveling and encountering a new love in her life. She met Dutch actor Robert Wolders, who had a season of the western show Laredo under his belt along with some other credits, and left her millionaire husband for him. (She had adopted two children with Pagliai as well.) He was 25 years her junior, but then she was also magically preserved with the animal cells, so it was almost even. The couple had an intense fascination with nature and each other and spent countless blissful moments together traveling and enjoying one another’s company.

She made an appearance at the 1972 Academy Awards, this time presenting for real, in order to honor The Poseidon Adventure with a Special Achievement in Visual Effects award. In a moment that I want to pop up on youtube.com so badly that I lie awake at night, she emerged on the stage atop a moving facsimile of the deck of The S.S. Poseidon and it malfunctioned, almost sending her overboard! Please, SOMEONE!

Still not entirely ready to abandon her legacy as a film star, she set out to make one more movie. This time, she incorporated many of the aspects of her own life into the plot. She played a lonely woman, one very much in tune with nature, who falls for a younger man amid the ruins of Mexico. Called Interval, quite a few critics and viewers would probably have considered Interminable a far more apt title! Some of the more cruel observers drew similarities between the Mexican ruins and the brittle remains of the star herself!

Determined not to allow any interference from anyone in realizing her project, she edited the film herself (!) using knowledge she had gained through her years with the talented and exacting Alexander Korda. It was a vanity project to end all vanity projects as she continued to appear in the film with one flashy blouse after another, almost always paired for some reason with white slacks, hair inordinately done up or, in some cases, down, giving her an unintentional vampire hag sort of look. She does pop up in one delicious lilac chiffon ensemble, looking pretty great.

The sappiness of the film cannot be underemphasized. There’s even a godawful scene in which she’s standing on an ancient ruin with her hands thrown out as Wolders runs to her hollering “I’m somebody!” Umm…. Maybe not. His own acting, despite his having a modicum of experience on TV, was eviscerated by critics. His biggest problem seemed to be a lack of decent posture and a lack of confidence. He knew almost from the start that he really wasn’t suited to the part and that it could be a virtual minefield for his costar and her reputation.

It turned out to be a debacle, losing most of the money it cost to make and effectively slamming the lid on Oberon’s screen career forever. It’s hard to even catch this flick on TV at 2:45am it’s so obscure and unloved. A VHS copy I found once at a flea market has two armed Pinkerton guards surrounding it all times. Every once in a while, I will enter the decompression chamber, become air-cleaned, don my white gloves, remove the videocassette from its sleeve and have a cackle or two.

Personally, I don’t care all that much about age differences in relationships. Joan Collins has certainly made it work for her! There is something just a tiny bit icky, though, about the fact that Wolders went from Oberon to Audrey Hepburn and then to Leslie Caron. Someone needs to warn Mitzi Gaynor! One thing, though, that impressed me greatly about him is that when Miss Oberon died in 1979, he received nothing, nada, zilch from her considerable estate and it was at his own request. He and Merle had already begun to disassociate themselves from worldly objects as part of their spirituality prior to her death. Still, ya gotta eat! I don’t understand how people get by when I barely make it working full time. He was there, too, through the very worst of her final days (as was her close friend and fashion designer Luis Estevez, who always reveled in dressing the very tan Merle in white.)

A very weakened and deteriorated heart required surgery for Miss Oberon and though she survived the operation, she was left with painful and severe scars down her torso. An appearance in September of '79 had a sort of sad Margo from Shangri-La tinge to it. Finally, she was taken one night by a severe stroke in November. She left behind not only a treasure of art, jewels and property, but also the legacy of her better film work. She also left a jigsaw puzzle for her widower and two adopted children to figure out about what her origins were and how she was able to keep her secrets for all those decades.