She Likes to Watch

This is the second of two parts remembering Jeanne Carmen, who starred in the 1959 film “Monster of Piedras Blancas,” which was filmed in Cayucos. Carmen died Dec. 20, 2007, of lymphoma at her Orange County home. She was 77.

Jeanne Carmen made a name for herself in the 1950s as a pinup model and B-movie actress, but her claim to fame in the final decade of her life was in the stories she told of life in the Hollywood of the late 1950s and early ’60s. Rat Pack Hollywood.

These were the waning days of the studio system and changing movie mores and public tastes. This was the era of Marilyn Monroe and, in the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.

Author Paul Parla knew Jeanne’s stories and of her old friends. He convinced her to begin selling autographed pictures at memorabilia shows, which led to Jeanne’s celebrity comeback in the 1990s. That in turn spawned the 1998’s “E! True Hollywood Story Jeanne Carmen: Queen of the B-Movies.”

“She’s an icon in her own way as exemplifying the beauty of the 1950s starlet,” Parla said in a TV interview. “She’s really basically the same 18-year-old girl who bagged Frank Sinatra for a good time.

“She’s got these great stories to tell, and whether you believe them or not, she’s part of the Hollywood mythology. She’s in there with the Kennedys and Marilyn (Monroe) … just part of the mix.”

Name-dropping
Here’s what she told me about three of the biggest celebrities of that era:

• Frank Sinatra: “Frank was a sweet guy, but he was boring to me because I was a young girl still in my early 20s, and he was in his late 30s,” she said. “It’s OK when you’re 38 and they’re 48, but not when you’re 21 or 22. That’s not OK because you’re just living, and they’ve already lived. So I found him to be very boring. I’d go down to spend a weekend with him in Palm Springs, and I could never stay the whole weekend. I’d sneak out in the middle of the night and drive home, or I’d say I was going to the hairdresser and never come back. I was very independent. I was a young girl with a great body, an interesting face, and money. You got to be a little bit of a monster on that one, haven’t you? But I was a nice monster.”

• Elvis Presley: “I met Elvis when he was 21 (or Presley’s breakout year in 1956) at a party. We started dating until he went into the Army (in 1958). Elvis was sweet, but he was, at that point, inside of himself, very shy and quiet. I was sophisticated and grown up when I met him. He was still like a little boy. He was still in awe of everything. I had already been with Sinatra. How can you go from Sinatra to Elvis is what it came right down to.”

• Marilyn Monroe: “Marilyn was one of the sweetest people I think I’ve ever met. She would give you the shirt off her back. You wouldn’t dare say, ‘I like those earrings.’ She’d hand them to you. She really got her lumps in Hollywood. She was not all those things they called her. She was just a really nice girl, wanting very much to be a movie actress, not a movie star particularly. She wanted to be a great actress so bad.”

Success despite headstrong attitude
Jeanne continued to act in the late 1950s, landing roles on TV and in B-movies, including Allied Artists’ “Portland Expose,” Warner Bros.’ “Untamed Youth,” with rocker Eddie Cochran, and as a lead in Republic Pictures’ “The Three Outlaws,” a story about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Alan Hale Jr. (who gained fame as the Skipper on “Gilligan’s Island”) before landing a role in “Piedras Blancas.”
Her last role was as Mrs. Lipschitz in 2005’s “The Naked Monster,” a film co-directed by Newsom and Wayne Berwick. As a kid, Berwick also had a role in “Monster of Piedras Blancas,” which was directed by his dad, Irvin Berwick.

“I succeeded in spite of myself,” Jeanne told me. “I just kept going up the ladder. I was always saying no to everything that came along, but I always had people, other actors, husbands, whatever, who pushed me into it.”

After Monroe’s death in 1962 — Jeanne believes the actress was a victim of foul play — she left Los Angeles, gave up the fast life and became a housewife and mom in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“I would have done really big things had I not left (Hollywood),” she said. “I was starting to really get offers, but I left town … and didn’t come back for 18 years.”

After her three kids were raised, Jeanne ventured back into the industry, using memorabilia shows and her roles in B-movies and Three Stooges shorts to reconnect with old fans.

“I’ve had the most interesting life, probably, than anyone that you’ll ever meet, or know or hear about,” she said with a hearty laugh. “I can’t imagine anyone from where I came from doing what I did.”

• • •

Jeanne’s son, Brandon, has written a biography of his mom: “Jeanne Carmen: My Wild, Wild Life as a New York Pin-up Queen, Trick Shot Golfer and Hollywood Actress.”
For more about Jeanne Carmen visit her Web site.

— Jay Thompson

This is the first of two parts remembering Jeanne Carmen, who starred in the 1959 film “Monster of Piedras Blancas,” which was filmed in Cayucos.

Jeanne Carmen left her mark on the Central Coast but was hardly a household name here.

Jeanne was a maverick, a sort of hick-from-the-sticks with a fifth-grade education who reinvented herself using her beauty and street smarts to become a pin-up, a Hollywood actress, a trick-shot golfer and, in her 70s, a celebrity famous for the celebrities she knew.

She died several weeks ago of lymphoma at her Orange County home. She was 77.
Frank Sinatra, one of her former lovers, would have agreed that she did things her way.

Jeanne returns to the Central Coast
I met Jeanne in October 2002. At that time it had been almost 45 years since she had starred in “The Monster of Piedras Blancas,” a B-movie and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” knockoff that made local headlines as the first motion picture filmed in Cayucos.
She returned to that beach town as guest of honor at a fundraiser the Friends of the Cayucos Library called “Hollywood Comes to Cayucos 1958.”

Jeanne was part of a panel discussion, a group that included Cayucos locals who watched or were extras during the week of filming in March 1958. There was also a representative of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, although scenes set in the lighthouse were actually filmed at Point Conception in Lompoc.

It was standing room only in the Veterans Memorial Building during the first of two screenings of the movie. I remember watching the fire marshal, who was standing near the building capacity sign, as he nervously kept count of the crowd that ultimately filled the room.

When the lights dimmed and the movie began there were actually more screams from laughter than of fright, although in one scene the monster carries a severed head — pretty heady stuff (pardon the pun) for the Ike-era drive-in movie set the movie was originally intended for. (I specifically remembered that scene from when I first watched the movie as a 10-year-old in Milwaukee in the mid-1960s.)

Watching the movie with 200-plus others was a kick. How could you not laugh with corny dialog like this:

“Murder, murder, murder. Mom, someone’s been murdered! Someone’s been murdered!”
“Who was it Jimmy?”
“Mr. Kolchek. He’s dead. He looks awful.”
“Where son, where, where?”
“I went to his store to buy some candy, and he was in his office dead. And mom, he didn’t have any head.”

Cayucans who crowded the Vets Hall were equally proud of seeing their small town on the big screen that Oct. 27, 2002, evening — a place that looked eerily similar to the 1958 community featured on screen.

During the movie, Jeanne sat with her son, Brandon James, in a side room off the main hall. As the end credits rolled she left through the back door and waited until master of ceremonies Bob Whiteford introduced her.

And when the 72-year-old strutted — and I mean strutted — in through the hall’s main entrance, she walked as if in a spotlight and left a stunned audience in her wake — likely, I thought, as she had as a young starlet half a century earlier.

“It’s funny, but she’s probably as well known now as she ever was and this is for somebody who dropped out of sight for 20 years,” Ted Newsom, a film historian and documentary filmmaker, told me in a phone interview before the event. “Basically the only thing that anyone has ever seen her in is (‘The Monster of Piedras Blancas’). It’s on that basis that she’s famous today.”

Humble roots
Jeanne told me about growing up poor in the 1930s in the cotton fields of Paragould, Ark., where she told anyone who would listen that, ‘I’m going to be a movie star.’ ” She didn’t like her stepdad and ran away from home with a girlfriend at age 13. Eventually she ended up in New York and became a model.

Portraying Lucy, the daughter of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse keeper, was one of her biggest movie roles. In an interview, I asked how she got it and her answer unfolded like a mini-drama, showcasing her headstrong zest for life.

“I can remember that I gave up a walk-on in a major movie,” she told me. “In this movie I was supposed to in a bikini walk down the stairs at the Beverly Hills pool, walk over, say hi and kiss the star, and do a couple of other things.

“They sent me off to the studio to get fitted. When I got there everyone ignored me. Finally I got to somebody who said, ‘There are the bathing suits, go down and look at them.’

“The whole thing just pissed me off. I walked out. I had already been offered this part in ‘Monster of Piedras Blancas,’ so I said to hell with them (and said) ‘I’m doing the “Monster of Piedras Blancas.” ’ ”

The peroxide blonde needed to darken her hair for the role as a young woman who returned to the lighthouse after being sent off to boarding school.

“So they take me to the hairdresser and they show me a book of hair colors. They said we can do this, which was a mousy blonde, or we can do this, which is red. Red is not a good color in black and white — it’s a horrible color for black and white — but I got the red anyway. I looked at it and I decided, ‘Oh my god, I don’t like this.’ So I went to the hairdresser. I had this long hair. (I told him) ‘You have to put this back to blonde, I can’t stand (the red), I don’t want it.’ He said OK. When he was washing the bleach off the hair he said, ‘Carmen, look in the sink.’ I looked and there’s all my hair laying in the sink.”

Her hair was simply overbleached and broke off. She stared at the hair and shrugged.
“That’s why I’ve got that horrible-looking hair in the movie. Have you ever seen worse hair in your life?”

And she was right. Her hair looked terrible.

Nude scene
Though she had an impressive portfolio of swimsuit photos, Jeanne drew the line at complete nudity. But that’s what the script called for — a nude swimming scene filmed on a Cayucos beach, where in March the chilly water was in the low 50s.

“I said, ‘What? There’s no nude scene in this thing.’ (They said) ‘Oh yeah, didn’t you read on page … ?’ ‘No. I haven’t read anything about a nude scene.’ Probably all I did was learn my lines and didn’t read the rest of it. I said. ‘I don’t do nude scenes.’ They said, ‘You’ve got to.’ I said ‘No, I’m not doing a nude scene.’

“So … they hired somebody else to do the nude scene. After I saw the movie, and I saw what (my stand-in) looked like, I said, ‘Holy s—, if I’d a known you were going to get somebody that looked like that I would have done the nude scene.’ ”

There was a real down-to-earth charm about this lady who in her later years enjoyed her return to the limelight.

Here’s a link to Jeanne Carmen’s official Web site.

— Jay Thompson

Before he ever donned a bag on his head and called himself the Unknown Comic, Murray Langston was a computer operator hoping to break into show business. When he asked what he had to do to get on the show “Laugh-In,” he was told, “Do something unusual and call us.”

So for his first ever TV appearance, Langston did an impression of a fork.

More “Laugh-In” spots followed, and he eventually found a gig on “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

As noted in Thursday’s Ticket, he became the Unknown Comic because he was broke and embarrassed to be seen on “The Gong Show,” where he made his first appearance for $250.

Langston appears with Kato Kaelin at the Spyglass Inn this weekend. (See more about Kaelin in this blog Friday.)

Though he never would earn more than $150,000 a year, Langston’s Unknown Comic would ironically become a household name in the 70s and 80s. And Langston would form relationships with some of the most recognizable names in show business.

Here’s more from our interview with Langston:

* For years the true identity of the Unknown Comic was a mystery – until Langston removed his bag on an episode of “Real People.”

* Being unknown led the way for others to say they were the Unknown Comic.

“I remember this one time – this was absolutely true – I was at a restaurant at the counter talking to this girl,” Langston said. “Eventually, I said I was the Unknown Comic, and she said, ‘No, you’re not,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And she said, ‘I met him in Chicago and had an affair with him.’ So there she was having sex with some other guy, and I was left holding the bag.”

* Langston appeared on “The Dating Game” as a contestant three times as himself and once as the Unknown Comic. As a contestant, he won every time. “I had the sense of humor going for me so I always won,” he said. “But during that period, I was living with a girl, so I couldn’t go on the dates. So what happened in those days was if one person cancelled the date, the other person just got to go with someone of their own choice. So I ended up walking away with luggage and some union (money).”

* On partying with Elvis at Presley’s Vegas suite: “Every time I made him laugh, my brain would go, ‘You made Elvis Presley laugh.’ It was unbelievable. . . I partied with him until, like, five in the morning. We sat in a circle, and he sang, ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ on guitar.”

* On Mickey Rooney: “The first celebrity I met was Mickey Rooney when I was 12 or 13. He was in Montreal, where I’m from, and he was in a restaurant . . . and I went over there and saw him, and he was fairly rude. And it was weird because ten years later, I did a movie with him, and he was still rude. And years after that I did a movie called ‘Up Your Alley,’ about homeless people . . . It was moderately successful for a little movie, and Mickey Rooney heard about it. And I get this call from Mickey Rooney – he wanted me to help him do a low budget movie. But because he’d been rude those first two times, I said, ‘Yeah, well look – let me get back to you.’ And I never got back to him. I didn’t want to work with a guy who was rude.”

* On Sonny Bono: “He was not a nice guy. Sonny Bono and Billy Crystal are two guys who have the same thing, I noticed: They don’t relate to you on a social level if you’re not at their level or above.”

* A quick Cher story: “Every Halloween I played the werewolf – I had those two hours of makeup on – and so the first time I did it, they did my hands all hairy with these ugly nails. So I walked into the rehearsal hall and Cher had her back to me – she was talking to one of the dancers – so I thought I’d scare her. So I sneak up and put this grotesque, hairy hand on her shoulder from behind, and she just looks at it and, quick as a whip, she turns and says, ‘Sonny – your mother’s here!’”

* In the 2002 movie “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” ‘Gong Show host Chuck Barris is portrayed as a songwriter, game show host and CIA assassin. Based on Barris’s 1984 autobiography, Barris has been coy during interviews about how much of the story was fabricated.

“Of course, that was all B.S.,” said Langston, who appears in the movie as the Unknown Comic. “(Barris) said he was sitting at a bar before he had his first game show, and he was struggling. A CIA guy actually befriended him and used to tell him, ‘You’ve got the kind of personality to make a good CIA agent.’ Of course, he never did, but years later when he decided to write his bio, he thought it’s be too boring so he said, ‘I wonder what would’ve happened had I taken that guy up’ and embellished it.”

– Pat P.