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JO’D:  You also knew the late Barbara Payton (Bride of the Gorilla), an actress who had one of the most tragic lives in the history of Hollywood. She’s also gotten an incredibly bad rap through the years, with many painting her as a kind of sex-crazed barracuda. Please tell us who you think she really was.

BR:  If the preceding individuals were tragic—and they are—then the life of Barbara Payton has to be right out of Grand Guignol horror! I had two very memorable (and distinctly different) meetings with Barbara. I met her the first time in the fall of 1958. It was at a small dinner party up on Sunset Plaza Drive, at the beautiful hilltop home of Milton and Charlene Golden. Mr. Golden was Barbara’s longtime attorney, and he was a close friend of mine, as well. Barbara and Charlene had spent the afternoon and the previous day reupholstering Milt’s favorite chair and ottoman in his home office. Barbara had just returned from living in Mexico for three years and she looked absolutely beautiful. I thought she was a warm, elegant and incredibly charming girl. She and I had a wonderful conversation that night and I was greatly impressed by her. I noticed when I was talking to her, Barbara hung on every word I said like it was the most important thing she had ever heard.

Barbara was the best listener I have ever met. She had beautiful, crystal-blue eyes and you could just melt in that wide-eyed gaze of hers. In fact, Barbara had a unique way of making you feel as though what you were saying was the wisdom of the ages. Talk about an ego boost! I remember she did all the cooking that night. The menu was a great marinara sauce poured over al dente spaghetti with a delicious salad drenched in a creamy Italian dressing. Barbara Payton was extremely intelligent and very talented in many things. That’s why I find it just incomprehensible that her life turned out the way that it did.

The dinner party that night was a bit of subterfuge, really. Leonard Fruhman, a young assistant to the famed interior designer Irving Longionotti, had escorted Evelyn Stebbins, a socialite friend of the Goldens and Barbara, and I had brought my good friend, actress Joan Caulfield. Leonard wanted to inspect the work Barbara had done on the chair and the ottoman—with the prospect of Mr. Longionotti offering her a job. It would have been a great opportunity for her, however Barbara didn’t seem interested in getting a regular nine-to-five job. She wanted desperately to get her film career rolling again, but by then it was a lost cause.

When Milton tried to talk to her after dinner—just the two of them, off in a corner of the terrace at his home—about getting a full-time job outside the film industry, Barbara wouldn’t hear any of it! Even though her finances at the time were almost non-existent, Barbara was adamant about getting back into show business. She insisted she could get her career going again if she could just get one good acting job to let people know she was back from Mexico. She had even held an ill-advised press conference (in August 1958), which was basically a joke. There was nothing to announce, no new film or TV show. Just that she was “back in town”. Barbara’s previous bad publicity over the Franchot Tone/Tom Neal brawl and her arrest in 1955 for bouncing checks had ended any chance for a film career for her. The few reporters that were present at that press conference taunted her with cruel questions about her past and by the time they were finished grilling her, Barbara was very hurt and quite angry with them. Needless to say, her comeback never happened, and by 1959 Barbara was sliding downhill…fast.

JO’D:  Did you keep in touch with her after the dinner party in 58?

BR:  No, I didn’t see Barbara again until four years later. She was a completely different person by then…the things that happened to her in that four year span must have been appalling! One night in the fall of 1962, I saw her hitchhiking in the rain on the corner of Sunset Boulevard, off Gower Street by Columbia Square, so I stopped to give her a ride. I don’t even want to go into how bad she looked that night…let me just say it was hard to believe this was the same person who only a few years before had been so fetching and exquisite. Barbara acted confused and we barely spoke. She seemed to remember me from the Goldens dinner party because she did mention Joan (Caulfield) to me. Joan and I had driven Barbara home the night of the party to her little apartment on Ogden Drive, just off Sunset Boulevard. The night she was hitchhiking, she said she wanted to go to The Coach and Horses Bar in Hollywood. However, before we got there, she had me pull over. Barbara got out of the car and walked into the rain and the fog, and I never saw her again. A few years later she drank herself to death in her parents home. Barbara was basically a very nice person, but I believe it is possible she was mentally ill. She debased herself so inexplicably. Drugs…alcoholism… prostitution. She was truly one of the world’s lost souls.

JO’D:  Back then, a lot of these performers personal problems were revealed to the public by several Hollywood gossip columnists (Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Walter Winchell) who were notorious for their tough and sometimes cruel reporting style. Did you know any of them well?

BR: Only Walter Winchell…I wasn’t important enough to know the other two! I only met Hedda and Louella a few times. I sat next to Louella once on an airplane flight to New York from Los Angeles and we spoke briefly. Although I had heard, as did everyone, that she was quite a boozer, she didn’t touch a drop of alcohol during the flight. I do know that Hedda Hopper—if she liked you, that is—was a good and valuable person to have in your corner. Far tougher than either one of these women, though, was a nasty old bird named Florabel Muir, the Hollywood reporter for the New York Daily News. I know she absolutely despised Barbara Payton and often ripped her to shreds in her column. Florabel covered the beat for the LAPD and she knew all the dirt in town. She interviewed me once, in the RKO commissary. I remember her telling me that if I wanted to offer the press a beverage, “It better be booze, brother!” (laughs) Those ladies were powerful…and nasty!

Walter Winchell, on the other hand, was my friend. He was kind to me and I won’t allow anyone to say a negative word about him. Sadly, Walter was already losing his power when I knew him. He had a little bungalow at The Ambassador Hotel and he loved to use the putting green on the grounds. I lived a couple of blocks away at The Talmadge Apartments on Wilshire Boulevard and he would often ask me to drive him to the studios for various screenings. I took him to Metro the first night they screened Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), a film in which he was on the telephone talking to Geraldine Page, but off-camera. When the scene appeared, he was as excited as a child. Newspaper people will never have the kind of captive audience they did back then. They really could make or break careers…and they did!

JO’D: Who would you say were among some of the nicest and most down-to-earth individuals you’ve known in show business?

BR:  Certainly Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Roger Moore, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Richard Chamberlain (a man of great humor), Steve Forrest and Patricia Barry. Patricia has done a lot of episodic TV through the years, and several soap operas. A kind lady, a great actress and a superb hostess. And Vera Miles—the greatest and most delightful person of all!

Loretta Young was very friendly and approachable (and very honest). Miss Stanwyck (“Missy”) was tough, but a most considerate lady. A thorough professional. Steve Forrest, who is Dana Andrews brother, was very personable and always a pleasure to talk to. He tells great stories! Roger Moore stood behind me in the blood drive line for The Red Cross once, at Warner Brothers. I enjoyed his total candor, and he was oh so British! As we were standing there in line waiting to give blood, he turned to me and said (with a stiff upper lip), “I am not fond of needles!” (laughs) Roger and I are still friends today.

At Warners, a man named Bill Orr was Head of Television back then. His assistant was Hugh Benson and he and his wife Diane were later my neighbors and just about my best friends in Hollywood. They were two of the nicest people I ever met. Hugh was especially kind to young actors.

JO’D: Speaking of Warner Bros.,you worked on quite a few WB television series in the late 50s to early 60s, including Hawaiian Eye and 77 Sunset Strip. Were you under contract to the studio at the time?

BR: No, even though I worked there a lot, I was never under contract at Warners, only at RKO. Catherine Ehring, the secretary of WB casting director Hoyt Bowers, advised me that even if I was offered a contract with the studio, that I should refuse it. She told me they would never let me model, which was my chief source of income. Studio contract players in those days rarely were paid more than $750 a week. I knew I could always earn much more money modeling…and I did.

Beginning in the late 50s, WB produced a ton of TV shows (Cheyenne, Bourbon Street Beat, The Alaskans, Sugarfoot, Maverick, The Roaring Twenties, Bronco, Surfside Six, the two you mentioned, and a few others). In fact, one year I remember the studio had eleven shows on the air, all at one time! (They were all on ABC, too, I think.) Eddie Rhine, a casting director at Warners, knew me through Dick Stockton, who worked in casting at RKO. They were both professionals who looked for actors who were right for the parts before they sent them to meet the shows’ directors. Through them, I wound up getting a lot of work. However, I want to be sure that people know that I was never a “star” at Warner Brothers Television. All actors during this period of who were not under contract—as well as contract players—took whatever jobs were offered. Some contract players had roles with no lines such as elevator operators, clerks behind counters in stores, shoppers, office personnel, and so on. There were also “silent bits.” A silent bit was where there were no lines but contact with a leading character. For instance…a handshake, but no dialogue. “Day players” did the same type of work. Sometimes casting people would use an actor just to see how good—or unfortunately, how bad—the actor appeared. One could do a larger part one week and be atmosphere and/or background the next week.

JO’D: There are some writers and self-professed film historians who make a habit of questioning an actor’s credits (and credibility) if they’re names are not listed on IMDb (The Internet Movie Database). How would you address these writers’ (sometimes quite vocal) skepticism?        

BR:  Yes, I know of one or two doing research articles now who obviously do not know the circumstances of employment for television and film in an era when actors worked with no regard to being “historically saluted.” All I can say is what I know and experienced myself. Billing, which some of these so-called “historians” search for in actors’ credits, was of little consequence in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, I know of an instance where Connie Stevens who was a regular as Cricket Blake on Hawaiian Eye, did a silent bit on 77 Sunset Strip with no billing. She was paid, though, for her work, as we all were. Back then, actors did whatever work was assigned to them. Even Bette Davis who was one of Warner Brothers Studios top stars did a part once with no dialogue and no billing! It was in the first shots of a major movie and Bette was costumed as a nurse. Why don’t one of those writers who seem to consider their work so thorough and above reproach, tell film buffs the name of the feature and the circumstances under which this was done? Even ads for products such as Lux soap or Jarman shoes could be assigned with no additional remuneration. This is one reason why I did not want a studio contract. The modeling would have been a conflict of interest and I needed to make a living.

JO’D:  When you were working on a lot of the WB television shows in the early 1960s, were the shows themselves considered to be well written and of high quality?

BR: The shows were very popular but the scripts were usually awful and were constantly being recycled. For instance, the same script for Sugarfoot was used on Bronco, the same script for 77 Sunset Strip was used on Bourbon Street Beat, and so on. Pretty clever, right? Jack L. Warner was cheap beyond words. He used to go around the studio at six pm sharp and turn off any lights that had been left burning! (laughs) That’s a true story, by the way…ask anyone who worked at WB back then!

There were a lot of complaints about how WB treated actors in those days, but the studio always kept its contract players (and the rest of us) working. At the time, there were only 13,000 members in the Screen Actors Guild, and we all worked. Now, there are over 100,000 members and most are unemployed!

JO’D: What kinds of roles did you play on the WB shows?

BR:  I played an assortment of playboys and cads, usually, with an occasional nice guy and a standard Western background character thrown in for good measure.(laughs)  One role I did that I thought was kind of interesting was on Bourbon Street Beat. I played a Cajun lawbreaker just let out of jail who becomes involved in a ferryboat incident in Algiers, Louisiana. It was a lot different for me and I enjoyed it. I also worked in a pilot called Solitaire, with Richard Long. It didn’t sell, but I enjoyed working with Richard. He had a tragic life, and he, too, died young, at only 49.

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JO’D:  Is that when you decided to get into modeling?

BR:  Yes. Ernie Bachrach put me in touch with John Engstead, who was one of Los Angeles’ top commercial photographers at the time, and he agreed to work with me. The test shots we did together turned out great, and almost right away, I landed my first modeling job—a toothpaste ad with a gorgeous young model named Joanne Gilbert. Jayne (Mansfield) heard I had several modeling jobs lined up, and she suggested I get an agent. I was just a kid from Texas, very green, and I knew nothing about the business! So, Jayne sent me to see Emmeline Snively at Blue Book Models. Ms. Snively was a legend in the industry, having discovered Marilyn Monroe, among many others. She also discovered a male model named Eric Fleming, who later branched out into acting and had a television series (Rawhide) and a popular film with Zsa Zsa Gabor (Queen of Outer Space)! (laughs) Emmeline signed me to her agency and was instrumental in getting me a series of catalogue and magazine ads, both in New York and L.A.

JO’D:  And yet you have said that your modeling career didn’t really take off until you signed with an agent by the name of Anita Colby.

BR:  That’s right. Anita Colby was called “The Face” and she was the top female fashion model in the 1930s and 40s. She had formed her own agency in 1958 and she loved the photos I had done with John Engstead, so she signed me to a contract. I remember Anita telling me that she liked my “wholesome, All-American look”. She knew bread and butter for modeling was catalogue and magazine work, and she was convinced I had the look she could market. Anita also made sure I owned the rights to all my photos. From the start, there was a clause written into all my contracts that allowed me to review all my contact sheets and to kill any photos I didn’t like. I was the first model (male or female) to get that privilege. Anita and I were kind of pioneers in that regard.

The years I worked for Anita Colby were a very exciting time in my life. The female models in those days were gorgeous! I would live several months in New York and then go back to L.A. to keep my toe in acting. Getting dropped when RKO closed didn’t bother me as much as I had feared because my modeling career took off right away.

JO’D: Speaking of gorgeous models, one of the most beautiful in the 50s had to be Suzy Parker. Did you work with her?

BR:  Yes, Suzy and I did a lot of catalogue work together. Suzy Parker was, without a doubt, the best model ever! That megawatt smile of hers was nothing short of dazzling. One shoot we did together was for the cover of a jazz album, Dave Brubeck’s Red Hot and Blue. It was a particularly great shoot because Suzy looked so exquisite. She was dressed all in red, leaning over a piano in a nightclub. I was sitting at a table by the piano, looking at her. Because it was thought in those days that jazz mainly appealed to intellectuals, I wore eyeglasses in the photo. It was an incredible shoot. Suzy Parker was a stunning piece of perfection, God rest her soul. [author’s note: Suzy Parker died on May 3, 2003 at the age of 70.]

JO’D:  Your first photo shoot for Anita Colby was for Mutual of Omaha. What was that modeling experience like for you?

BR:  The ad was actually for Mutual of New York (MONY) and it was an exhilarating experience. I was a father returning home from work, being greeted by his two children and his wife. I remember Anita searched long and hard to find two children who resembled me and I thought the two youngsters she found, a brother and sister, did, in fact, look a lot like me. By the way, the cab driver in the shoot was a real cabbie. I remember he kept the meter in his cab running during the entire shoot! Insurance companies always budget commercial shoots very carefully, and it was cheaper to use a real cabdriver than to hire a model.

JO’D:  Please describe what a typical day in the life of a male model was like in the 1950s and 60s.

BR:  They were long days, that’s for sure. For one thing, you needed lots of money to pay the cab fare in NY, so you could get from one spot to another! (laughs) Seriously, it was tedious work at times. Time consuming, repetitive…you had to make sure you always looked good. You couldn’t look tired…you couldn’t be out of shape. What they wanted from me, for instance, was that “well-scrubbed” look. Very thin, almost to the point of emaciation, but with good shoulders and pecs. You had to be ten pounds lighter because of the camera. It wasn’t easy! There were demands and standards you had to live by, or you were out. But, let’s face it, the payoffs were great. I loved the pretty girls, the clothes, the attention. I mean, who wouldn’t.  I remember walking down the Sunset Strip one day  in the early 60s and seeing a mammoth billboard advertisement looming overhead, of me smoking a cigarette. I was in awe…it was pretty damn exciting!

To show you how things sometimes went on these photo shoots, I was hired once to do an ad for Carlings Beer. It was shot in New York in the summer on an excruciatingly hot and muggy day. It was at a time when NY used to experience “brown outs” and during the shoot the air conditioning went off and wouldn’t come back on. The beer kept going flat with the heat and I was perspiring profusely in a wool Pendleton shirt. No matter how hard she tried, the makeup artist couldn’t keep me “powdered down”…beads of sweat kept popping out on my forehead and top lip. The beer may have gone flat, but I was frothing at the mouth! (laughs) They finally brought in a couple of fans. The beer was discarded and they wound up using creme soda in which they stirred in a little Rinso to get a nice head on the “beer”. (laughs) Just one of the tricks of the trade, and believe me, back then there were many!

JO’D:  Through your acting career in L.A., you met a lot of Hollywood performers. I know you were very close to the beautiful, Italian-Irish actress Gia Scala (The Guns of Navarone), who had an extremely difficult life. 

BR:  Oh, dear, sweet Gia. She was an absolute angel and I loved her very much. We met in 1957, on the set of her film, Don’t Go Near The Water, on Lot 3 at MGM. My heart almost stopped beating when I saw her the first time. She was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen. Imagine how pleased I was to learn that she was as nice as she was beautiful. We hit it off immediately and were best friends for the next fifteen years.

Gia was childlike in some ways, and yet very sophisticated in others. She was a good actress and had some strong film roles until the early 1960s, when things began to go downhill for her. She was very well read and she painted beautifully. She was also a wonderful cook. Gia liked people and she trusted them. However, I believe her trust in some instances was misguided. I’ve missed her everyday since she died in April 1972.

Gia and I were very good friends of Guy Williams (Zorro) and his wife Jan. Guy and Gia had met in the late 50s when they were both under contract at Universal-International. I don’t know if people know this, but Guy was Italian and his real name was Armand Catalano. He and Jan lived in a beautiful, Spanish-styled mansion on Hillside Avenue, next door to Raymond Burr, and Gia and I went up there a lot to visit them. Jan and Gia were both great cooks and Guy was easy to talk to. He was down-to-earth and rarely ever played the part of the “actor”. It was fun riding around town in Guy’s hot, red Ferrari. It was a dynamite-looking car and he loved it!

JO’D:  There’s been some controversy in recent times about the cause of Gia Scala’s death. Much of the information has been dispensed in interviews given by her sister, Tina Scotti (AKA Tina Scala). Would you like to take this opportunity to clear some things up about Gia’s last years?

BR:  Contrary to what’s been reported in the past, Gia and her sister were not close. Several years ago, Tina gave an interview to the late Bob Slatzer, the writer who claimed he was married at one time to Marilyn Monroe, and she said there were indications of foul play in Gia’s death. These allegations of Tina Scotti’s are simply not true.

Gia suffered through a host of emotional upheavals in her life over the years, including the death of her mother, with whom she was extremely close. She had married actor Don Burnett and was devastated when they later split up. In April 1971 Gia was arrested over a dispute with a downtown L.A. parking lot attendant when she refused to pay an additional fifty cents overtime charge, and a physical altercation ensued. Then, a few months later, her sports car turned over on a winding canyon road and she lost part of her index finger. In the months preceding her death, Gia had developed a stomach ulcer for which her doctor had prescribed liquid Donatol and the tranquilizer Valium. I knew she was ill but at the time I had no idea what was wrong with her. Looking back now, I recall that there were days when her lips actually looked blue! I remember the day we took a friend to The Movieland Wax Museum in Anaheim, near Disneyland, to see Gia’s wax figure from The Guns of Navarone. Gia received the red carpet treatment that afternoon and the photographer for the museum took several photos of her. She didn’t look that bad in person but I was horrified when I saw the pictures. Gia was not well and the camera picked up on it (as it so often does). In fact, I received the photos on the same day she died and I’m glad she never saw them. They were heartbreaking.

JO’D:  What is the true story of Gia Scala’s death?

BR:  Gia had moved back into the house in Laurel Canyon where she had lived when she was married to Don. There was a lot of construction work that needed to be done on the house and she found three young men who said they would help with the repairs and also do some much needed yard work for her. One of them moved into a small bedroom over the garage.

I remember there was a misunderstanding with the young men who were not doing the work Gia had hired them to do. She asked them to leave, and they did, without argument. The kid who was staying in the room over the garage returned later that day to get some of his possessions and to thank Gia for having given him a place to stay, and he’s the one who found her dead. It was immediately reported in the newspapers that she had died of an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol, but that wasn’t true.

I don’t deny that Gia drank. She drank white wine. But when she was found dead, there were only three Valium pills missing from the medicine bottle. I later read Gia’s death certificate and got to see for myself the real cause of her death. An autopsy revealed Gia had suffered from “advanced arteriosclerosis”, the same ailment that had killed her father. It was the real reason why her behavior was so bizarre in those last years. Her brain simply was not getting enough oxygen…it was beyond her control. I spoke to both Sgt. Estrada of the Hollywood Division LAPD and to the L.A. coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, about this. They stated unequivocally that there was absolutely no foul play involved in Gia Scala’s death, nor was her death a suicide. For anyone to suggest otherwise is extremely unfair and outrageous.

When Gia passed away, it was up to Jan Williams and me to make all the arrangements for her funeral. Tina Scotti tried to keep The Screen Actor’s Guild from giving Jan the death benefits Gia had left for her (about seven hundred dollars), but luckily she was not successful. I lost touch with Guy and Jan Williams after Gia died. They separated and he later moved to Buenos Aires because Zorro was still very popular there and he loved (and I guess, needed) the attention. Guy died in his home of a brain aneurysm in 1989. What made it especially sad is that he was all alone and his body wasn’t discovered for five days. Guy was really a terrific person…a good and decent man.

JO’D:  In the 60s, you also knew Inger Stevens (The Farmer’s Daughter), another tragic Hollywood casualty.

BR:   Inger had one of the most engaging smiles I have ever seen. However, as I soon learned, it often hid a broken heart. I will say this for her, though…she never brought anyone else down by unburdening her woes on them. Inger was always “up” and she always acted like she was on top of the world. Inger and Gia were neighbors on Woodrow Wilson Drive in Laurel Canyon and that’s how I met her. Over time, we got to know each other pretty well. I feel Inger Stevens fell in love too often with the wrong men. She had a secret…but this is not an issue now, nor do I wish to discuss it. It kills me to think of how needless her death was. As you say…a casualty.

Just think of the casualties among the young stars who started their careers about the same time as Gia and Inger: James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, Natalie Wood, Nick Adams, Jean Seberg and just shortly before them—Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe. It really is shocking when you stop to think about it.

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JO’D: Upon your arrival in Hollywood, you were signed to RKO Studios as a contract player. You have admitted to me that your father’s friendship with Howard Hughes, the studio’s owner, helped you land the contract.

BR: Let’s put it this way—it definitely got me through the door. My weekly paycheck of $150 came through RKO’s paymaster, Mazzios Damon, but my contract was with Hughes Tool Company. That was not unusual for actors signed by Howard Hughes. Later, when he sold RKO, all the contracts were also sold—all except for Jane Russell’s, I think. Anyway, my contract was pretty standard with options every six months and a $50 a week raise after the first year. The second year the raise was $50 every six months for the next two years. It was a typical beginner’s contract.

JO’D: Following your signing to RKO in 1954, you were given bit parts in The Conqueror with John Wayne and Susan Hayward, and Cattle Queen of Montana with Ronald Reagan and Barbara Stanwyck. Both these films have long been considered  “turkeys”, haven’t they?

BR: They were turkeys! (laughs) Oh, God, I think everyone on the planet was in The Conqueror. It was one of the most ludicrous films ever made! Come on…John Wayne as Genghis Khan? I must say, however, I found his wonderful sense of humor a surprise. He was not nearly as stoic as he appeared to be. I remember being completely star struck on that film. I played one of Susan Hayward’s slaves and I recall staring at her all the time—she was so beautiful. However, when she wasn’t filming, Susan looked kind out of place in her diaphanous chiffon costumes as she was also often wearing modern-day, horn-rimmed glasses! There were hundreds of  “extras” from Central Casting on that film, and I noticed they were a strange lot, definitely a breed apart from the rest of us. They were, shall we say, a bit rough around the edges, and they always stayed to themselves.

I wasn’t given any dialogue in the film because RKO was trying to rid me of my thick Texas accent. The studio sent me to work with Gertrude Fogler, the speech teacher at MGM, and she helped me a lot. My main speech exercise was “Papa put Paul on the pony in the park.” Enunciated very slowly, it was supposed to completely eliminate my Texas twang. RKO took the cost of my lessons with Ms. Fogler out of my paycheck. She once told me a really funny story about Zsa Zsa Gabor. They were working one day on speech exercises and Ms. Fogler was called away. She told Zsa Zsa to work on her “w’s.” Zsa Zsa said, “I am vorking on them!” (laughs)

In my second film at RKO, Cattle Queen of Montana, I merely road a horse in several location shots on the RKO ranch…a glorified “extra”. The first day on the set, I was introduced to both Ronald Reagan and Barbara Stanwyck. At the time, I attributed that privilege to my being under contract to the studio. Reagan impressed me with his great posture. He was a very cordial man but I recall he seemed puzzled by the script, which was understandable since it made absolutely no sense! I remember the studio had Barbara Stanwyck put a colored rinse in her hair everyday so that it would photograph red. She had some gray in her hair, which was very attractive, but for some reason the Technicolor cameras needed her hair to have a certain shade of red. Barbara Stanwyck was a very lovely person and many years later I knew her socially. One day on the set, she smiled at me, and I was, as we said in those days, “on cloud nine!”

JO’D: What other film and/or TV work did you do during this time?

BR:  All my television work came later on, in the 1960s. I did just one other film while I was under contract, An Annapolis Story, with John Derek and Diana Lynn. That wasn’t for RKO, though, that was on loan out for Allied Artists. I was in the military ball scene, and I also had a few other small scenes. RKO’s Head of Production, Eddie Grainger, had earlier sent me a memo ordering me to get a haircut for the role. He said with my long hair I looked “…too much like Veronica Lake”, so I wound up getting a flat top. I still have that memo, too! (laughs)

JO’D: Who were some of the other fledgling actors and actresses who were signed to RKO at the same time you were?

BR: There weren’t many contract players left at RKO by the time I got there, and even fewer signed directly to Howard Hughes. By 1954 the lot was pretty much dead. Let’s see, there was Mona Knox (The Las Vegas Story), who recently passed away, a young actor named Frank Griffin (Teenage Crime Wave), who was the brother of actresses Debra Paget, Teala Loring and Lisa Gaye, and a gorgeous young girl named Joyce Taylor (Atlantis, the Lost Continent). Joyce was a singer who had been under contract to Liberty Records, and she later did a good movie with David Janssen, called Ring of Fire. She was a beautiful lady—and very talented, too—but she later married a stockbroker and left the business. The RKO lot was really more like an empty ghost town than a bustling movie studio by the time I got there.

JO’D: Were there any films you were up for at RKO that you didn’t get, but wished that you had?

BR: There was a juvenile delinquent film called The Young Stranger that was designed to introduce James MacArthur, whom RKO had signed to a contract in 1956. I tested for the part of his best friend, however the casting director, Bill White, did not like the Hughes actors, preferring the RKO people instead. So, that was one part I had really wanted that I lost. Truthfully, RKO didn’t know what to do with me, so after a while, they stopped putting me in anything.

Despite the difficulty I was having in getting decent film roles, Perry Lieber, the Head of Publicity at RKO, liked me and kept me busy in the still gallery. Ernie Bachrach was the best still photographer at any of the studios and he had noticed that I never photographed the same way. When he discovered that about me, you would have thought that he had discovered radium. He loved it! Ernie—who, by the way, also loved the ladies—suggested I should try modeling. By then, RKO was really on its last legs.

JO’D: What were those last days at RKO like?

BR: Bill Dozier, who later produced television’s Batman, was president of RKO at the time and he and Eddie Grainger butted heads constantly. The studio produced and released some terrible movies (I Married A Woman, All Mine to Give, etc.), and then all of a sudden production was at a complete standstill. Bill Dozier was out on his ass after a year. General Tire and Rubber Company came in and bought the studio and the new people knew nothing about making movies. It was costing far too much money for them to keep it open with absolutely no activity.

In 1956, a film called The Girl Most Likely, with Jane Powell and Cliff Robertson, was one of RKO’s last productions. After that, the studio tried a remake of Stage Struck (Katharine Hepburn had won an Oscar in the original film, Morning Glory). Susan Strasberg had the lead role but the film couldn’t compete with Hepburn’s, not even with Henry Fonda as Susan’s leading man. That movie was probably RKO’s death. After it came out, General Tire made an agreement to have everything that was already completed released through Universal-International, and then we were all shown the door.

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Photos of Sally Todd today.

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Photos of Sally Todd in glamor poses:

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We  shot some of Frankenstein’s Daughter at Harold Lloyd Sr.’s house, so I think maybe that’s how his son got cast in the film. Who knows, maybe Harold Lloyd Sr. had even invested some money in it.

All in all, I have to say that I did have a lot of fun making Frankenstein’s Daughter. We were all either going to have fun, or cry a lot.

John: During the time you made these horror films, I know you were also guest-starring on several TV shows. Among your television credits in the late 50’s, you acted in a few episodes of Dragnet. You told me earlier that you also dated its star, Jack Webb, in 1958. What can you tell us about him (and your relationship)?

Sally:  That was quite an eventful period in my life…both personally, and professionally. I went in for a reading to play a teenager on the show and I got the part&#151it was that easy. I was thrilled that I was going to be working with Jack Webb because he was a very powerful guy at the time. Jack was also known for using many of the same actors over and over again on his show so I was looking forward to being asked back if I did a good job. (And I was asked back to do another show, in 1959.)

Well, about halfway through the first show, Jack asked me to have dinner with him. He had a beautiful suite right above the executive offices at the studio that was almost as big as a sound stage…it was fantastic. I remember I wore a lovely black dress and Jack seemed very attracted to me. We had a wonderful, relaxing dinner there with a few other guests (including the famous songwriter and conductor Ray Heindorf, and his wife), for which I was grateful, as I was a little nervous. Not that nervous, but Jack was a lot older than me, and at first I felt a bit threatened by that.

Jack had a Filipino houseboy who was supposed to be the best cook in the world and I think he was. The meal he prepared for us was absolutely delicious. Jack always had all his meals served to him in this suite above the studio and sometimes he even had them catered by Chasen’s. He threw some terrific parties up there. Anyway, we had a lovely dinner that night.

The next day I was back to work on the set of Dragnet and a delivery boy brought me a huge bouquet of flowers. And that was the beginning of my little courtship with Jack Webb, which actually quickly became a big courtship. The following weekend he took me to the world premiere of Around The World in Eighty Days, which was fabulous. Earlier that evening, he had sent a messenger over to my apartment with a gorgeous cocktail dress he wanted me to wear. Jack absolutely took over my life but it was fun and exciting to me as I was still very young and naive. I was at his house almost every night that summer. His friends dropped in constantly and I was really impressed with him as it seemed like he knew a million people and they were all at his beck and call.

Jack was charming and witty and intelligent, but it didn’t take me long to see that he drank a lot. And unfortunately, before you knew it, I was drinking a lot, too. So, it was pretty much always party time when we were together.

Everything was going along fine and then he insisted I move closer to the studio so that he could see me whenever he wanted. He wound up getting me an apartment right across the street from the studio, and it was beautiful. We furnished it with this very expensive imported stuff from an antique store on Sunset Boulevard. Jack had great taste&#151whether it be in fine art or furniture or music.

After a while, I learned that there was a very private area in Jack Webb’s suite that I was not allowed to see. He told me the area was ‘off limits’ to me, which, of course, piqued my interest even more. I guess you could call it a ‘secret room’ as it was always locked and I later found out why.

But that story is best saved for another time!

To read more about Sally’s amazing experiences in show business, look for her upcoming autobiography. John O’Dowd wishes to thank Sally and her manager Peter Clark for their graciousness, as well as fellow writer Michael Barnum, whose kindness and generosity in arranging this project with Sally is deeply appreciated.

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John: Were there any other serious mishaps on the set during filming?

Sally: Yes…like when the boat we were on completely broke apart out in the ocean. All of us girls in the film (Abby Dalton, Susan Cabot, June Kenney, Lynn Bernay and Betsy Jones-Moreland) were on this rickety old wooden boat that was supposed to be a stately Viking ship. You know, it had the big mast and lots of barrels and all the Viking shields along the sides…it was supposed to be really impressive, right? So, one weekend out at Malibu we’re working on this scene of the six or seven of us in this so-called Viking boat, and it’s high tide—the worst day in the world to take this pile of junk out into the surf. But Corman said, ‘We have to make this shot. Come on…let’s go!’ I mean, just try to picture it: high tide at Zuma Beach, and it’s a rip tide, to boot. We weren’t even supposed to be out there.

So, we’re in the ocean, and the waves, which seemed to be like 30 feet high by then, started crashing down on us. Within minutes, the boat broke in half and all of us girls went flying into the surf. I got hit in the head by one of the barrels and actually broke one of my pinkies. The rip tide started pulling some of the girls out to sea and when Roger saw that, he hollered for someone to call the Coast Guard.

Abby Dalton and I were the only good swimmers in the group and we somehow got past the rip tide, but it pushed us sideways into this huge cliff that was jutting out into the water. By this time Abby and I were screaming and flailing our arms because we were both being body-slammed into the side of this mountain. We decided we should try to get out of there if we could so we began climbing the rocks that were at the base of the cliff. You would think that Roger Corman would know enough to film all this, right? I mean, this is good, dramatic stuff. But instead, he turned all the cameras off, the jerk.

Abby and I wound up with cuts and bruises all over our hands and arms because the waves kept knocking us off the rocks and bashing us into the side of the cliff. This went on for several minutes and we must have drifted 20 or 30 feet before we were saved. It was a total nightmare. Finally, the Coast Guard showed up and I recall them being very angry with Roger. I mean, they really came down on him…big time. It could have been a real bloodbath…there were bodies everywhere, and a few of the girls had drifted pretty far out. But, true to form, Roger underplayed the whole thing. It was, you know, on to the next scene, and that was that. A lot of people nearly lost their lives making that stupid thing and if Roger Corman had only filmed what really happened he would have had a very harrowing movie.

John: According to the book, Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures by Mark Thomas McGee, the film’s sea serpent was actually a hand puppet worn by special effects expert (and writer of the story) Irving Block. What were you thoughts on its appearance?

Sally: Oh, God, that thing. It was so embarrassing. I seem to remember it was made of paper mache. When the film showed it coming up out of the ocean and attacking the boat—all that stuff, of course, was done on a sound stage. I remember a lot of us being on the set that day, watching that particular scene, and we all left the stage at one point because we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was just so ridiculous and embarrassing.

John: Do you remember if there was a big world premiere for the film?

Sally: (laughs) I don’t know where the film premiered, but I’m sure it wasn’t at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre! It wasn’t the type of film they would have rolled out the red carpet for. I was just happy I had gotten paid for the thing and that the check didn’t bounce.

John: What are your memories of your fellow cast members in the film?

Sally: The leading man was an actor named Brad Jackson, who, I hear, later had a nervous breakdown and then killed himself. Looking back now, I believe he suffered from anorexia nervosa. Of course we didn’t know anything about the disease back then, but Brad wouldn’t eat. He just wouldn’t eat, and he was so thin. We all thought he was just depressed, but in reality, he was starving himself. It was a very unfortunate thing.

Susan Cabot was a good actress and, as a lot of people know, she also had a very sad and tragic death. She did a lot of good work, she really did, but she was an extremely strange person. I think most people know how Susan died. Her son was a little demented and he killed her. Killed his own mother—can you imagine? That happened many years after we did the film, though…maybe 20 years, or more. [author’s note: Susan Cabot died on December 10, 1986 at the age of 59, while her son, Timothy Roman, died on January 22, 2003 at age 39.]

Apparently, Susan had a very unhappy life. She could never hold on to a man, I understand, and she had a very strange and dark personality. None of us could get next to her on the show. She wasn’t really normal, even back then. Just a very moody, weird girl.

Abby Dalton, on the other hand, was terrific. She was a lot of fun and she was a hard worker, too. Another girl, June Kenney, was a very cute, very pert little blonde. She didn’t go too far in her film career, but she really was a nice girl.

In all, there were probably 15 or 20 young actors in that film, and I had already worked with several of them on some TV projects. Roger had promised me and a few of the other players a lot more work after the film but I didn’t get anything else from him, that’s for sure. I really didn’t mind, though. The way Roger Corman did things back then was just so screwed up. For instance, the dialogue coach on Viking Women was Roger’s gardener, or something. And there wasn’t a stunt coordinator on the film…Roger had an actor filling in. He was too much.

John: Do you think the dialogue in the film was authentic?

Sally: Uh…no. (laughs) It was unbelievably hysterical and we all had a hard time saying our lines. Someone had written the dialogue to mimic how they thought a Viking would speak, and it was ridiculous. Instead of sounding Norwegian, it sounded Hebrew. You know: ‘Smelman! Irving! Magma! Already the storm god licks his lips at the coming feast!’ That kind of thing. How can you say stuff like that without cracking up? (laughs) Trust me, the only thing that kept us from laughing all the time were all our injuries. Everyone was always bleeding and/or limping from the scene they had just filmed.

John: Your next picture, Frankenstein’s Daughter (Astor, 1958), is probably your best known horror film, and many genre film fans love it and still hold it dear to their hearts (including this interviewer). How do you feel about the film?

Sally: I appreciate it that some people enjoy the film , but come on…the movie is terrible. The script was unbelievable and the direction, just like with the Corman film, was almost completely non-existent. In fact, I really believe the director, Richard Cunha, was a myth. I don’t think the man ever even existed. (laughs) I didn’t know who he was…he was always hiding in the shadows. The other actors and I would come on the set and we would hear a voice in the darkness, yell ‘Action’, but we never quite saw who was saying it. Let me tell you, any one of us could have written better lines than what we were given. Every day, he (Richard Cunha) would change our lines and then he would run away. The cameraman would say, ‘Stand here. Do this. Do that.’ And that was the extent of our direction.

John: I know a lot of the acting in the film has been criticized through the years, but I kind of like everyone’s performances—even Felix Locher’s (who played Uncle Carter). What memories do you have of your co-stars in the film?

Sally: I thought they were all talented, it’s just that the movie stunk. The film’s lead, of course, was John Ashley, whom I dated that summer. John and I stayed friends even after we stopped seeing each other. We had fun together on the film because we made fun of it, you know?

Sandra Knight was the other girl lead and she married Jack Nicholson a few years later. Sandra was a very talented young actress and although she made a few more movies after Frankenstein’s Daughter, her acting career never quite went anywhere. It’s a shame, too, because she was a good actress. I heard some time ago that after she divorced Jack Nicholson, she remarried and moved to Hawaii.

We filmed Frankenstein’s Daughter during a really bad time in Hollywood. The studios had fired most of their contract players and film jobs were scarce. The industry was putting out all these junky monster movies and a lot of us who did them were not able to move past them to get some good work in good films. It didn’t just happen to me—it happened to a lot of us at the time.

I worked alongside two sons of famous actors in Frankenstein’s Daughter. The kid who played my boyfriend was Harold Lloyd, Jr., the son of the famous silent screen star Harold Lloyd. And the detective was played by a very good-looking young man by the name of Robert Dix, who was the son of Richard Dix, a big film star at RKO in the 1930s. I felt so sorry for Harold Lloyd, Jr. I played a real sexpot in the film; you know, a loose and sexy bad girl, and Harold and I had some necking scenes. Well, in real life the poor guy was gay, and he didn’t know the first thing about kissing a girl. Back in those days, people were still hiding being gay and Harold was very gay and trying very hard to hide it. But we all knew. Oh, God, he was so awkward. I had to show him how to hold me when he kissed me. He didn’t know how to hold a girl, or where to put his hands, or how to embrace me. I thought the poor kid was going to have a heart attack, I really did. I had to be the initiator, the composer, and the choreographer of our love scenes. It became very traumatic for me after a while because I was thinking, ‘Oh, Christ, if this guy doesn’t get it by now.’ But anyway, we finally got through it. I remember looking over and seeing John Ashley and Sandra Knight standing off to the side and kind of laughing at Harold and me trying to ‘make out’. (laughs) It was obvious I was kind of attacking him because he just didn’t know what to do. Poor baby, he didn’t make very many films after that and I know he died young. [author’s note: Harold Lloyd, Jr. died on June 9, 1971, due to complications from a massive stroke he had suffered a few years earlier. He was just 40 years old.]

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John: On to Tor Johnson, whom I’m sure was christened “Lobo” in another life. In her autobiography, A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me (co-authored by Stone Wallace and Philip Chamberlin), former actress Dolores Fuller writes: “I have fond memories of big Tor Johnson, who despite his enormous size and intimidating presence, was a kind, soft-spoken man—though with a Swedish accent so thick it was often difficult to understand him.” What can you say about this beloved cult figure that hasn’t already been said (or written)?

Sally: That’s a tough one. He’s been an icon for years and I’m sure by now his fans know most everything there is to know about him. Well, he was asthmatic, how about that? Tor had really bad asthma that clearly impacted his breathing, and you can actually hear him wheezing in the two or three scenes that we had together. In all honesty, there were times that Tor’s condition made me fear for my safety. In the scenes where I am supposedly unconscious, Tor had to carry me around this rickety old house from one room to another, and he would always start wheezing after a while, like he was really struggling to breathe. I weighed about 115 pounds at the time, so obviously it wasn’t that I was too heavy for him. Tor had a ravenous appetite, and I would say he easily weighed 350 pounds. As a result, I don’t imagine he was all that healthy.

In one scene that we filmed, Tor picked me up and started down this long staircase and I really had the feeling that he was going to drop me down the stairs or maybe even fall on top of me. Every time the poor thing picked me up I would start shaking. At the time, it was very frightening.

John: I would really be remiss if I didn’t ask you what you thought of Tor Johnson’s now legendary line in the film, “Time for go to bed?”

Sally: Well, it’s absolutely unbelievable and hysterical—just like the rest of the film. (laughs) My God, is that too much, or what? What were we all thinking? I wasn’t in that particular scene so I’m not sure who noticed it at the time (if anyone), but since then that one line of dialogue has definitely taken on a life of its own. Working with Tor Johnson—strange Swedish man that he was—is something I will never forget. Even though I was intimidated by his gargantuan size, he really was a fun guy and a very kind person (just like Dolores Fuller said in her book) and I know that he would have never, ever, intentionally hurt me.

John: The theatrical trailer for The Unearthly hinted at what was in store for your character: “What this gland does to this blonde when it’s electrolated into her body is an experience in horror that is almost unbelievable!” Tell us, what was it like being electrolated?

Sally: (laughs) As you can imagine, pretty rough. You saw the movie, so you know the outcome.

John: Yes, unfortunately, I do. After John Carradine injects your character with that infamous “17th gland” he has discovered—which looks more like a prehistoric fish, or a stir-fried snow pea—you undergo a very heartbreaking metamorphosis. I say “heartbreaking” because your character in the film is basically very sympathetic. Kind of a tough-talking airhead, maybe…but still sympathetic (especially toward Lobo). I can imagine movie audiences in 1957 screaming and jumping out of their seats when your character, Natalie, turns toward the camera and reveals that…face.

Sally: It was pretty horrific, wasn’t it? When I first heard that I was going to have to be made up to look so ugly and frightening, I panicked, but thank God for (makeup supervisor) Harry Thomas. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was just a top-notch makeup man—the best in his profession—and he absolutely saved me.

Harry had to make me up to look about 200 years old and he used a sticky gel, tissue paper, and a hair dryer to create the effect. Then, to finish the process, he put a layer of another substance (some sort of makeup, I think) on top of all of it, and then he let everything air dry. Well, he did such a magnificent job I wound up looking like I had the worst skin disease of all time. I sort of looked like a leper and leprechaun combined, you know? (laughs) Oh, it was horrible. But Harry Thomas was such an expert at applying and removing monster makeup, I never experienced any discomfort. Harry made sure to put a thin layer of base on my skin underneath all the tissue paper and glue, and that protected me beautifully. When he removed everything, I didn’t have any redness or irritation anywhere. The man was a genius, and I was very happy to see him again the following year, when we worked together on Frankenstein’s Daughter.

John: In The Unearthly, how long did it take Thomas to apply your monster makeup?

Sally: About two hours. Layer after layer (after layer) of it, clear down to my neck and also on one of my hands. When I looked in the mirror and saw what he had done to me, I was nearly scared to death. Fortunately, I only had to wear that monster makeup for a day and a half. I don’t think I could have stood it any longer than that.

John: The last scene in the film (where we see all the freaks and mutants in the dungeon) is so creepy and unexpected, it’s almost surreal. With all those hairy, misshapen faces, the growling, and the lumbering around, it was like the world’s most horrifying sideshow, or like something out of Island of Lost Souls or The Sentinel. To me, that scene is still very disturbing, even though I have watched the film several times.

Sally: I know. The scariest part for me was when they threw me in that room with all those guys. For a minute, I forgot they were actors and I was afraid I wasn’t going to get out of there alive. Ha…that’s why you heard me screaming in the background.

At this point, Sally’s manager, Peter Clark, interjects: “Hey, Sally, didn’t the producers of the film recruit all those freaky guys from your apartment building in the Valley?”

Sally: (laughs) That is a big, fat lie! The man is a liar, John. Don’t believe a word he says. He’s just jacking us around. (laughs)

John: Hey, you two have a really great rapport. But who exactly were the guys that played the mutants? Professional actors? (I know that Tor Johnson’s son Karl played one of them).

Sally: That’s right…I had forgotten about that. But aside from Tor’s son, I think the rest of the zombies in that scene were just some old, washed-up Hollywood stuntmen and alcoholic extras the producers had somehow gotten hold of. They were a rough lot, I’ll say that for them. All their masks were so lifelike and horrible I just wanted to stay away from them (and I did).

John: I have heard that the freaks were supposed to be a bigger part of the film and that Harry Thomas was extremely disappointed when they were relegated to that one brief scene at the end. Here he had spent many hours designing those monster masks and they’re seen only fleetingly, for like 30 seconds or so.

Sally: Well, if that’s true, then I can understand why he would be upset by it. The original title of the script was The House of Monsters so I think the freaks were supposed to be in the picture a lot more than they actually were. I don’t know why that changed. Imagine if they were allowed to run wild in the house throughout the entire film? Wow, that would have been really scary!

John: Your next film, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (AIP, 1957), is on many bad film aficionados lists as one of their favorite Grade-Z films. It was Roger Corman’s nineteenth film credit in three years as a director and producer, and I’m curious what you thought of his directing style.

Sally: What an amazingly screwed-up picture that was. Whoever wrote the script of that thing obviously owed Roger Corman some money, because the film was just a rotten mess. [author’s note: the screenplay was written by Louis Goldman, from a story by Irving Block.]

Oddly enough, Roger had a pretty good name at the time. He was putting out a lot of product that was popular with the country’s teenagers, but sometimes he would be on the set and other times he wouldn’t. And, you know, when he was there, it was all about, ‘Ready, set, go. Horses…go. Actors…run. Look good, don’t stop…keep going!’ That’s what was important to Roger Corman. Work fast, and look good. Not the quality of a film, by any means.

John: Were all the beach scenes in the picture filmed at Malibu?

Sally: Most of them were shot at Zuma Beach out in Malibu, yes. We also shot some scenes in Santa Monica. The rest of the movie was filmed at Bronson Canyon and at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, which was an absolutely horrible place to shoot a film. It was like 120 degrees in the shade and we were surrounded by horses and wild boars and other smelly things. It was dusty and hot and actually pretty gross.

Just like the “freaks” in The Unearthly, the bad guys in the film were all these over-the-hill, punch drunk wranglers who were loaded and carrying on the whole time they were on the set. So there we are out in the mountains in this god awful heat, being chased by these drunken guys on horseback. As you can imagine, I was panic-stricken the whole time.

John: Given the rough conditions on the set, did anyone get hurt?

Sally: We all did. However, out of a group of about ten or fifteen kids in the film, I’m pretty sure I got the prize for suffering the most injuries. It seems I was always being bumped around by the horses, or falling down cliffs and into mine shafts. I’m not normally a klutz but the staging on that film was unreal. Everyone was expected to do their own stunts and everyone got hurt. We were running down shale rocks and being pushed and grabbed and thrown down to the ground…it was a very tough show to work on. Not to mention that Corman was always very low-key when it came to showing an interest in his actors safety. He just seemed unconcerned, like he didn’t give it much thought. He would say something like, ‘See this cliff here? Well, you’re gonna run straight down this 20-foot cliff and then when you get to the bottom, we’ll do a great close-up of you and it’ll be fantastic.’ And I would look at him and go, ‘What? What do you want me to do?’ The guy was a real slick talker, let me tell you. And we were all kids, so what did we know? Most of us were in our early 20s.

I remember I started out at the beginning of the film in this cute little leather outfit—you know, this short, sexy, Viking kind of costume—and by the end of the picture, it was just a bunch of rags and ratty strips of fur. I had them tied around my knees, my elbows, my fingers…you name it. (laughs)

John: Do you remember a specific incident of getting injured on the film?

Sally: Oh, sure…several. There was a scene near the end of the film where the entire cast was on horseback. The bad guys were chasing us girls on their big, fat horses through this very narrow canyon out at the Iverson Ranch and they were going to corner us against the side of a mountain. Well, I remember thinking that there was something about the staging of the scene that just didn’t seem safe to me. I had the feeling, and I don’t know why, that the horses were going to rear up and throw us. I mean, I had a real strong vision of being trampled.

By this time, I had totally had it with the stunts. I thought, ‘If I come out of this film alive, it will be a miracle.’ So, I’m looking at the set-up of this scene where the horses are going to race us right into this narrow, dead-end area of the canyon and I thought, ‘Uh huh. No way.’ The horses are going to be rearing up. They’re going to be confined and it’s going to make them crazy and they’re going to respond by piling up on us. It didn’t make any sense to me at all and I was scared to death. So, I said to Corman, ‘Roger, I am not doing this scene.’ He got really mad and yelled at me, but I didn’t care. There were some girl extras on the set who weren’t featured players like Susan Cabot and Abby Dalton and me, and he wound up using one of those girls to replace me on the horse. And she just happened to be Abby’s kid sister. Roger slapped this long blonde wig on her head so that she would look more like me, and then he put her up on the horse, and guess what happened? The horse reared up and flung her to the ground and she had to be carted off to the hospital with a brain concussion.

I mean, that was my horse that threw her! Do you see why I’m glad I was always such a rebel? It might not have been good for my career, but at least I’m still alive.

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John: Wow, I guess Sammy found himself in hot water quite a lot in those years. I heard that when he dated Kim Novak, her boss Harry Cohn had threatened him with bodily harm, too.

Sally: Yeah, the poor guy. I remember hearing from Polly (or somebody) that right after that whole fiasco with Vince and Jackie, Sammy went right into therapy. (laughs)

John: Didn’t you date Vince Edwards, too?

Sally: Yes. A few months after Sammy’s party, I met Vince at a job interview and he asked me out. We started dating, and eventually got engaged. Jackie had moved on by then and was dating Jack Webb, but then in 1958, Jack hired me to do some episodes of Dragnet, and then we started dating.

John: Whew…what a wild Hollywood story!

Sally: I know, isn’t it? I later became engaged to Jack but it didn’t work out and he not only went back to Jackie, he also wound up marrying her. Poor Sammy lost out all the way around!

John: Did you keep in touch with Sammy after that infamous party of his in the 50s?

Sally: No, I didn’t see him again in person until the mid 70s, when some friends and I attended one of his shows at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Sammy was just a holy mess that night. I don’t even know if I can say for sure that he was drunk, but he was definitely on something. Sammy wandered around the stage lost, almost like he was on a different planet. The audience didn’t boo him, but they were shouting out to him to sing something because all he was doing was pacing the stage and mumbling to himself and looking around the room like he didn’t know where the hell he was. Sammy just stared at the crowd with this confused and tortured look on his face and I’m sure he didn’t know what they were even yelling about. My God, it was so sad. It was not one of his best performances, by any means. After watching him for a while in this downright pitiful state, my friends and I got up and left because we just couldn’t bear to see him so out of it. Remembering how electrifying and in control Sammy had been all those years earlier at the Mocambo, seeing him so wiped out like that at the Sands just broke my heart. Thank God, though, that he evidently got his act together in the 1980s before he died, and stopped doing whatever he was doing. [author’s note: Sammy Davis Jr. passed away on May 15, 1990 at the age of 64, as a result of complications from throat cancer.]

John: You mentioned earlier that you have a story about meeting JFK through your friendship with Peter Lawford.

Sally: Yes, JFK had been elected President by that time and being that Peter was his brother-in-law, he often had parties at Peter’s beachfront house in Malibu. One day I called Peter’s office and I said to him, ‘I want to meet the President and I want you to arrange it for me.’ He said, ‘Sally, I would love for you to meet him, but he’s very busy this weekend.’ Peter went on to tell me that JFK was getting ready to address California governor Pat Brown and several hundred people at the Century Plaza Hotel, and he said that he had to knuckle down that weekend to work on his speech.

Well, I wasn’t about to let a little thing like that stop me. (laughs) I said to my cousin, ‘I am going out to Malibu Beach this weekend and I am going to meet the President. You wanna come?’ So she and I drove out there in the morning and we parked ourselves on our beach blankets right outside Peter’s property, and we just stayed there all day. I had on these really tight hip-huggers, and I was brown as a berry, and let me tell you, I looked great.

Eventually, a huge crowd formed on the beach, and it included dozens of cops and FBI agents and security guards. Finally, JFK and Peter came out onto the beach to say hello to the crowd and the President turned his head and looked right at me. Peter said, ‘Sally!’, and I went, ‘Hello!’ He and JFK talked secretly for a little bit and then Peter gave me a sign to wait around until the crowd left. I turned to my cousin and said, ‘See…?’ (laughs)

The head of the President’s security team came out later on and escorted me up to Peter’s house. No one else was there other than JFK, Peter, and a few security people. It was obvious right away that the President was smitten with me…he was charming, and very complimentary. At the time I had been rehearsing a sexy dance routine which Peter knew about, so he said, ‘Sally, why don’t you do that dance of yours for the President?’ And would you believe that for the next five hours that’s just what I did? With the help of lots of champagne and a very enthusiastic “audience”, I danced non-stop for JFK until about one o’clock the next morning.

John: I have to admit that the image of you dancing privately for President Kennedy for five hours straight is quite evocative and fascinating.

Sally: Thanks. And I never even got tired! (laughs) He was clearly enthralled with me, that’s for sure, and we had a great time. In fact, JFK enjoyed it so much that he arrived at the Century Plaza two hours late for his speech with Governor Brown. Before they left, Peter said to me, ‘Don’t leave until I get back because we have to talk. The President is absolutely crazy about you.’ Later, Peter had a driver bring me home, and the very next day I received two dozen American Beauty Roses from…guess who? Then, Peter’s agent called me and said, ‘Sally, would you be available to drop everything in the next few days if we contact you and ask you to fly to Washington to visit the President?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Of course I would!’ There’s a lot more to the story, but I’ll save the rest of it for my book.

John: Wow. I know a lot of people out there are going to want to hear more about you and JFK.

A few years prior to dancing for President Kennedy, and in the midst of her jam-packed Hollywood social life and busy modeling career, Sally landed an acting job in what would be the first film in her (now legendary) horror/sci-fi trilogy: the John Carradine/Allison Hayes/Tor Johnson freakfest, The Unearthly. Though widely perceived through the years as a dull and moth-eaten version of the mad scientist and mutants plot seen one year earlier in the period piece The Black Sleep (Bela Lugosi’s last completed film), The Unearthly has, in recent times, somehow developed a small, but loyal, legion of fans. Produced independently (and cheaply) by the movie outfit AB-PT Pictures Corporation in the spring of 1957, and distributed by Republic Pictures as one of its last releases, The Unearthly was originally co-billed that summer with the Peter Graves/Peggie Castle marauding grasshoppers film, Beginning of the End. However, while the latter picture seemed relevant in 1957, with its plot of atomic-age insects gone amok, The Unearthly was a bleak and dated affair whose mid-1940’s, PRC-like ambiance seemed conspicuously obsolete by the late 50s.

Shoehorned into John Carradine’s massive filmography between the similarly rancid The Incredible Petrified World and the overblown, Technicolor spectacle, The Story of Mankind, 1957’s The Unearthly truly seemed to be an unearthly experience at the time for Sally, then just 22. While the film’s plot freewheeled through a world of tortured and twisted souls, the on-set shenanigans of some of its stars remains vivid in her memory.

To those who appreciate it’s dubious merits, The Unearthly does have its interesting moments—from the propulsive opening scene of a terrified woman clawing at the face of a drooling and cretinous Tor Johnson, to John Carradine’s many bizarre rants&#151each of them crisply enunciated in his imposing, booze-burnished voice&#151to the film’s final, fleeting moments in a basement dungeon where the viewer is treated to the sickening sight of several grunting freaks chained to a rotating maypole. Nearly saved by film composer Henry Vars’s dramatic musical score that tries (albeit, in vain) to create a Daliesque aura to the proceedings, The Unearthly is a true, “bad-movie” lover’s delight, and although Sally’s role in the film is brief, it remains memorable.

John: In 1957, monster movies came back into vogue and you made your first appearance in the genre with your co-starring role in The Unearthly. You’ve told me that you were dating Vince Edwards when you made the film.

Sally: That’s right. As I said before, he was a very jealous and possessive guy, so my life that summer was never dull. We shot most of The Unearthly in an old house on Western Avenue in Hollywood, just off Sunset Boulevard. Well, Vince would drop by the set every day to check up on me because he knew I was working with Myron Healey, who was a very handsome and debonair man. Myron was probably about 35 years old at the time, and even though I was a very young 22, I still found him to be immensely attractive. He was also a very friendly guy, but believe me, our relationship was strictly professional.

Anyway, Vince always wanted me all to himself, and before long he had become almost a permanent fixture on the set. He would pull up in his beautiful brand new Lincoln and people would come running up to me, whispering, “Vince is here! Vince is here!” (laughs) And I’d go, “Yeah…so? What do you want me to do about it?” I was there working. I certainly wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Vince had a really bad temper, and our relationship, as a result, was pretty passionate. I’ll probably talk more about that in my book.

John: Let’s get right to John Carradine. The man is an acting legend, but he was also a certifiable character, and I’m wondering how the two of you interacted.

Sally: I thought Mr. Carradine was a lovely man. He was just wonderful to watch as a performer because he knew so much about acting. To this very day, I consider it a great honor to have gotten the chance to work with him.

Unfortunately, as most everyone knows, John Carradine had a real drinking problem that went on for many years, but the amazing thing to me is he would spend hours upon hours drinking with the film’s director, Boris Petroff, and Myron Healey (who also liked to have a few belts), and yet it never once affected his work. Just like the true Shakespearean actor that he was, the man was always letter perfect. Petroff never had to do a second take with John&#151ever. This man was unbelievably fantastic. But, my God, did he and the other guys drink. In fact, I don’t know how they drank as much as they did and yet were still able to do their jobs. I couldn’t have done it, I know that. [author’s note: In a 1988 interview, featured player Arthur Batanides, now deceased, admitted that he was inebriated throughout most of the film, as well.]

John: John Carradine’s sepulchral tone and over-the-top performance in the film brings new meaning to the word “hammy”. I read somewhere that he once said, “Directors never direct me…they just turn me loose.” Did Boris Petroff turn Carradine loose, too?

Sally: Well, none of us were directed in the film. In retrospect, it was the same type of experience I would have later on when I worked on Viking Women and Frankenstein’s Daughter. Boris Petroff was exactly like (directors) Roger Corman and Richard Cunha in that none of them gave their actors any real guidance or encouragement to do a good job. In all these films, you were basically just left to your own devices—it wasn’t very inspiring, I’ll tell you that. I’m sure that John gave the part what he felt it required. The man was a veteran…he knew what to do.

John: You had only one scene in The Unearthly with Allison Hayes, who was another popular scream queen of the late 1950s. Did you get along with her on the set?

Sally: Allison was a very beautiful and voluptuous woman, but no, we weren’t friends. She was a quiet and moody person and I really didn’t get to know her. For some reason, she wouldn’t talk to me. Looking back now, I think that was because I was the popular girl on the set&#151you know, always laughing and smiling and happy. I was young and blonde and people seemed to gravitate more toward me than to Allison, and who knows, maybe that bothered her.

John: I have always read that Myron Healey was a great person and that he was always very professional. He was a real workhorse, too. He did a lot of stuff in the 50s and should probably be a lot better known outside the genre film world than he is. You mentioned earlier that he was a nice guy.

Sally: Myron was a total delight. We had two scenes together and he was very helpful to me when we rehearsed them. He made suggestions to me and was really like my acting coach during the shoot because I got nothing from Boris Petroff. Myron was a very experienced actor and even though he tilted the bottle, shall we say, he was never rude to anyone, or unprofessional, and like I said, he helped me. Just like John Carradine, Myron Healey was never late for work, or unprepared. He knew what was expected of him (a decent acting job), and he delivered it.

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John: Although Red Skelton went on record as being totally against the use of off-color jokes on stage, I’ve heard that his humor off stage could be pretty blue. Did you experience any of that?

Sally: Yes, but it was all double entendre stuff…it really wasn’t that dirty. He would get just blue enough, you know, to get us all roaring. I was hysterical the whole time (in fact, I barely made it through the show). Rehearsing with Red was always a blast because he would slip that material in when we weren’t expecting it. Red Skelton was a fantastic ad-libber…probably one of the world’s best, in fact.

As everyone probably knows, Red always had a special place in his heart for children. He really loved kids and he donated a lot of money over the years to several different children’s hospitals and organizations.

I was very fortunate to have met and worked with people like Bob Cummings and Red Skelton. I thought my career was off to a really good start when I got those shows.

John: In the mid 50’s, you dated a handsome young actor named Rad Fulton (later James Westmoreland). In photos from that period, he kind of resembles a young Elvis Presley. Was that a serious relationship?

Sally: We dated exclusively for four or five months, and yes, during that time we were very serious about each other. “Jim” and I were two gorgeous and red-blooded young kids and we had an extremely physical relationship. In fact, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other! (laughs) Our life back then was going to one exciting Hollywood party after another, and we spent nearly every waking moment together. Jim and I met through his agent, Henry Willson, who also handled Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter and Guy Madison (among several other hot young actors). Henry was also my commercial agent, and he was one of the most colorful characters in town. He was gay and outrageous and I think he had a bit of a crush on Jim, because he was highly offended when Jim later told him that he wanted to leave his agency. Henry demanded that Jim immediately stop using the name of Rad Fulton, to which Jim replied, ‘No problem…you can have your lousy name back.’ (laughs)

John: Not long ago, you and Jim Westmoreland had a reunion after not seeing each other for nearly 50 years. What was that like?

Sally: It was wonderful. Jim writes books now and teaches golf, and he still looks great. It was amazing to see him again, and he is just as sweet and lovely as he was back in the 50s. He calls me several times a week and we have resumed a beautiful friendship. It is absolutely terrific.

John: You have an interesting story about working with Jerry Lewis, don’t you?

Sally: Yes, that was before I heard about his somewhat legendary reputation with the ladies. (laughs) In the summer of 1955 I signed a contract with NBC to do six weeks work on the Colgate Comedy Hour (which had undergone a name change to the Colgate Variety Hour). Though the show was hosted by several different comedians, I was thrilled to learn that I would be working that summer with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Even though they were feuding with each other by then, I still was very excited because they were still enormously popular as a comedy team. Jerry and Dean were so much fun to be around.

The Colgate Comedy Hour was broadcast live each week which meant that I had to join the AFTRA union, of which I had not been a member previously. Well, Jerry evidently took a romantic shine to me as soon as he met me and he offered to pay for my union card, which I thought was kind of unusual, but I took him up on it as I really wanted the job.

The shows I did with Dean and Jerry were great. We would do different comedy skits each week and I would play a sexy nurse one week and maybe a secretary the next week and a girl in a bathing suit the following week. And, sometimes, there would be four of us girls introducing Dean and Jerry to the audience at the beginning of the show (just like Jackie Gleason would do later on in the 1960s, when he taped his TV show from Miami Beach).

As time went on, I noticed during rehearsals that Jerry was becoming more and more attentive towards me. But, I didn’t mind it too much as I was learning how to flirt with a man and then how to run away as quickly as possible afterwards. (laughs) I knew I had to escape him because I still had a couple more shows to do and I didn’t want to lose my job over something stupid like a false rumor going around that I was having an affair with Jerry Lewis. I mean, I knew I could be replaced at any time if people started believing that.

So, I always managed to outrun him and still have fun on the show and then on the last week of work one of the other girls came up to me and said, ‘Jerry is looking everywhere for you.’ At almost the same time, the assistant director came over to me and said, ‘Sally, we were all looking for you. Jerry wants to talk to you about your AFTRA card.’ Um…okay. I don’t know if Jerry Lewis expected me to show up in his dressing room with a check in hand, or what, but obviously, I didn’t go. You know, I never heard another word from him after that. (laughs)

A few months later, there was a big call over at Paramount for dozens of background girls for a new film that Jerry and Dean were starring in, called Artists and Models. Even though my agent knew what had happened between Jerry and me, he sent me over there for an interview. Well, I heard that Jerry took one look at my name on the call list and said, ‘In no way, shape or form is Sally Todd to work on this picture.’ And, needless to say, I didn’t.

So, that’s the story of my almost-romance with Jerry Lewis. He’s still around, God love him.

John: When I think of Jerry Lewis, I always think of Dean Martin, and when I think of him, I think of the Rat Pack. Did you ever date any of them?

Sally: Yes, I went out with Peter Lawford, off and on, for about a year. I first met him on the set of his TV show Dear Phoebe, in which I had a small part, and we hit it off right away. Peter was a great guy—he easily had the best sense of humor of anyone I have ever met, and he was gorgeous, too. Peter was warm and generous, and I still miss him. After he married Pat Kennedy, our relationship evolved into a close friendship, and a few years later he got me another acting job on his TV series The Thin Man. It was through Peter that I got to meet President Kennedy. That was an amazing experience for me and I’ll tell you that story a little bit later.

You mentioned the Rat Pack and I do have a pretty outrageous story about Sammy Davis, Jr. that I think you’ll find interesting. During the time that I worked with Dean and Jerry (mid 1950’s), Sammy was opening one night at the famous Mocambo nightclub on the Sunset Strip, and I attended his show. My date that night was a young guy from UCLA and although neither of us had ever met Sammy, we were invited to sit at his private table. We were joined there by actress Jackie Loughery, who had won the first Miss USA contest a few years earlier, and a few other celebrities, including actress and singer Polly Bergen. At the time, Jackie was dating actor Vince Edwards, who, of course, went on to play Ben Casey. (Vince was not with her at the Mocambo.)

Sammy sang beautifully that night and afterwards he invited my date and me to attend a very intimate party at his house for just a few select guests. So, we’re at the party, and while everyone else was eating and drinking and having a great time, I noticed that Sammy was acting very weird. He had gotten real quiet and moody and was pacing back and forth. He was extremely nervous, and when I asked someone about it, they told me that Sammy had secretly made a date that night with Jackie Loughery for after the party, and that Vince Edwards had found out about it. Now, at the time, Vince was notorious in town for being one of the most jealous and most hotheaded guys alive. He was an Italian bodybuilder from Brooklyn, and he was very buff and very dangerous. So, needless to say, before long, Sammy was having definite second thoughts about dating Jackie. (laughs) He was scared to death thinking that Vince was going to crash the party and kill him, or at the very least, beat the crap out of him.

John: What were you doing during all this drama…comforting Sammy?

Sally: No, the rest of us were unaware that our host was absolutely losing it right before our eyes, so we kept right on partying and carrying on. I remember Polly Bergen and I were drinking champagne like there was no tomorrow and at one point during the evening we even switched outfits with one another. I guess were both vying for the title of ‘Queen of Sammy’s Party’. (laughs)

Eventually, Sammy holed up in his bedroom where he continued pacing back and forth. At some point he saw me out in the hallway and he grabbed me and brought me into his bedroom with him because he didn’t want to be alone. I remember him saying to me, ‘Sally, I just know that Vince Edwards is going to show up here tonight and kill me.’ Once he explained to me what was going on I told him he was a damn fool. Everyone knew that Jackie Loughery was a big flirt, and you can’t get someone like Vince Edwards mad at you and not expect trouble as a result.

When I was in his bedroom, Sammy opened his dresser drawer and pulled out a gun which he started waving around. I was absolutely terrified. I had seen guns in person before, but never in that context. I’ll never forget Sammy crawling up on his bed and crumbling into a little fetal position and just rocking back and forth while cradling that gun. Here was a man who, just a few hours earlier, was totally together onstage, and now he was crumpled up like a baby. It was insane.

Finally, Sammy said he was going to call the police. At that point I felt it was time to leave, but since I had already gotten rid of my date, I wound up getting a ride home from Polly Bergen. She called me the next day to say that she had heard the police had indeed come out to Sammy’s house after we left, but that Vince never showed up. So, Sammy escaped death that night after all. (laughs)

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