Former Sixties starlet and writer Terry Southern’s longtime
companion Gail Gerber a.k.a. Gail Gilmore, whose films include Girl Happy, Beach Ball, Village of the Giants, and Harum Scarum, returns to the silver
screen on Saturday 27, 2008 in Lucky Days
co-directed, written and starring Angelica Page Torn (daughter of Geraldine
Page and Rip Torn) screening at the Coney Island Film Festival in Brooklyn, NY.Click hereÂ
for more information.Â
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Gail Gerber in End of hte Road (1970)
Last seen on the big screen playing a pot-smoking high
school student in End of the Road
(1970), Gail has a small role as a dotty old lady who encounters Torn's lonely
woman during the last summer days of Coney Island's
famed amusement park. The impressive cast also includes Frederico Castelluccio,
Luke Zarzecki (pictured with Torn), Will Patton, Anne Jackson, Marilyn Sokol, and
Rip Torn.
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Lucky Days
Look for Gail’s memoir Terry
Southern and Me: Uneasy Riders in Hollywood co-written by yours truly next
year. Gail dishes about the her life
with the free spirited writer, what went on behind the scenes of her own movies
and Terry’s including The Loved One, The Cincinnati
Kid, Easy Rider, Casino Royale, The Magic Christian, and Candy,
and what life was like during Terry’s “exile†from Hollywood during the
Seventies and Eighties. For more
information on Gail, visit The Gail Gerber Fan Gallery
Carol
Lynley fans rejoice! Warner Bros. is finally
releasing to DVD the long overdue The
Shuttered Room (1967) starring Carol, Gig Young, and Oliver Reed. In this H.P. Lovecraft inspired spine tingler,
Lynley is convincingly scared throughout as the terrorized heroine who returns
to her place of birth with her older citified hubby (Young) to claim an old
millhouse complete with a hideous thing in the attic and a lascivious punk
cousin (Reed) with an eye for blondes who wants to keep it in the family so to
speak. Creepy music, excellent
cinematography including POV shots from the mysterious house guest, and Carol
never lovelier or vulnerable make for a suspenseful time.
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The Shuttered Room will have an anamorphic widescreen
transfer and as an added bonus it is being paired as a double feature on DVD
with It! (1966) starring Jill Haworth
as an innocent young girl lusted after by disturbed museum curator Roddy
McDowall who (a la Norman Bates) keeps his mummified mommy around the
house. If that’s not bad enough, he
brings to life a Hebrew statue called the Golem and uses it to do away with his
enemies. Â
Carol Lynley and Gig Young in The Shuttered Room
When
asked about It! for my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, saucy Jill
quipped, “I only did this film because I needed the money. I hated everything
about this movie—particularly what they did to my hair. They gave me an atrocious hairstyle for
it. But I did like Roddy McDowall. He
was very nice to work with. And with
Roddy, what you see is what you got. He even brought me the poster for It! on the opening night of Cabaret [the original Broadway musical
where Jill played Sally Bowles]. I
couldn’t believe they were going to release it.Â
He signed it and put an S-h before the It! This film really was a
piece of shit.â€
The double
feature DVD will retail for $19.98 and will be available at Best Buy only.
During the 1960’s,
beautiful Chinese actress Irene Tsu played a variety of “native†girls in a
number of popular drive-in films including Sword
of Ali Baba, How to Stuff a Wild
Bikini, and Paradise, Hawaiian Style
with Elvis. Tsu had poise and talent,
which was noticed by producer/writer Arthur C. Pierce who cast her as a space
traveler in Women of the Prehistoric
Planet. It was her first starring
role. She then played a South Vietnamese
spy in The Green Berets, John Wayne’s
homage to our boys in Vietnam
before becoming part of the spy boom.Â
She portrayed a geisha girl in The
Man from U.N.C.L.E. feature The Karate
Killers and a fashion model in the secret agent spoof Caprice starring Doris Day.Â
Irene Tsu today
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But the one role that got
away from her was the part of Maily in The
Sand Pebbles starring Steve McQueen.Â
The heartache of losing the part almost made her quit the business. She was director Robert Wise’s first choice
for Maily in his epic film but studio machinations kept her from getting the
role. Commenting in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, Irene
Tsu recalled, “I interviewed with Robert Wise a few times and he set up an
expensive screen test for me on a massive set with other actors. I thought I did very well but then weeks went
by with no word. I went to see Wise and
he told me he wanted me for the part but the producers overruled him. They gave the part to Marayat Andriane who was
rumored to be Fox head Darryl Zanuck’s current mistress. When I found out I burst into tears and hoped
never to have to go through something like that again.â€Â
Though Irene was
devastated, she wound up with a contract with 20th Century-Fox because “I had
to sign with them before they allowed the screen test. For a short time I was treated like a star of
the Golden Age. They gave me my own
dressing room that was as big as a house.Â
I even had my own parking space.Â
Unfortunately, after only one film the studio went bankrupt. My contract was dropped along with all other
such commitments Fox had.†Undeterred, Irene kept working vigorously. The 1970’s saw Irene mature into a more than
fine actress as she progressed from exotic parts to playing doctors, lawyers,
and scientists in both film and television.Â
And she is still active today.