B Movie Babes

Friday, July 31, 2015

#63 Francine York

Francine York was a typical ‘70s babe with big hair and even bigger … well … um … you know. Francine got the acting bug at age nine, when she stole the show – as one of the evil stepsisters – from Cinderella. She then put in her time twirling batons, doing pageants, modeling, and being a show girl. 150 credits and a 50-year-career later (including a stint as an Elvis girl as well as lots of classic TV), she’s still going strong – and looking great – today.

Embarrassing Real Name: Francine Yerich

Embarrassing Real Birthplace: Aurora, MN

Cheesy Pageant Titles

Miss Eveleth (MN)
Miss San Francisco

Embarrassing Movies

The Centerfold Girls
Wild Ones on Wheels
Mutiny in Outer Space *
Curse of the Swamp Creature *
Astro Zombies: M-3 Cloned
Space Probe Taurus

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

The most beautiful girls in the world! He was their JUDGE... JURY... and EXECUTIONER!
Astounding adventure from the center of the moon!
Horror so incredible it stretches the mind of man beyond the breaking point

Embarrassing Characters

Wendy Wendkoski
Nurse Norma
Lydia Limpet
Queen Medusa

Interesting Tidbits

Was active in 4H and won several blue ribbons for cooking, up to the state level
Was a favorite of Jerry Lewis
Once portrayed Marilyn Monroe onscreen (in the classic Marilyn: Alive and Behind Bars)
Never married

Where can I learn more?

Nice, um, er, hat?

<#64 #62>

Friday, July 24, 2015

#64 Triple Feature: Debra Paget / Lisa Gaye / Teala Loring

Now here’s a real stage family. And in addition to the three sisters, we also have a brother (the makeup artist Ruell Shayne) and a mom-and-dad vaudeville act. As for the sisters, Debra was the glamorous one, Lisa was the steady one, and Teala was the obscure one.

Debra Paget

Embarrassing Real Name: Debralee Griffin

Cheesy Pageant Titles

Azalea Queen
Miss Sonic Boom
Most Glamorous Chassis
Chinchilla Queen

Embarrassing Movies

Demetrius and the Gladiators
From the Earth to the Moon
Tales of Terror
The Haunted Palace
Mother Is a Freshman

Embarrassing Taglines

The storming, slashing, sweeping saga of history's fabulous pirate queen!
BOLD AND BAWDY AS THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI! LUSTY AND GUSTY AS ITS FIERY WOMEN! ROUSING AS THE TIMES THAT INSPIRED IT!
See the Stampede of 3000 Angry Buffalo!!!

Embarrassing Characters

Taura
Kalua
Shila, Cleopatra's Daughter
Seetha the Sheeva dancer
Sonseeahray
Appearing Day

Number of Marriages: 3

Shortest Marriage: 4 months

Unlikely Spouses & Boyfriends

Howard Hughes
Elvis

Whiffs of Scandal:

Mom was a burlesque queen
Her “Egyptian dance,” from Princess of the Nile was extremely racy for the mid-50s (YouTube)

Interesting Tidbits

Maintained a 26-room mansion for 13 relatives
Had a strawberry-pink Cadillac covered with rhinestones
Had her own private zoo, with a peacock, chimpanzee, and gibbon
Became a born-again Christian (click here for her “prophecy”)

Screen Credits: 45

Where can I learn more?

Lisa Gaye

Embarrassing Real Name: Lezlie Griffin

Embarrassing Movies

Valley of Mystery
Night of Evil
Face of Terror
Castle of Evil *

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

Rock 'n' Roll vs. the Squares
A wilderness of danger! An empire of savage hate!
So terrifying! We have reserved your coffin ... if you drop dead while watching

Embarrassing Characters

Ahza
Natula
Princess Suvi
Sunset
Soft Snow
June Fitzdingle

Interesting Tidbits

Was in Rock Around the Clock
Did tons of TV
There is another actress out there with the same name (but born in 1990)

Screen Credits: 87

Where can I learn more?

Teala Loring

Embarrassing Real Name: Marcia Griffin

Embarrassing Movies

Delinquent Daughters *
Black Market Babies
Return of the Ape Man

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

The queen of the tropics finds a new jungle man!
YOUTH RUNNING WILD! UN-HEEDED...UN- CHECKED!
YOU'LL BE FROZEN TO YOUR SEAT IN TERROR!

Embarrassing Characters

Girl
Cigarette Girl
Thin Girl
Young Hit-and-Run Victim
Erato

Unlikely Spouses & Boyfriends: Rudy Vallee

Interesting Tidbits: Was in a number of westerns, but was terrified of horses

Screen Credits: 16

Where can I learn more?

<#65 #63>

Saturday, July 18, 2015

#65 Susan Hart

Want to break into B movies? Try marrying James H. Nicholson, founder of American International Pictures (AIP), a prime producer of B’s like Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, It Conquered the World, and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. That’s what Susan Hart did. Good move, Susan!

Embarrassing Real Name: Susan Neidhart

Embarrassing Real Birthplace: Wenatchee, WA

Cheesy Pageant Title: Hollywood Deb Star

Embarrassing Movies

War-Gods of the Deep
The Slime People *
Planet of the Vampires
The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini *
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine *

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

SURF'S UP! The swingin'est young people's picture of the year!
Up from the bowels of the earth ...
They Became Pawns in a WAR Beneath the WAVES!
It's kill or be killed in a cycle gang-war!
Super sexbots... built to kill!

Embarrassing Characters

Miss Tennis
Mona Monaghan
Lili Kalua
Outraged Woman at Dog Show

Whiffs of Scandal

Appeared in Playboy (non nude)
Correspondent in divorce proceedings
Lawsuits over ownership of AIP

Interesting Tidbits

Was discovered on a Hawaiian beach
Her song Is This a Disco or a Honky Tonk? made it to the Top 100
Took up competitive figure skating while in her forties
Owns the rights to I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Not to be confused with Susan Hart the neuroscientist, CFO, business school dean, law professor, or porn star (thanks, Google!)

Where can I learn more?

<#66 #64>

Friday, July 10, 2015

#66 Diana Lorys

Diana Lorys deserves to be better known. She’s certainly a babe – in that classic Italian/Spanish, 1970s, Jess Franco / Mario Bava B movie kind of way. And she was certainly in her share of B’s – 59 spaghetti westerns, horrors, spy flicks, sci-fi, and soft porn, to be exact.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much of anything on her. In fact, to learn more, I ended up letting Google translate several pages in Italian and Spanish and German for me. And it’s there that I learned that Diana was:

actually called ana maria vega Cazorla, is one of the actresses of spaghetti, was born in Madrid in 1940 I was formed in the theater and as a classical dancer dance and flamenco. How often the case, he made the leap from theater to film, where he became a face was regular, but always of B-movies: horror, action, science fiction, spaghetti western, was in the latter genre where a hole was carved, but the decline of himself and his marriage in 1978, also the year of his last film, definitely away from the screens, to pursue his private life.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Real Name: Ana Maria Vega

Embarrassing Movies

Sex Charade
The Awful Dr. Orlof *
The Playboy and His Sprees
Superargo and the Faceless Giants *
Fangs of the Living Dead *
House of Psychotic Women

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

A warning for the youth... An alarm call for the parents
They had taken his bride - and killed her. Now he would take California - and kill it!
Submit to the master or be frozen forever in his cold-storage harem!
His Shrine Was the Face of Terror!

Embarrassing Characters

Bertha Zemis
Money
Janet Spokane
Novie de Rock
Gitana, Daylight’s Girl

Where can I learn more?

IMDb
Wikipedia (en Italiano)
Wikipedia (auf Deutsch)
El Comenta Mierda (The Shit He Says)

<#67 #65>

Friday, July 3, 2015

#67 Virginia Grey

A stunning beauty and “one of the hardest-working women in Hollywood,” Virginia Grey never got the break she deserved. She garnered 140-some credits over a 50-year career, but never moved beyond secondary roles in A films and starring turns in B’s. Louis B. Mayer once told her, "You have everything but luck."

Primarily a comedienne, she starred with Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and the Marx Brothers. She also took a turn in Westerns, crime dramas, war movies, pre-historics, sci fi, and pretty much everything else out there.

Embarrassing Movies

Youth Takes a Fling
Jazz Mad
House of Horrors
Slaughter Trail
The Naked Kiss *
Tarzan’s New York Adventure

* - author has seen

Embarrassing Taglines

Fang and claw killers stalk the city streets!
WILD SAVAGE LAW...Tough Flaming Adventure!!
Raw Panic The Screen Never Dared Reveal!
The boldest story of love you have ever been permitted to see!

Embarrassing Characters

Ella Goff Finch
Estelle Hohengarten
Lorabelle Larkin
Camille Quinlaw
Consuela MacNish

Unlikely Spouses & Boyfriends: Clark Gable (she actually carried a torch for him for the rest of her life, never marrying)

Interesting Tidbits

Her father, Ray Grey, was one of the Keystone Kops and then later a director
One of her babysitters as a child was Gloria Swanson
Discovered waiting for her mom, a film editor
Made her film debut at age 10, in the silent version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Was a Mormon and staunch conservative Republican

Where can I learn more?

Ho, ho, ho!

<#68 #66>

Saturday, June 27, 2015

#68 Double Feature: Lina Romay

It’s not what I’d call a common name, like a Betty Smith or a Sue Johnson. In fact, it’s a bit odd. How much stranger that two B movie actresses would share it …

The first Lina Romay was primarily a singer from the ‘40s. She did, though, appear in a couple of B’s, as well as much classier fare. In fact, she may not really have enough credits to be in this blog, except for …

… the second Lina Romay. This one was schlockmeister Jess Franco’s favorite actress (and also his wife). That means lots and lots of views of Lina dripping blood, Lina stark naked, and Lina stark naked dripping blood. Probably the most well-known flick of hers is Female Vampire, where she is pretty much completely nude for the whole film.

This second Lina was also known as Betty Carter, Jean Collins, Candice Coster, Candy Coster, Lennie Hayden, Lulu Laverne, and Jane Morgan. And, yes, she did take the name she normally went by from the first Lina Romay.

	Lina I	Lina II
Real Name	Maria Elena Romay	Rosa María Almirall Martínez
Embarrassing Movies	Love Laughs at Andy Hardy Two Girls and a Sailor The Lady Takes a Sailor Joe Palooka at The Big Fight Senor Droopy	The Perverse Countess Oasis of the Zombies * Lust for Frankenstein The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Hellhole Women Wanda the Wicked Warden Killer Barbies Vs. Dracula * - author has seen
Embarrassing Taglines	FORTY-EIGHT EXPLOSIVE HOURS! Lilting Rhythms...Lovely Mermaids...Wacky Comedy! Turn on the Fun! A Heat Wave of Beautiful GIRLS! GAGS! RHYTHM! and ROMANCE!	Prisoners in a barbaric camp of sadistic perversions ... Kidnapped by cannibals! Raised to eat human flesh! Girls ... CHAINED ... CONDEMNED to a Life of TORMENT at the Hands of Their Beautiful, BRUTAL Captor!
Embarrassing Characters	Chona Degnon Raquel Riviera	Moira Frankenstein Yuka, the Jealous Amazon Mari Cookie / Tarantula
Number of Marriages	3	2
Shortest Marriage	2 years
Unlikeley Spouses & Boyfriends	Peter Lawford Artie Shaw (musician) Jay Gould III Jack Dempsey	Jess Franco
Whiffs of Scandal		More than her fair share of porn flicks
Interesting Tidbits	Was born in NYC, where her father worked for the Mexican consulate Norwegian and Irish on her mother’s side Was lead singer for Xavier Cugat’s band	Offstage, she was the opposite of her onstage persona – shy, retiring, and typically dressed in frumpy clothes
Screen Credits	24	123
Where can I learn more?	Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen IMDb Wikipedia Fan site	Tribute IMDb Wikipedia

Can you guess who's who?

<#69 #67>

Friday, June 19, 2015

#69 Corinne Calvet

Zut alors! Corrine Calvet really was French, having come to the US in her early twenties. Not too surprisingly, she was typically pegged as a sexy, sultry Yvonne, Colette, Danielle, Yvonne, or Yvonne. She was particularly known for her husky, sexy voice and her resemblance to Rita Hayworth. Her stormy personal life provided plenty of grist for the tabloid mills.

As for her oeuvre ... Somehow or other, she got stuck with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin more than once. And her later years included such TV fare as Batman, Starsky and Hutch, and General Hospital.