Tom Lisanti - Fantasy femmes of sixties cinema : interviews with 20 actresses from biker, beach, and Elvis movies

Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood: Seventy-Five Profiles (2008)

Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 19591969(2005)

Drive-in Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties(2003)

Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 19621973(2002)

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Lisanti, Tom, 1961
Fantasy femmes of sixties cinema : interviews with 20 actresses from biker, beach, and Elvis movies / by Tom Lisanti ; foreword by Chris Noel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Joan OBrien Diane McBain Joan Staley Jill Haworth Pamela Tiffin Francine York Joy Harmon Eileen ONeill Julie Parrish Jean Hale Irene Tsu Chris Noel Lana Wood Celeste Yarnall Judy Pace Salli Sachse Deanna Lund Karen Jensen Linda Harrison Tisha Sterling More groovy gals.

ISBN 978-0-7864-6101-1

1. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. 2. ActressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN1998.2.L57 2010
791.43'028'0820973dc21 00-64008

British Library cataloguing data are available

2001 Tom Lisanti. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: Celeste Yarnall

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

To my parents, Vincent and Joan,
for all those wonderful summer
evenings at the drive-in.

A number of people had a hand in helping me put together this book. First and foremost, I relay my thanks to the lovely ladies who let me interview them and who shared their lives in Hollywood with me: Jean Hale, Joy Harmon, Linda Harrison, Jill Haworth, Karen Jensen, Deanna Lund, Diane McBain, Chris Noel, Joan OBrien, Eileen ONeill, Judy Pace, Julie Parrish, Salli Sachse, Joan Staley, Tisha Sterling, Pamela Tiffin, Irene Tsu, Lana Wood, Celeste Yarnall and Francine York. I also wish to thank Mitchell Bard, Brendon Boone, Shelley Fabares, Laurel Goodwin, Sue Ane Langdon, Carol Lynley and Dale Sheets for their brief comments.

This book and my writing career would never have come to pass if it werent for the encouragement from my pool buddies and fellow authors Louis Paul and Heidi Stock (a groovy gal in her own right). Thanks to Mark Tolleson for his editing prowess. He now knows more about sixties gals than he ever could have imagined. Thank you to my longtime friends John Covelli and Teresa DeTurris with a special thank you to Teresa for her legal help. My gratitude goes to my colleague Barbara Cohen-Stratyner for her input and advice, to my former boss Robert Marx at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for giving me the support and flexibility to write this book, and to Bob Taylor, the curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, for giving me unlimited access to the collection.

I also wish to thank my familymy mother Joan Lisanti, Joe and Beth Lisanti, Lorraine and Richie Nicolo (I spelled it right!) and Donna and Mike Cates. A big hurrah to my number one fan on Long Island, Vincent Page.

Kudos to my friends who have prodded me along with their helpfulness and encouragementtop billing must go to my LA friend Shaun Floyd Smoot Chang and (in alphabetical order) Keith Aden, Bill Benish, Anne and Chris DeMarco, Jeff Failla, Scott Hannibal, Pete Kaiser, Tom Kazar, Phil Lindow, Jeremy Megraw, Alan Pally, Tim Roberts, Mitchell Soble and Kevin Winkler.

And last but certainly not least, special thanks to a great guy named Ernie DeLia.

The sixties were the highlight of my life. While my high school friends had gone off to college, I hit New York City, where director Sandy Howard cast me in his first film. I then went to California. I had always dreamed of Hollywood. How exciting to be under contract to MGM and to become a working movie actress! I learned my craft from successful, important actors. Having not attended acting school, I studied by paying attention, being disciplined and working hard. Some of us worked mightily at being the best we could be in one of the most demanding and desired of all careers. Though we were competitive with each other, we also liked one another. Actress Eileen ONeill and I are best friends todayalmost like sisters.

Author Tom Lisanti has the heart to understand, appreciate and applaud us Ol Sixties Cinema Gals. We enjoyed doing Elvis, beach and teenage movies. These films were innocent fun. Nudity, violence or foul language werent necessary in these films. It wasnt until the late sixties that we encountered this.

I loved our sixties film culture. I didnt go to movies or work in films that caused nightmares from any violence or horror. I experienced that visiting our troops in Vietnam. Going back and forth from the glamour of filmmaking to the stark reality of war later gave me nightmares. I wish for all the children of the world never to have nightmares of fright and violence, whether from war or films. That is one reason I still like Elvis, beach and teenage movies. They make me happy!

Chris Noel

Why a book on sixties actresses who are known only by cult movie fans or have been long forgotten? That is the question I have been asked most since I began working on Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema. I just felt these actresses had long been overlooked in film history. Though none of them became superstars, they appeared in some of the most popular films of the decade, worked in genres aimed at the teenage audience, and guest-starred on some of the most beloved TV shows of our time. But nobody was writing about them. There were no interviews in genre film magazines and they were rarely mentioned in film history booksnot even ones that focused on the sixties.

The second question Ive been asked is why I didnt focus on better-known actresses. The answer is simplestars such as Ann-Margret, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Stella Stevens, Sandra Dee, and Connie Stevens have been written about ad nauseam. There are biographies, autobiographies, chapters in books and numerous magazine articles on these actresses. I never tried to contact any of them because they were not the people I wanted to write my book about. I wanted to interview and write about the lovely young women who graced Elvis, beach, biker and alienated youth movies.

I became familiar with most of the women profiled in this book by going to the drive-in with my family in the late sixties and early seventies, and by watching WABC-TVs 4:30 movie every afternoon. I would rush through my paper route to get home in time for Elvis Week, Beach Party Week, Biker Movie Week, etc. As a teenager during the seventies, I was enthralled by the music, the attitude, the clothes and especially the actresses of the sixties. I became a fan of most of them and followed their careers into the seventies and eighties. Often I would wonder, Whatever became of? When nobody answered my question, I decided to find out the answers myself. Hence this book.

Biographical information and acting credits were accumulated through research on the Internet, at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library, the Museum of Television and Radio and especially the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Ive tried to be as inclusive as possible regarding film and TV credits. The reader should note, however, that it is extremely difficult to document variety, talk and game show appearances.