Advise & Consent (1962)

This complex and controversial drama about party politics with a big-name cast was directed by Otto Preminger. It was based upon Allan Drury's highly influential and best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning political potboiler of 1959.

The movie was both praised for its daring homosexual subplot (taken directly from the novel) and also condemned for its datedness. In one scene, it stereotypically portrayed a NYC gay bar (Club 602) with the voice of Frank Sinatra singing on the jukebox and the effeminate bartender beckoning for a horrified homosexual character to enter.

The plot was about the cancer-stricken US President's (Franchot Tone) controversial and unpopular nomination of independent-minded Robert A. Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) to the position of Secretary of State. He sought the "advice" and "consent" of the US Senate for confirmation. In the Senate, the President's appointment was:

• supported by Senate Majority Leader Bob Munson (Walter Pidgeon) from Michigan
• opposed by southern Senator Seabright "Seab" Cooley (Charles Laughton), who branded Leffingwell as an ex-left-wing, former Communist Party member

Senator Bob Munson (Walter Pidgeon) - Supportive of Leffingwell's Nomination

Dixiecrat Senator Seabright Cooley (Charles Laughton) - Opposed to Leffingwell's Nomination

Herbert Gelman (Burgess Meredith) - Damaging Testimony Against Leffingwell : "He's a Communist!"

The head of the Senate nominating sub-committee to gather testimony regarding Leffingwell's appointment was stringently-honest, idealistic and principled Utah Senator Brigham Anderson (Don Murray). When testifying under oath before the Senate subcommittee, Leffingwell denied the "Communist" accusation from Sen. Cooley. However, he was confronted by the testimony of a surprise witness - Treasury Dept. clerk Herbert Gelman (Burgess Meredith), who openly declared: "He's a Communist" - Gelman claimed that in the past in Chicago, Leffingwell had participated in secret meetings and discussions within a "Communist cell" using code names. He also claimed that he had been a student in Leffingwell's class, and lost his job at the Federal Power Agency where Leffingwell also worked at the time. Leffingwell countered by claiming that Gelman was mentally-unstable, and was not registered as one of his university students.

In fact, after the hearing, Leffingwell met privately with the President who had appointed him, and admitted that he had lied, and asked to have his name withdrawn: "I lied at the hearing. I knew Herbert Gelman. I knew him in Chicago. I knew him at those meetings. They were communist meetings, Mr. President. I was never a party member, but I was young, looking for a cause. Didn't take long to discover that wasn't it, and I dropped out." The President refused - claiming it was only a 'youthful indiscretion.'

Then it was revealed that Senator Anderson also had a "nasty secret" from his own past. When Anderson returned home, he was asked by his wife Ellen Anderson (Inga Swenson) about accusations that she had received through anonymous telephone calls:

He said that before you go on with the Leffingwell matter, you ought to remember what happened in Hawaii...Then he hung up. What happened in Hawaii, Brig?

She asked her husband about a caller who made it sound like he knew some kind of a "nasty secret." He responded by downplaying the "crackpot" calls and told her to hang up on any future calls. Shortly later, Anderson received a call himself: "You'll be interested in this. We have the stuff on Hawaii. If you don 't want us to use it, you'll get out of Leffingwell's way. This is no joke, Senator. We'll use it...It's a photograph, senator. And a letter."

Senator Anderson Asked By His Wife Ellen: "What happened in Hawaii?"

Anderson Receiving Threatening Phone Calls Himself

The controversial candidate's fate was ultimately in Senator Anderson's hands when he learned of Leffingwell's perjury and demanded that his nomination be withdrawn: ("I'm giving you a chance. Call the press and announce your withdrawal"). However, Leffingwell refused and deferred to the President's opinion, and Anderson was faced with making the truth public.

Meanwhile, Anderson's threatening phone calls intensified from an "awful creature" to coerce him to favorably confirm Leffingwell, and his scared wife Ellen demanded to know more: ("They're calling me, Brig. They're trying to force you to do something through me. Now, you've got to tell me what it is"). He admitted he had done something from his long-ago past, but wouldn't provide details: ("If I do what they want, everything that I have tried to be, everything that I have tried to stand for in my life would be just thrown away"). He tried to conceal the fact of his latent homosexuality ever since, and it became an impediment in his attempt to have a normalized marriage.

In the film's most notorious homophobic scene (including the first depiction of a gay bar in a major Hollywood film), Sen. Anderson apparently feared that he was going to be outed and wished to stop being harrassed. He tracked down an overweight gigolo pimp named Manuel (Larry Tucker), who directed him to NYC's Greenwich Village Club 602. As he entered the bar, stereotypically depicted with gay males, Anderson heard Frank Sinatra on the jukebox crooning: "Let me hear a voice, a secret voice, a voice that will say. 'Come to me and be what I need you to be'..." Sickened by the sight, he frantically fled when Raymond Shaff (John Granger) approached to apologize for the phone calls, and outside the bar admitted he had sold his incriminating information (used as blackmail) for money: ("I needed money, Brig. Well, you wouldn't see me. I kept calling. I was drunk"). Ray was Anderson's former Army buddy-lover with whom he had a month-long affair years earlier during R&R in Hawaii. Outside the club, Anderson dashed for a taxi, and pushed Ray into a gutter's mud puddle as he took off.

Anderson was being blackmailed by ambitious, demogogic, pro-peace, pro-Leffingwell freshman Senator Fred Van Ackerman (George Grizzard) from Wyoming, who had dug up the dirt on Senator Anderson's indiscretions from the past. A photograph of the two men (wearing Hawaiian leis), and Brig's handwritten breakup letter sent to Ray in 1952 were delivered to the Anderson home and revealed the past to his wife.

Unable to face reality, the self-loathing Anderson returned to Washington DC and tragically committed suicide - "In his office, cut his throat" (slashed his own throat with a razor). After her husband's death, Ellen was overwhelmed with grief: "He was good, and kind and honest. I don't know what they were trying to use against him, but whatever it was, they can't use it anymore. So it doesn't matter, does it?"

During the final confirmation vote-process for Leffingwell, Sen. Munson chided Ackerman Munson for his role in Brigham’s death, and threatened censure and expulsion but then declined due to respect for the Andersons' privacy:

We tolerate about anything here. Prejudice, Atticism, demagoguery, anything. That’s what the Senate’s for, to tolerate freedom. But you’ve dishonored us ....Fortunately, our country always manages to survive patriots like you. We could introduce a resolution to censure and expel you. But we don't want Brig Anderson's tired old sin made public. Whatever it was.

As it turned out, the climactic vote on Leffingwell's controversial confirmation was contentious and basically deadlocked at 47 votes apiece. And then it was announced that the President died, and the Vice President Harley Hudson (Lew Ayres), the presiding officer in the Senate - and now the new President-elect, announced that he would not confirm the appointment: ("The vice president will not exercise his constitutional privilege to break this tie with an affirmative vote. The motion to advise and consent to the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell for secretary of state stands defeated"). He preferred to appoint his own Secretary of State. The last lines of the film occurred as the Senate was adjourned:

Munson: "Senators. A great leader is dead. A bitter loss for our country. A bitter personal loss for all of us here. I move we adjourn out of respect until further notice."
Cooley: "So ordered."

Boccaccio '70 (1962, It.)

This four-part anthology film about Eros was made by great Italian directors. The four segments and their major stars included three sexy European stars: Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren and Anita Ekberg:

The most interesting episode was Federico Fellini's Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio (The Temptations of Dr. Antonio), Fellini's first film in color.

The Giant Billboard with Anita Ekberg Advertising Milk

The segment told about a milk company's advertisement in the form of a giant billboard in a Rome park that provocatively pictured a reclining, well-endowed blonde bombshell Anita Ekberg (playing Herself). She entreated passersby to "Drink More Milk." Surprisingly, she suddenly came alive to torment and tempt self-appointed moral protector Dr. Antonio Mazzuolo (Peppino De Filippo), a pious and crusading censor who wished to cover up or dismantle the billboard, believing that it was the cause of corruptive evil in the world. He prayed to himself:

"Who are you? Semiramis, Cleopatra or Taide? Poisonous evil spirit, whoever you are, be gone! Sink into the abyss of sin! Go away! I order you to go!"

Then she laughed at him, set her large milk glass on the ground near him, and stepped out of the photo ("I'm alive"). In her Amazonian 50-foot size, she ran through the grass, rolled around (causing the earth to tremble), and then stalked him. She asked: "Why are you so nasty to me?" and "Does it bother you that you're so small?" She promised: "I won't hurt you. I'll just caress you." She picked him up, and placed him between her monstrous breasts as he screamed: "What an embarrassing place to die." When he reached for his umbrella in her cleavage, she teased him: "Mr. Mazzuolo likes touching!"

She then changed into normal size, and caused him to fall for her: "Stay with me, forever...You're so beautiful. Don't be nasty, stay with me," he begged, but then immediately changed his mind and chastised her. Growing in size again, she yelled at him: "I'm fed up with you." She realized the power of her allure as she began to strip-tease. She claimed she was the devil, there to take him away, and asked: "Help me get completely undressed." He attempted to cover the camera lens, to obscure the offensive views of her by women and children in the cinema. She asked as she lowered her dress top (offscreen):

"What's wrong with looking at a naked woman?...The moment has come. You'll never forget what you're about to see. Look."

As he speared the billboard pretending that he was St. George killing the dragon, it appeared that the entire encounter with her had been his own internal crazed fantasy. He was sedated and carried away on a stretcher to an awaiting ambulance.

Cape Fear (1962)

This suspenseful and intense late b/w film noir featured the sexually-predatory character of vengeful, amoral and insolent psychopath Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) (often with a thick phallic cigar on his lips and wearing a Panama hat). He was a disgruntled ex-convict who relentlessly pursued the members of the family of well-regarded Southern lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck). Cady believed that Bowden had wrongfully witnessed against him earlier in Baltimore "eight years, four months and thirteen days ago" for a vicious rape and assault.

The evil, intimidating, vengeful and insolent character of cigar-smoking psychopath Max Cady was first exemplified when he walked inside a Southern courtroom, and as he ascended the stairs, he ignored a woman who dropped a book in front of him. Then, he appeared at a bowling alley, where he inappropriately propositioned the married waitress (Joan Staley) with a $20 bill. He approached Sam and threatened him and his family: "Don't mind me, Counsellor. I'm just gettin' a gander at the rest of your family. You're a lucky man."

While waiting for his chance to rape again, the sexually libidinous ex-criminal picked up a floosy-drifter named Diane Taylor (Barrie Chase) from a waterfront bar scene after he undressed her with his eyes. She later cheerfully described him as an animal: "coarse, lustful, barbaric." He replied: "Keep right on talkin', honey. I like it when you run me down like that." She called him "rock-bottom" and added: "It's a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower."

But then in a cheap second floor hotel room, he circled her bed and predictably committed acts of "lewd vagrancy" and assault upon her, and she was found with a bruised face. However, she refused to answer questions, press charges or seek treatment and promptly fled from town. She feared recrimination: "Nobody can protect themselves against a man like that."

At a boat dock, Cady lewdly made a comment to Sam about his young teenaged daughter Nancy Bowden (Lori Martin):

Say, she's gettin' to be, uh, gettin' to be almost as juicy as your wife, ain't she?

After Nancy's school dismissal one day, he lustfully stalked her into the school's basement, terrorized her and almost killed her when she ran into the street.

The "shocking degenerate" told Sam how he had threatened his own ex-wife (now married to a plumber) after being released from prison (where he had "burned for eight years"), forcing her to write a "love note" to him inviting him on a "second honeymoon" -- "I made her write a lot of dirty words. Then I occupied her time for three days."

On a Cape Fear River houseboat where Sam had lured Cady with the two females as 'bait,' the bare-chested ex-con first threatened wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) to have consensual sex with him in order to spare her daughter. He angrily squeezed a raw egg in his fist over her and rubbed the insides over her chest as he told her:

Look! I was gonna go for Nancy, but uh, I can always make it with Nancy. You know, next week, next month. Wait a minute, now. You proposition me. You, instead of Nancy, and I'll agree never to see you again. All right? Listen, unless, of course, you want it. Now that's how you give your consent.

When she claimed he was using sexual blackmail on her, he held her against a wall, slapped her, and forced her to keep quiet: "All in all, I don't think you're gonna, you're gonna say too much about this, are you?"

His assault of Peggy was only a diversion to go after Nancy, and although the young girl defended herself with a fireplace poker, she was no match against his powerful grip - he gagged her mouth and dragged her outside, where she was ultimately saved by her protective lawyer-father.

During a barefisted fight to the death (and Sam's near drowning in Cape Fear River), Cady was overpowered, wounded, and held at gunpoint. Cady taunted Sam to shoot him: "Go ahead. I just don't give a damn." But Sam decided not to kill him, in the last lines of the film:

Sam: "No. No! That would be letting you off too easy, too fast. Your words - do you remember? Well I do. We're gonna take good care of you. We're gonna nurse you back to health. And you're strong, Cady. You're gonna live a long life - in a cage! That's where you belong. And that's where you're going. And this time, for life! Bang your head against the walls. Count the years, the months, the hours, until the day you rot!"

Face-Off Between Max and Sam

Dr. No (1962, UK/US)

The Bond films with Bond Girls told about a promiscuous agent who practiced casual 'free love' in an atmosphere of action and violence. As in most of the films, Bond would defeat the villain(s) and get the girl.

In the film's most unforgettable sequence of Dr. No (1962), Bond awakened to the sound of a girl's voice singing "Underneath the Mango Tree." And then on the Crab Key beach rising Venus-like from the water with giant seashells that she was poaching, Bond had his first view of Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), an innocent, carefree, voluptuous island girl/diver wearing a sexy, white bikini and hunting knife at her waist.

[Note: Wet bikini-clad Ursula Andress was the first Bond girl in the first James Bond film. Halle Berry would recreate this famous scene as Jinx Johnson in a bright orange bikini in the Bond film, Die Another Day (2002).]

Bond's own appearance from the undergrowth startled her:

Honey: Who's that?
Bond: It's all right. I'm not supposed to be here either. I take it you're not. Are you alone?
Honey: What are you doing here? Looking for shells?
Bond (glibly): No, I'm just looking.
Honey: Stay where you are.
Bond: I promise I won't steal your shells.
Honey: I promise you you won't either. Stay where you are! (She drew her hunting knife and threatened him)
Bond: I can assure you my intentions are strictly honorable.

She explained how her boat was too small to be noticed, and that she often came to the beach to get shells for sale in Miami. They had stopped trying to catch her, and had given up ("I don't think they bother anymore").

After ducking for cover from a high-powered patrol boat that fired at them on the beach, she led them to a hiding place, where they evaded more guards with dogs. She explained how she believed that Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) had killed her marine zoologist father - he had disappeared on Crab Key while exploring. She had lived all over the world (the Philippines, Bali, Hawaii - "anywhere there were shells") with her father. She didn't go to school, but resourcefully learned everything as a child by reading an encyclopedia ("I started at 'A' when I was eight, and now I've reached 'T'. I bet I know a lot more things than you do!").

When she and Bond were taken captive by Dr. No's men wearing radiation suits, they were taken to Dr. No's lair at his private island, where they were stripped of their clothes (Bond: "Do the girl first") and then showered in a decontamination chamber to be scrubbed clean of radiation.

Afterwards, they were ushered by Sister Lily (Yvonne Shima) and Sister Rose (Michel Mok) to adjoining hotel suite rooms to dress. A drug-laced coffee drink knocked them out, after which they awakened, dressed formally, and descended in an elevator for a dinner with gracious Dr. No in his private study next to his giant aquarium with a huge glass observation panel. Following a short discussion about Dr. No's plans for world domination, he ordered Honey to be taken away by guards for their amusement, and Bond - attempting to defend her - was subdued, beaten up and imprisoned.

With Dr. No	Honey Strapped Down at Flooding Sluice-Gate
After Rescue - Time For Kisses

Later, Bond escaped from his own cell, sabotaged the facility, set it to self-destruct, and killed Dr. No. He rescued strapped-down Honey from a flooding sluice-gate chamber, and they safely escaped Crab Key in one of Dr. No's boats - that conveniently ran out of fuel and sent them drifting. He suggested: "We can swim, or come here..." When they were located by Leiter in a rescue boat, they had this exchange of conversation (similar one-liner and double-entendres were commonplace in Bond films):

Leiter: Ahoy, Mr. Bond! Ahoy, Mr. Bond!
Bond (sitting in boat): Well, well! What's the matter? Do you need help? (Honey stood up in the boat)
Leiter: I'm quite sure you don't.
Bond: Well, now that you're here, you'd better give us a tow.
Leiter: Throw us your line.

Soon, they were given a tow back to shore by the rescue boat, although Bond released the tow-line to let them go adrift and continue embracing and kissing.

Gypsy (1962)

This screen version of the 1959 Broadway musical play (starring Ethel Merman) by Warners and director Mervyl LeRoy, with a Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim score, was a musical biographical drama set in the 1920s - based upon Gypsy Rose Lee's memoirs.

It was suggested by the lives of:

• Mama Rose Hovick (Rosalind Russell, singing voice of Lisa Kirk), Gypsy's bullying and domineering stage mother who pushed her into show business
• Louise Hovick (Natalie Wood), an American ecdysiast-actress later known as "Gypsy Rose Lee"
• 'Baby' June Hovick (Suzanne Cupito/Morgan Brittany), Gypsy's younger sister
• 'Dainty' June Hovick (Ann Jillian), Gypsy's older sister

One of the most memorable numbers was the wild and funny You Gotta Have A Gimmick performed by a trio of Minsky's burlesque house strippers (Roxanne Arlen, Betty Bruce and Faith Dane) to fresh-faced and naive Louise Hovick - aka Gypsy Rose Lee - on how to be an innovative and successful stripper and get applause. ("...If you wanna make it Twinkle while you shake it If you wanna grind it Wait till you refined it If you wanna bump it Bump it with a trumpet So get yourself a gimmick And you too can be a star!").

On stage before an all-male audience in a burlesque house in Wichita, KS, Louise was introduced as "Gypsy Rose Lee." She stepped into the spotlight from behind the stage curtain, and center-stage, she nervously gave her debut performance while wearing a fur wrap, long white gloves and an elegant blue evening gown - standing stiffly and tentatively singing Let Me Entertain You with a deeply sensual subtext, as Mama stood and coached off-stage and yelled tips, such as "Sing out!" and "Just dip!" Finally, Gypsy removed her fur wrap while singing a final refrain of: "Let me entertain you, We'll have a real good time, yes sir, We'll - have - a real good time." She removed one long white glove, before teasingly dropping one strap on her evening gown - and then quickly exiting the stage. It was an underwhelming performance, to say the least.

In Detroit	Philadelphia	At Minsky's
Montage of Gypsy's Improved Performances

There was also a montage of future performances, exhibiting Gypsy's significantly improved stage show with more sensual moves, more stylish peekaboo stripping and costuming, and her trademark line asked to the audience: ("Hello everybody, my name is Gypsy! What's YOURS?"). The montage ended with Gypsy's introduction at Minsky's at a New Year's show - headlined by "The Queen of Striptease" who again performed: "Let Me Entertain You" - "We'll have a real good time!" - with a semi strip-tease behind a curtain.

House on Bare Mountain (1962)

Independent film director Director R. Lee Frost made this early, hour-long 'nudie-cutie' sexploitation film - meaning lots of breasts and buttocks on display, no touching or actual sex, and no full frontal views. It enticed with the come-ons:

• "Everything's Off! When the Hollywood Models Meet the Monsters"
• Shot in Nuderama! Monsters Meet 20 Lovely Models

Old lady Granny Good (Bob Cresse in drag, resembling comic Jonathan Winters' Granny Maude Fricker character at the time) was running a girls' "finishing" school (GGSFG) for female teens (actually older women) in a "vine-covered cottage" (actually a horror film mansion), although in the first scene, the transvestite was seen behind bars.

The story was told in flashback -- in the opening scene, Granny (after hiding numerous liquor bottles in his office) met with the parents of a new student named Prudence Bumgartner (Laura Eden) for entry into the school. Bombs exploded nearby (exploding bottles of moonshine!). It was soon revealed that they were undercover cops searching for evidence to arrest Granny.

During the interview, one of the shapely students, Honey (Angela Webster), entered topless and wearing only white panties. She had been studying nuclear physics and was then given the task of memorizing the entire dictionary. Prudence was assigned Sally (Ann Meyers) as her roommate, and soon the entire floor of girls was undressing and showering.

The First Few Students in the Film
Honey (Angela Webster)
Sally (Ann Meyers/Perry)	Prudence (Laura Eden)

Most of the activities of the school were led by Granny ("Let's shake 'em up!...the Sag, Straddle, Hop"), with the girls in the nude, showcasing lots of jiggly breasts: exercising outdoors included jumping jacks, twisting, and skipping rope.

They also studied in a drawing class (with Granny as their model) and after lunch, they recessed by sunbathing in the sunshine and tossing a beach ball by the pool.

School Activities - Waist-Twisting Exercises

Due to financial difficulties, Granny had employed Krakow (William Engesser, also crazy-credited as Abe Greyhound), a huge 7 foot tall, non-speaking (besides grunts and growls) hairy werewolf, to operate an illicit moonshine still in his cellar. Granny was suspicious that someone was attempting to rat him out to the authorities.

In the film's climax, a fancy annual costume ball was scheduled (during a full moon) for the girls. Before the party, there was a long sequence of girls (one-by-one) descending the stairs (topless) to make phone calls to their boyfriends, reminding them to bring alcohol.

Right at the beginning of the boring party, Prudence contacted police by walkie-talkie, urging them to come and bust the illegal cellar still during the celebrations, but then she was confronted by Krakow in the cellar - and she passed out. The punch was spiked multiple times by the costumed monsters at the party (Frankenstein (Percy Frankenstein), and Dracula (Doris Dracula) and by Granny himself.

After the cops arrived, they arrested Granny in the cellar - where she offered to have them sample her "elderberry wine" - causing them all to collapse to the floor.

Meanwhile, the booze-soaked party upstairs had become a well-behaved dance orgy with many female students doffing their tops to wriggle around - doing the Watusi or Twist.

In the surprise ending, Granny wasn't in jail, but all of the cops were - after becoming drunk and imprisoned in his cellar. Krakow had been liberated from his 13 cents a day job by a representative from the United Werewolfs of America organization. Left without a worker, Granny cracked his whip to get the officials (accompanied by Prudence) to distill more booze.

Lolita (1962, UK/US)

The original 1962 Kubrick version of Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita (1962) was a dramatic story with black humor of juvenile temptation and perverse, late-flowering lust. It told the basic plot line of the obsessive love of a mature literature professor for a pubescent nymphet (12 years old in the original novel) in an aura of incest. During the film's production, however, it was marked by the threat of censorship and denial of a Seal of Approval from the film industry's Production Code.

[Note: The film was remade by Adrian Lyne in 1997, and was considered much more controversial.}

Rather than a film of overt sexuality and prurient subject matter, the content of the 1962 version was mostly suggestive, with numerous double entendres and metaphoric sexual situations.

The film's publicity posters asked the tagline: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" with a picture of Lolita in a seductive lollipop pose. She wore heart-shaped sunglasses and licked a red lollipop. Indeed, at the time of the film's making, sexual freedom and content had not advanced to the point of acceptance commonly seen today.

Lolita's opening credits, however, contained some of the most overtly-erotic, idealizing images of the entire film - designed to set the tone of the film. They hinted at pedophilia during a pedicure (during which the over-controlling and possessive male protagonist expressed sexual jealousy).

The First Views of Lolita (Sue Lyon)

The first view of nubile, young, sultry twelve-year-old daughter, Dolores 'Lolita' Haze (Sue Lyon - a fourteen-year-old television actress in her screen debut) was as she languidly sunbathed on a blanket on her backyard's garden lawn, listening to a transistor radio. The tempting, precocious, iconic, underaged nymphet was wearing a two-piece bathing suit and wide-brimmed sun-hat, and eyed by the passion of middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason). Lolita's mother Charlotte (Shelley Winters) tempted him to board in their home with her "cherry pies."

A shorthand montage of images and scenes visually provided a metaphor of Humbert's growing obsession for the young girl - he competed with Lolita's affection as Charlotte continued to show interest in him. But when it was announced that Lolita would be attending summer camp two hundred miles away, Humbert's face suddenly expressed understated consternation at the thought of Lolita's departure. She hugged him in the upstairs hallway before leaving. To be near Charlotte's seductive child so that he could proceed with his nymphetomania, Humbert realized that he must marry Charlotte. Opportunely, Charlotte was killed when she ran out of the house and into the path of an oncoming automobile in the street, before revealing Humbert's secret obsession with her daughter.

Humbert, now Lolita's official guardian, drove the Haze station wagon to pick her up from summer camp. The aptly-named camp sign welcomed him: "CAMP CLIMAX FOR GIRLS - Drive Carefully." He was reluctant to tell Lolita the truth about her mother's death. He confessed his love for the not-so-naive Lolita:

Humbert: You know, I've missed you terribly.
Lolita: I haven't missed you. In fact, I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you.
Humbert: Oh.
Lolita: But it doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway.
Humbert: What makes you say I've stopped caring for you?
Lolita: Well, you haven't even kissed me yet, have you?

Lolita's Suggestion to Play Game in Hotel Room

The film was noted for the scene of Humbert's overnight stay at a hotel with Lolita, where he willingly accepted the only room available for his planned 'seduction' - Room # 242 - "it's only got one bed." Although he contemplated crawling in bed with Lolita, he was resigned to sleeping alone on a rollaway cot. The next morning, she gave him a coquettish, whispered suggestion to play a game that she had learned at camp with a boy named Charlie, while seductively twirling the hair on his head with her finger --- followed by a discrete fade to black.

About four years later, it was revealed that Lolita had gone through "much sadness and hardship." She was married, six months pregnant, and in debt when Humbert visited to help support her financially. Lolita was very unlike the sultry, sleek young girl he had remembered a few years earlier. She admitted to having had a continuing affair with another of the film's prominent characters, TV writer Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), another pedophile. Tragically, Lolita had been robbed of her childhood and youth by both Humbert's affections and Quilty's exploitative, sordid relationship with her.

In the film's opening prologue, Humbert's car drove headlong into the fog toward Quilty's mansion. He was insanely motivated to commit murder for Quilty's duplicity and his part in seducing, running off and abandoning Lolita. Multiple gunshots were delivered by vengeful middle-aged literature professor Humbert Humbert as he wounded and killed Claire Quilty - he emptied all six rounds of his gun into a Victorian, Gainsborough-type watercolor painting (of an 18th century genteel young woman), killing Quilty through the painting where he was hiding. Quilty was blamed for his part in seducing, running off and abandoning nymphet teenager Dolores 'Lolita' Haze.

In the film's epilogue, the ending shot was another view of the painting - with a bullet hole torn through the face of the young girl - symbolic of the irrecoverably-marked life of Lolita. The epilogue's title card: "Humbert Humbert died of coronary thrombosis in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Claire Quilty."

Something's Got to Give (1962)

This light romantic comedy was famous for containing the last role (although uncompleted) of sex star Marilyn Monroe. Production delays and the expense of Fox's epic Cleopatra (1963) resulted in the firing of Marilyn, although she had been re-hired and was to resume production in October of 1962. It was to be considered her come-back film.

Then the film was permanently halted when Monroe died of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962 at the age of 36.

She had taken the role of married Ellen Wagstaff Arden. The most highly-anticipated scene, which would have been the first nude scene in an American sound film by a major star, was a well-publicized nude swimming pool scene.

[Note: It was reported that the star gave up her nude body covering.]

Due to Marilyn's death, the nude star honor would then be held by Jayne Mansfield for her naked appearance in Promises... Promises! (1963) - see below.

The production of Something's Got to Give was revamped and remade as Move Over Darling (1963), starring Doris Day - and without nudity, of course.

Tonight For Sure (1962)

The only claim to fame for this early 1960s soft-core, 69-minute 'nudie-cutie' (or skin flick) film (at the time of Russ Meyer's ascendancy) was that it was 22 year-old producer/co-writer/director Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut film - Tonight For Sure.

Both this and his second film The Bellboy and the Playgirls (1962), were shot in 1961, but released the following year. And in both films, he stitched together and created new narratives out of segments of other films. The new film, Tonight For Sure, set in a strip club, consisted mostly of two flashbacked stories (illustrated with nudes) amidst strippers performing their burlesque acts. There were no explicit or simulated sex scenes, just poses of various fully-nude or half-nude females.

The cheap sexploitation footage (used as flashbacks in the new film) that Coppola 'cut and paste' were from these two films:

1. Coppola's earlier sexploitation film "The Peeper" - a short 12-minute film shot and directed by 21 year-old Coppola at UCLA film school in 1960-61 (with Playboy Playmate Marli Renfro as the star)
2. writer/director Jerry Shaffer's "The Wide Open Spaces" - an unreleased erotic western made in 1960 about a cowboy who became delusional - seeing naked females everywhere (including Marli Renfro in the cast)

Coppola also shot additional footage of the burlesque theatre night-club with on-stage strippers, to supplement the other two storylines. His full contribution to the new film film was about 60% of the footage - Shaffer was credited with being a co-screenwriter, but was never officially credited as co-director.

The film's major tagline was:

"The Wild, Wild West Has Never Been Wilder...Beautiful Babes...Bashful Cowboys!"

It was also advertised on its poster as: "The wide open spaces suddenly grow crowded, when delectable desert desserts roam the range and wide-eyed cowboys cry, don't fence me in!"

The story was set in Los Angeles on the Sunset Strip, in August of 1961, at a burlesque theatre known as The Harem Club ("With the most beautiful girls in burlesque!"). Two males met outside the club at about 9:30 pm and introduced themselves to each other:

• Benjamin Jabowski (Karl Schanzer), a lecherous and perverted city businessman; he later claimed that a woman in his apartment complex, a red-haired model named Lucie Mae (Marli Renfro, famous for being the double for Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960)), was following him on the street - although he was the one who was stalking her; he secretly followed her and voyeuristically peeped on her (excerpted from "The Peeper" film) - he watched her undress inside an art photography studio [Note: Renfro also appeared naked in the western portions of the film.]
• Samuel Hill (Donald Kenney), a scruffy-looking, desert cowboy/miner, who rode into Los Angeles on his donkey; later, he told about how his partner Jamie (Larry Chance) from a Nevada mine was driven mad by delusions and visions of naked women (seen in flashbacks) - they appeared everywhere around him, in the sagebrush, in a casino, in a western jail, at the mine, and even in his bathtub

The two men viewed themselves as moralistic and prudish crusaders who needed to clean up the city. After ordering drinks, Jabowski planted a timed bomb in the electrical box in the men's room set to blow up at midnight in the nudie nightclub. As they awaited the explosion, the two hypocrites sat, drank heavily, and talked about the harmful and degrading evil effects of "indecent feminine exposure" from sinful and lewd women - while they were in an establishment entertaining them with burlesque strippers.

One stripper named Exotica (Laura Cornell) with only pasties and a skimpy bikini bottom performed behind the two men for their entertainment. Samuel insisted that they watch: "We ought to know what we're stampin' out," but Jabowski insisted they turn away. However, as the evening progressed, they moved closer and closer to the main stage.

Blackjack Dealer Lucy Mae in Western Town's Gambling Casino	Lucy Mae Peeped Upon When Undressing in an LA Photo Studio by Jabowski	Lucy Mae In Jamie's Bathtub In Another Western Scene
Many Nude Views of Marli Renfro (Playboy Playmate)

Samuel related a story about his friend Jamie who was thrown from his horse and suffered a head injury. Afterwards, he delusionally thought he was going crazy when he envisioned naked women everywhere in the West, illustrated with many flashbacks and lots of views of naked women - in the western desert, at a gambling casino, in the sheriff's jail, at a mine, at a corral, and in a ranch home. He called it "the curse of the hills, the curse of the Pink Mountains."

Naked Women in the Desert - "The Curse of the Hills"

The timer set in the electrical box in the Harem Club reached 12 midnite, and after a few sparks, the lights in the club went out for about a minute, and there was mass confusion. When the lights returned, women entered with picket signs ("CLOTHING FOREVER," "NUDITY IS LUDITY," and "CLEAN UP OUR CITY") and a band to protest against lewdness. The curtain was lowered to end the show.

Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Director Edward Dmytryk's melodrama (based on Nelson Algren's 1956 novel of the same name) was considered a shocking film (for its time). It was notable as the first major Hollywood film to be open about the subject of lesbianism even while restrictions were being imposed by the Production Code, although it was harshly criticized as lewd, tawdry, and sleazy. Its Oscar-nominated title song had the tagline: "Love is Best When Kept a Secret," alluding to the film's seedy underworld plot set in Depression-Era New Orleans.

The hookers at the Doll's House bordello (more opulent in the film than in the novel, with a jazz band and a bar) were managed by lecherous, iron-willed, villainous lesbian madame Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck - the first US actress to portray a lesbian in a feature film), who was sexually disinterested in her disabled husband.

Prostitutes working at the brothel included:

• Hallie Gerard (Capucine), an artist, the wayward 'one true lover' of naive, crusading Texas drifter Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey)
• Kitty Twist (24 year-old Jane Fonda in her third film role), an amoral, rebellious, teenaged vagabond ("You think I'm just a tramp, don't you? Well, I'm not. I may act like one, but I'm not")

Mexican café owner Terasina Vidaverri (Anne Baxter) allowed Dove to stay and work on the outskirts of New Orleans, while he searched for (and finally located) Hallie.

Bordello manager Jo was possessively in love with her own employee, Hallie, and in the film's most homoerotic scene, Jo tried to intimidate her when Hallie expressed a desire to marry Dove and run off with him - he was her true love in Texas from four years earlier:

Jo: "I'll be sorry to lose you. But if you think the world is your oyster, go ahead and take it. But how do you think the boy is going to feel when he finds out what you are, what you've been?"
Hallie: "He'll forgive me."
Jo: "All right, go to him. After all, a girl like you has so much to offer a man - a knife to cut his heart out."
Hallie: "I'll change."
Jo: "Of course you'll change, but haven't you said that so many times before? But go on and tell him. Tell him about the days and nights of Hallie Gerard. Tell him about the mud you've rolled in for years. Well, tell him! (Hallie collapsed on the couch behind her) Better throw this one back, Hallie. Don't try to fool him with lies, and don't try to fool me with lies, for his sake."
Hallie: "Don't threaten me, Jo."
Jo: "Why you silly, stupid, blind - do you think I'm playing childhood games back in Arroyo? If you won't tell him, I will...You may be weak, but I'm not. I'll find your dirt farmer, I'll tell him, and that'll be the end of that. (pause) Oh Hallie, Hallie. You've been dreaming. You've had a brief dream of young love and candy kisses. And it's all so foolish, it's all unreal. Hallie, if you have any feeling for that boy, let me break it off."
Hallie: "No, Jo, let me end it. Let me tell him. I-I owe him that. Please?"
Jo: "All right, Hallie."

In fact, Hallie did break Dove’s heart when he learned she was a prostitute living a "life of sin." But then he forgave her and still vowed to rescue her. The lustful and trampish Kitty was vengefully involved in a plot to betray and blackmail Dove into leaving Hallie forever. Also, Jo had Dove severely beaten.

The Accidental, Tragic Shooting Death of Hallie (Capucine)

By film's end, Hallie suffered for her perverted profession (according to Production Code dictates) - she was accidentally shot in the stomach when the gun of Jo's bodyguard Oliver (Richard Rust) went off during a struggle with Dove in Teresina's cafe and she died in Dove's arms.

Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962)

Russ Meyer's lesser, hour-long comedy film advertised itself as "A SINtillating, titillating, rollicking, raucous, romp through the wild & swinging West." It was the skin-flick director's third feature - and the final one in his trilogy of color 'nudie-cuties,' beginning with The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) and followed by Eve and the Handyman (1961).

The silly western spoof film (basically a nickelodeon-styled silent film without synchronized sound) opened with a lengthy narration about the epic old west (with panning shots of sagebrush, western landscapes, bloody swords and bugles).

Wild Gals of the Naked West

It then consisted mostly of short vignettes, recalled and narrated by a prospector (Werner Kirsch) with fake white cotton whiskers and eyebrows, about how an old western ghost town was formerly filled with decadence and debauchery, especially at the Rot Gut Saloon. The place was populated by larged breasted topless women (with pasties) shaking their assets, amidst shooting guns and drunken coots guzzling whiskey straight from the bottle while grinning at the camera.

Goldie with The Stranger

The plotless film concluded with the arrival of a maroon-clothed Stranger (Sammy Gilbert) with a foot-long silver pistol and blue-colored hat who vanquished the grizzly, black-clad bad guy named Snake Wolf (Frank Bolger) to claim the big-breasted heroine Goldie (or Golden Nuggets) (Terri Taylor), and join her behind a "DO NOT DISTURB" sign.

Boin-n--n-g! (1963)

Director Herschell Gordon Lewis' soft-core "nudie cutie" (made with producer David F. Friedman) was one of the last of its kind.

The hour long film was a self-satirizing and semi-autobiographical screwball comedy about the sexploitation film industry itself ("The Howlarious Story of 2 Guys Who Make a Nudie Movie"). It advertised that the film featured "undraped damsels by the dozens."

It told about two amateur porn film fanatics who were interested in making their own porn film:

• Al Harding (William Kerwin billed as Thomas Sweetwood), a producer
• Bob Stevens (William R. Johnson), a director

After watching the Herschell Gordon Lewis double feature: Daughter of the Sun (1962) and The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961) at the Studio Theatre, the two inexperienced filmmakers decided to audition and film naked women for an adults-only nudie movie of their own making. They hired film equipment, auditioned a few females, and rented out a country cottage for the weekend's filming in the outdoors.

Aspiring Actresses
	Actresses Sitting in a Patch of Poison-Ivy

They titled their finished film "Nature's Nudniks," but there were disastrous results and complications. In one segment, the nude actresses sat down in poison-ivy!

Posing For Camera

Cleopatra (1963)

This epic 4-hour blockbuster from 20th Century Fox was heavily publicized for many reasons:

• its lavish and opulent extravagance (the $2 million budget ballooned to $44 million (much more in today's dollars) and almost bankrupted the studio)
• the negative publicity generated by the off-screen, extra-marital love-hate relationship and affair conducted between its two major stars: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (as Marc Antony). They were both married to others at the time - Burton to Sybil Williams (from 1949-1963), and Taylor to Eddie Fisher (from 1959-1964). [Earlier, Taylor had scandalously 'stolen' Debbie Reynolds from Fisher and had a quickie marriage to him in Las Vegas in 1959.] Taylor was accused of "erotic vagrancy" when she left Fisher for Burton

In the long run, the publicity was beneficial for the film's bottom line, since it needed to recoup its expenses when it was finally released. The stars' off-screen indiscretions helped (although they were criticized on moral grounds), but it took many years for the film, the most expensive to date, to recoup its enormous costs.

Elizabeth Taylor Following in the Tradition of Sexy Cleopatras (with 65 Costume Changes)

Besides appearing nude under a massage towel or a diaphanous lounging gown, and often seen in bosom-revealing gowns, Cleopatra (Liz Taylor) had numerous love scenes with both co-stars - first with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) and then Marc Antony (Richard Burton). When Caesar took her as his mistress, because his wife Calpurnia was barren, Cleopatra placed his left hand on her right breast to successfully seduce him:

"My breasts are filled with love and life. My hips are rounded and well apart. Such women, they say, have sons."

She bore him a son named Caesarion. In the magnificently-staged reception that Caesar held for the Queen of Egypt in Rome (a half-naked dancer with tassels on her breasts led the procession), Cleopatra arrived on a giant Sphinx drawn by extras. Caesar was assassinated, photographed behind flames as Cleopatra was having a seance with a priestess. She returned to Egypt, but then her manipulative ways brought her into romantic contact with Marc Antony.

Contempt (1963, Fr./It.) (aka Le Mépris, or Il Disprezzo)

New Wave film-maker Jean-Luc Godard's unrated European import with nudity further chipped away at censorship barriers. There were many views of the behind of its French starlet Brigitte Bardot.

The marriage drama opened with an exploitative extended view of a fully nude Brigitte Bardot (as unsatisfied wife Camille Javal) lying face down in bed with her screenwriter husband Paul (Michel Piccoli).

The scene - shot with a colored filter - was ordered to be added to the finished film by Italian producer Carlo Ponti, to capitalize on Bardot's immense popularity, although it desexualized the sex kitten with her questioning dialogue about all of her objectified body parts from her head to her feet:

"See my feet in the mirror?...Think they're pretty?...You like my ankles?...And my knees too?...And my thighs?...Do you see my bottom in the mirror?... Do you think I have nice buttocks?...And my breasts? You like them?...Which do you like better, my breasts or my nipples?...And do you like my shoulders?...I don't think they're round enough...And my arms?...And my face?...All of it. My mouth, my eyes, my nose, my ears?...Then you love me totally."

The dialogue ended with her statement: "Then you love me totally." He answered: "I love you totally, tenderly, tragically." She replied, "Me too, Paul."

[Note: The same scene was repeated in Godard's Tout Va Bien (1972) (aka Everything's Going Fine) with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.]

Flaming Creatures (1963)

Experimental and openly gay filmmaker Jack Smith's controversial, ultra-low-budget 43 minute movie was declared obscene, sexually-graphic and depraved, and seized by police at its underground premiere in NYC in the spring of 1963. It was reported to be an exotic, Arabian tribute to 1940s screen star Maria Montez.

The primitive, herky-jerky, ragged, over-exposed, and legendary film (shot on half-ruined or damaged film stock), made on a Greenwich Village rooftop in the city, was banned in 22 states and in four countries.

		Ravaging of Woman With Exposed Right Breast
Rape Scene - Assaulted Female

The many disjointed and odd-angled images of heavily-made-up lips, eyes, overlapping limbs, and genitals of bisexuals, transvestites, hermaphrodites and other drag queens (some in white fabric dresses), possibly in an Arabian harem - either dancing, grooming (primping), or romancing:

• a mock lipstick commercial (Someone asks: "Is there a lipstick that doesn't come off when you suck cocks?...But how does a man get lipstick off his cock?"), with a close-up of a flaccid penis being shaken and then seen next to the face of a man with a large false nose while he applied lipstick
• the simulated cruel rape of a screaming woman during an earthquake, and a repetitive view of her enlarged close-up of her large, round, singly-exposed, massaged breast that was constantly being jiggled; then, her dress was raised and she was ravaged and forced to endure cunnilingus
• a drug-fueled orgy of intertwined bodies, kissing and organ caressing and stimulation, with nude and semi-nude males and females - with a soundtrack of vintage music

Drag Queen Sucking Blood From Neck of Unconscious Victim - Then Playing With Himself

• the sight of a vampirish, blonde-wigged, high-heeled drag queen rising from a coffin, to suck the blood from the neck of another unconscious drag queen - and then, the vampire laid back and wiggled his penis (masturbation?)

Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963)

This early, inaccurately-named Herschell Gordon Lewis (known later as the "Godfather of Gore") film was a further example of the predictable, usually awful "nudie-cutie" genre of films.

It was considered the first nudie-musical (filmed in brightly-colored "Buffocolor" and "See-more-scope") - "the first (and to date the only) nudist musical." The film was created an excuse to display lots of female nudity (tops and back-end bottoms) in a naturist camp (mostly in the film's final 20 minutes only).

In the plot, "skin-diving singing sensation" and nightclub singer Eddie Livingston (Rex Marlow) at Miami's Joey Maxim's Roaring Twenties nightclub became suspicious of his blonde girlfriend, the club's publicist/press agent Allison Edwards (Louise "Bunny" Downe/Vickie Miles) and her mysterious weekend disappearances, when she was always unavailable for dates. It appeared that both Allison and her photographer friend Cynthia Martin (Jean Clyde/Judy Parsons) would vanish together.

Allison with Boyfriend Eddie at the Club

Tommy's Girlfriend Cynthia Martin (Jean Clyde/Judy Parsons)

Eddie had a nerdy comedian friend Tommy Sweetwood (William Kerwin), who was dating Cynthia, trail Allison and Cynthia in a red convertible into Sunshine Park, a Miami-area nudist camp. When Tommy reported back, Eddie went midly crazy during a Monday morning interview on a "Great Day in the Morning" radio broadcast after learning about Allison's naked escapades over the weekend:

"My best friend over there had to tell me about the nakedness of the girl I intended to marry. How she consorts with all kinds of people, all kinds of people without any clothes on."

The newspaper, the Daily Press-Chronicle, reported: "NO NUDES IS GOOD NUDES FOR RADIO SHOW." Soon after, Allison admitted to Eddie that she was a weekend naturist: "What Tommy saw was true enough as far as it goes...Yes, I am a nudist. I have been since childhood. I think it's a wonderful healthy way of life, mentally as well as physically. And I'm not gonna sit here and listen to a bunch of insults about something that I believe in."

On 'Invitation Day' at the nudist park, Allison invited Tommy and Eddie to attend as her guests, to see what she harmlessly did on weekends: "We have bowling, water-skiing, big yachts, even horseback-riding." Tommy was open to the idea: "Look at all the exposure we'll get!" - he quipped. She added that for Eddie to see more of her: "Come to the camp next Saturday and then you can see ALL of me." At the park, Eddie and Tommy reluctantly stripped off their clothes to join the already-naked Allison and Cynthia. They were introduced to their friends.

Allison (Allison Louise Downe)
	(l to r): Eddie, Allison, Cynthia, Tommy

With two other sun-worshipping nudists and her friends, at the 50 minute mark, Allison experienced a five-minute horseback (bareback) riding scene (including lots of close-ups of bouncing breasts).

There were many other scenes of nudity, including naked pool frolics, casual nude lawn sunbathing, bare swinging on a hammock, nude water-skiing, and in-the-buff yachting.

Lounging by the Pool

Sunbathing on Yacht

Bare-Assed Boating

The film ended with a short talent show with Tommy telling jokes and entertaining everyone by playing a guitar ("The Naked Truth"), and Eddie also performing "That Night When We Were Young." The film concluded with Eddie obviously completely comfortable with Allison's nudism - he had also become enamoured of the nudist lifestyle himself.

Irma La Douce (1963)

Director Billy Wilder's bold and sexy French farce/romantic comedy, the biggest film of his career, was adapted from the successful 1960 Broadway stage musical, retaining only Andre Previn's Oscar-winning musical score.

Because this was a Wilder film, it was filled with sexual double entendres, and it was a milestone Hollywood film featuring overt prostitution.

The story told of fired gendarme Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), who struck up a friendship and romantic interest in a carefree, feisty Parisian streetwalker named Irma La Douce ("the sweet") (Best Actress-nominated Shirley MacLaine, although Marilyn Monroe was originally considered for the role).

[In fact, MacLaine was presented as a seductive sex symbol in the film, with lots of barely-covered views of her breasts in a flimsy bodice.]

Ultimately, he became her pimp (business manager or "mec") and then to monopolize all of her affections, impersonated a wealthy, buck-toothed, mustached, eye-patched British client named "Lord X" as her sole customer. However, complications arose when:

• she became jealous that he was two-timing her with another streetwalker - either Lolita (Hope Holiday) or Kiki the Cossack (Grace Lee Whitney) - although he was only working frantically at a second job at the local fish market to raise funds
• he became jealous of his own alter-ego

The film ended when Nestor 'killed' Lord X, and then became a prime suspect in Lord X's 'death' - culminating in a cathedral marriage with a very pregnant Irma.

Playboy Centerford/Playmate of the Month in February 1955

The buxom, platinum blonde sex goddess/siren Jayne Mansfield from the late 50s (a former Playboy Playmate in February 1955, similar to rival Marilyn Monroe), with a breathy and squeaky voice, appeared in such hits as The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).

Then, Mansfield (measuring 40D-21-32) became the first mainstream actress to appear nude (not fully) in an American feature sound film, baring her breasts and buttocks. The film's poster shouted out Jayne's words:

"This is the first time I've ever appeared COMPLETELY NUDE!"

The original version was banned in many cities (including Cleveland) and substituted with an edited version. In order to have the film available, it was distributed independent of the major studios.

The provocative sexploitative film which emulated Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was heavily publicized (pre-release) in Playboy's June 1963 issue in a pictorial titled The Nudest Jayne Mansfield, with more revealing pictures to prove it, that led to the magazine's Chicago publisher Hugh Hefner being charged with obscenity (and later acquitted) -- the only time in his life.

In this unrated sexploitation farce by director King Donovan, Jayne Mansfield played the notorious role of Sandy Brooks, taking a cruise with her eccentric and clueless, anxious, black-spectacled husband, TV script writer Jeff (Tommy Noonan), and desperately hoping to have a baby. He often took to drinking - psychologically fearing that he was infertile after 4 years of marriage. The ship's doctor (Fritz Feld) gave Jeff a placebo, but suggested that he was getting a Viagra-like pill to stimulate his manhood.

The couple made friends with their neighboring shipmates, Claire (Marie McDonald, an ex-Miss New York) and her muscle-bound weightlifter/actor-husband King Banner (Mickey Hargitay, former Mr. Universe and Mansfield's real-life husband). After a night of drunken carousing, they realized - eventually, that the two females were pregnant, but by whom, since it was thought that Jeff was impotent (he admitted it happened when he had the mumps in military school - which would actually cause sterility!) - the film's running gag.

Jayne Mansfield - The First Mainstream Star to Appear in The Nude in a Hollywood Film
In the Bath
At the Door
In Bed

In the film's first few minutes, Mansfield wriggled in a foamy bathtub on board the ship and sang "I'm In Love," then toweled off (and dropped her towel) at the bathroom door to toplessly greet astonished husband Jeff with: "Do you want something, honey?...See ya later." She also suggestively writhed on a bed. Many of the 'nude' clips were repeated in the film, as short dreamy flashbacks.

Its success led one of the film's actors, Tommy Noonan, to follow up a year later with 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964), featuring an unclothed Mamie Van Doren.

Scum of the Earth (1963)

This was a 'dark' poorly-made early "roughie" film in the mid-1960s. It was directed by the notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis in his pre-gore days with his frequent producer David F. Friedman.

The film was advertised as "Depraved, Demented, Loathsome, Nameless, and Shameless" and deliberately filmed in black and white to emphasize its sordid nature - it contained only limited hints of very tame nudity (very brief glimpses of breasts). It also stated:

From the Shadows of their Sordid Haunts...They Slither Like Predatory Beasts...To Stalk Their Prey!

In this expose of smut peddling and the pornography racket (set in Miami, FL), pretty blonde model Sandy (Sandra Sinclair), who was already posing for semi-nude photos, wanted out of the business. She was fed up and spitefully told her photographer - the sleazy and boozing Harmon (William Kerwin, aka Thomas Sweetwood): "One of these days, I'm gonna spill the beans on this little deal."

Smut Photographer Harmon (William Kerwin)

Sandy (Sandra Sinclair): "I'm gonna spill the beans on this little deal"

Sandy Posing as a Model

Sandy's photographer Harmon was actually working for an unscrupulous businessman - a sleazy boss named Mr. Lang (Lawrence Wood) - the head of the corrupt modeling agency - and pornography ring. With promise of lucrative rewards, Lang pressured Sandy into becoming a "recruiting agent" to entice others to become models: ("new, fresh talent"). If she couldn't find others, she would have to pose herself (with a broader variety of poses - implying nudity or sexual acts). And initially, she also had to pose with the new recruits to make them feel more comfortable.

Wholesome and naively innocent, dark-haired high school beauty Kim Sherwood (Vickie Miles, aka Allison Louise Downe), was recruited by Sandy to pose for $50 dollars an hour in cash. Young college-bound Kim decided to model to earn money for her college tuition, and began to have her pictures taken by Sandy's photographer. Although the first pictures were clothed, when she asked for more income to pay for her schooling, she was given the option to pose with further "glamour shots" (swimsuit photos and more).

Meanwhile, Lang was in league with one of Kim's juvenile delinquent classmates named Larry (Mal Arnold), who was illegally peddling Lang's 'smutty' photos to HS students. Larry demanded more revealing photos - of the young models topless or in other poses. To keep up with the demand, Kim was offered $500 for two weeks work - to pose in more revealing photos, and during one shoot she was tricked into having a few completely topless photos taken - she worried her reputation would be ruined. Sandy warned Kim to cooperate with the 'dirty picture' racket - otherwise, she would be coerced and blackmailed by having her topless photos spread all over town:

"If you don't go along with these morons, they're gonna place your bosom all over this town! Honey, my suggestion is this - pose for them."

Kim reluctantly agreed to appear in more photos, but insisted on not having her face shown in any of the photos. Larry bullied her otherwise: "Look, little Miss bright eyes, you're in no position to dictate terms." Kim acquiesed and stripped down to appear fully nude. A tracking close-up shot from Kim's feet to her face revealed that she had indeed agreed to strip fully. While she was posing nude for Harmon, Larry was off to the side, snapping unauthorized photos of his own to distribute and sell to HS school students. Some of her classmates knew of her poses and her reputation suffered.

Kim (Vickie Miles) - From Clothed to Unclothed Photos

The film included an infamous, moralistic speech after Kim was brought by Sandy to Mr. Lang's downtown office. Lang intimated that since she was "in trouble" due to the photos - she needed to listen to his advice. She refused to pose again for "filthy pictures" even if it meant she couldn't attend Craxton University. Lang threatened to have Larry print up 100 photos of Kim's nude photo, and then in a 3 minute lecture or rant as he sweated profusely, he denounced her as "dirty" - as the camera progressively zoomed into his mouth (revealing lots of metal crown-work).

Mr. Lang's (Lawrence Wood) Rant Against Kim

"It's time for straight talk. It's not my fault you posed for Harmon. It's not my fault you posed for Larry in the nude. You did it, it's your problem. It's pretty late to act prissy and prim. All you kids make me sick. You act like Little Miss Muffett. And down inside, you're dirty. Do you hear me? Dirty! You're greedy and self-centered, and think you can get away with anything. And you're no better than the girl who sells herself to a man. You're worse, because you're a hypocrite. And now Little Miss Muffett is in trouble, and she's all outraged virtue. Well, you listen, and you listen well. You're damaged merchandise, and this is a fire sale. And you walk outta here, and your reputation won't be worth fifteen cents. You do as I tell ya, do ya hear! You do as I tell you!"

Lang then offered Kim one year's paid tuition, in exchange for "posing for one day for Harmon. The shots will be nature studies - you, Sandra and another girl." Kim agreed to pose after emphatically stating it would be "the end" of her posing career.

A number of events occurred as the film ended:

• one of Lang's brutal enforcers (and male porn stars) named Ajax (Craig Maudslay Jr.) abducted Marie (Toni Calvert/Christy Foushee), one model who was threatening to report the illegal activities to authorities; he forced her into a motel room and threatened a belt whipping (and possible rape); off-screen, he whipped her bare back leaving marks, and raped her; after he left her, she phoned the police
• during Harmon's photoshoot of three nude models with various props, Shirley (Christina Castel), Kim, and Sandy, Ajax interfered and grabbed Kim's prop - a baseball bat; as he was preparing to sexually assault Kim, Harmon defended her, took the bat and battered him to death; then Harmon returned (and/or destroyed) all of the photos taken of Kim to protect her reputation before dismissing her: "Remember, you weren't here tonight"; afterwards, he confessed self-defense to police to help prevent the sexual assault, and Sandy stepped forward and claimed she was the one being attacked, and that they were engaged to be married
• while closing down his business and ordering all evidence (photos) to be destroyed, Lang killed his own assistant Larry in his office with three gun shots when he demanded more money and called the police

In the conclusion during a climactic police pursuit, Lang ran from two policemen and ended up in the ocean. To avoid arrest and prosecution, he suicidally killed himself by shooting himself in the mouth. As he pulled the trigger, the screen momentarily turned blood red - in homage to Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). The film ended with Harmon thanking Kim for humanizing him: "We owe you an awful lot. Why, you turned us back into human beings instead of a pair of animals." Kim was saved from further embarrassment.

The narrator (director Herschell Gordon Lewis) concluded: "For every girl who escapes the trap, another falls into it. Only an alert society can rid itself of those who prey on human weakness. The Scum of the Earth."

Writer/director Ingmar Bergman's last film of a trilogy ("Silence of God") about faith and redemption (preceded by Through A Glass Darkly (1961) and Winter Light (1963)) attracted unusual attention for its explicit and "overt sexuality" for its time (nudity, incest, self-defilement - female masturbation, nymphomania, and urination).

It told about emotional emptiness, fractured intimacy, failed communication and distance in human relationships in its voyeuristic, bleak story of two polar-opposite, incestuous sisters, with a wide void between them:

• Ester (Ingrid Thulin), judgmental, very intellectual, controlling, older, frigid and repressed blonde; a chain-smoker and drinker, seriously and terminally-ill (bed-ridden with lung disease, coughing up blood, and slowly suffocating to death), employed as a professional literary translator
• Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), younger, more open, earthy, carnal, narcissistic, sexually-overt, and promiscuous brunette -- with young 10 year-old son Johan (Jorgen Lindstrom)

The Two Sisters (Blonde Ester and Brunette Anna) - Aspects of One Person
Lesbian 'Attraction' and Spitefulness Between the Rival Sisters

As the threesome traveled by night-train together to return home to Sweden, they stopped in a nameless foreign Central European country (with an incomprehensible language) and checked into the claustrophobic, deserted Hotel Europa, in "Timoka," where they rented a two-room suite with a large doorway in-between. The only bridging element between them was younger sister Anna’s innocent son Johan.

While Ester was drinking heavily in her bed in one of the rooms, Anna decided to take a bath and asked Johan to come and scrub her back, before they took a nap. Ester went into her sister's room and contemplated Anna and Johan as they slept. She returned to her own bed, unbuttoned her pajamas and proceded to masturbate. Shortly later, Ester again spied on her sister through the doorway, as a naked Anna cooled herself off with water from the sink.

While Ester remained in her hotel room - dying, Anna flaunted her freedom (and also displayed disloyalty toward her sister) by going out to look for nihilistic pleasure in sex. First, she stopped into a café and met a young waiter (Birger Malmsten). Then she attended a performance in an uncrowded, dark cabaret-revue theatre, where she voyeuristically spied on a uninhibited couple making clothed love during the show - she was both attracted and repulsed. After leaving the theatre, she returned to the cafe and gestured to the waiter.

When she returned to the apartment, Anna was questioned by Ester about her soiled dress. She spitefully told an embellished tale about having a casual sexual encounter (with the cafe waiter) in a cinema:

"I went to the cinema and sat in a box at the back. A man and a woman made love right in front of me. When they were finished, they left. A man came in, someone I'd met at the bar. He sat down next to me and started stroking my thighs. Then we had intercourse on the floor. That's why my dress got dirty."

Anna was upset that Ester was being so inquisitive. Later that evening, she then revised her story to Ester about the sexual encounter, telling about how she had sex with a stranger (cafe waiter) in a church:

"Then I went to the bar and this man left with me. I didn't know where to go, so we went into a church. We had intercourse in a dark corner behind some pillars. It was cooler there."

Although Ester begged her to not meet the man again, she met the stranger (the cafe waiter) and had sex with him in one of the vacant hotel rooms down the hall. After sex, Anna delivered her inner thoughts in a monologue - since she couldn't communicate verbally with the man: "How nice that we don't understand each other."

The climactic scene occurred when Ester entered the hotel room where her sister was engaged in sex with the stranger. This precipitated a violent and bitter argument about their dislikes for each other. After Ester left, Anna expressed a range of emotions from deranged laughter to sobbing tears when she commenced love-making again with the man.

The next morning while left alone, despairing, hopeless and knowing death was imminent and that Anna and Johan were going to leave soon, Ester intellectualized to herself - and expressed her intense loathing for sexual contact:

Erectile tissue...It's all a matter of swollen tissue and secretion. A confession before extreme unction: Semen smells nasty to me. I've a very keen sense of smell - and I stank like a rotten fish when I was fertilized. It's optional.

Anna and Johan left on the 2 o'clock train, leaving Ester to die in her sweltering hotel room.

Tom Jones (1963, UK)

This Best Picture of the year by director Tony Richardson was a costumed historical adaptation based on Henry Fielding's novel.

Its most memorable and notable scene was the much-imitated, bawdy, extended-foreplay, primal food-eating sex scene between:

• Tom Jones (Albert Finney), a lusty, boyish rogue
• Jenny Jones/Mrs. Waters (Joyce Redman) - rumored to be Tom's mother!

Meat, fruit, and oysters provided the aphrodisiac. It was a perfect combination of carnal sexual lust and food consumption. Their multi-course dinner meal consisted of soup, drafts of ale, turkey, oysters, pears, and wine which they slurped, sucked, and tore into with gleeful and pleasurable abandon.

Young Aphrodites (1963, Greece) (aka Mikres Afrodites)

Director Nikos Kounduros based his film on the Pastoral Idylles of Theocritus in the 3rd century, about the two nymphs - Daphnis and Chloe. There was some talk when the film was released about it being scandalous and inappropriate to have the two young leads often half-naked.

However, the nudity was very brief and more suggestive in the film's advertising and marketing than in the actual film itself.

Actual Film
Publicity Stills

The coming-of-age story of mating and sexual awakening (with a tragic ending) opened in the year 200 BC. The two main young characters who engaged in courtship were:

• Chloe (Kleopatra Rota) - a 12 year-old village girl who fished, sometimes revealing her breasts
• Skymnos (Vangelis Ioannidis) - a nomadic shepherd boy

There were two other parallel older characters who lived in a nearby fishing village:

• Tsakalos (Takis Emmanuel) - a persistent, sex-obsessed shepherd aggressively pursuing Arta
• Arta (Eleni Prokopiou) - Tsakalos' love interest although she was married to a fisherman (away); also a bird trapper