It’s been purt’ near twenty years since Jed an’ all his kin last stood outside the Clampett mansion and said goodbye to fans of The Beverly Hillbillies. But last week, Donna Douglas, who immortalized the role of backwoods lollapalooza Elly May Clampett on the phenomenally popular Sixties sitcom, offered a…
It’s August 1963. Blissfully unaware of the presidential tragedy lurking in the wings, a smart young Phoenix couple blithely sets out to see the most-talked-about film of the season. He wears a sharkskin suit with a dark skinny tie. She opts for a linen sheath and faux pearls. And as…
“I don’t care what you do. I don’t mind any bare buns but I didn’t want any swingin’ frontal shots. Just remember that we’re in the underwear business, not the pornography business.” Or so Phoenix jockmeister Dan Martin said several months ago when he gave a Hollywood producer carte blanche…
As she puts the finishing touches on a life-size replica of a Holstein sculpted from over 400 pounds of dairy spread, Norma “Duffy” Lyon knows exactly which side her breed is buttered on. “I consider myself a dairy farmer’s wife first,” announces the 61-year-old Toledo, Iowa, housewife as she smoothes…
Jeff Stone smoking a cigarette?! During his eight seasons on The Donna Reed Show, he’d have had plenty to answer for. But two weeks ago, waiting to make a personal appearance at a Nick at Nite promotion in a mall outside Dallas, it’s 45-year-old former actor Paul Petersen who’s demanding…
This weekend Nick at Nite’s TV Land Tour rolls into Chris-Town. And given the opportunity, the cable network would probably like to tout the traveling museum as “more fun than a barrel of Monkees.” Unfortunately, The Monkees is one of the few Sixties-era sitcoms that doesn’t air on the five-year-old…
Ever since last October, Jennie Garvin has dreamed of the day when she could tell everyone in the world to “get lost.” Sadly, the head of the Eloy Chamber of Commerce now may never get her chance. Thanks to a labyrinth of problems, a Scottsdale developer has shelved plans to…
Sitting in an office surrounded by a doghouse-shaped cremation urn, a bone-shaped bronze memorial marker and a grief therapy brochure offering tips on disposing of a dead pet’s “belongings,” Alex Neff unsuccessfully fights back a grin. For a fleeting second, he looks like the cat who swallowed the canary–rather fitting…
Do female food servers have any business working in a fine-dining establishment? When a reporter from a national food-service magazine posed this thorny question to Chicago restaurateur Nick Nicholas five years ago, few words were minced. “Broads are a pain in the ass to work with,” proclaimed the outspoken restaurant…
“We pulled it, we checked it, we put it back.” And with that, a Bashas’ employee provided the final word on last week’s biggest bone of contention–a crackpot controversy over whether the videocassette packaging for Disney’s The Little Mermaid bore the image of a penis. Last Thursday, the supermarket chain…
Want to win friends and influence people? A waggish mutt milliner with the unlikely name of April Ode has just the cure: “Walk your dog with a hat on, boy, and people come flocking to you.” Ode, who does for man’s best friend what Dr. Seuss did for cats in…
Although she’s come a long way in the past few years, Pia Zadora is currently going nowhere fast. But this time, the singer is happy to report, that lack of momentum has absolutely nothing to do with her career. Trapped in a noon-hour traffic jam on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, Zadora…
There’s no use sugar-coating the bitter truth. Mary See, 135-year-old grande dame of the soft-center set, is finally showing her age. For one candy lover, the ravages of time recently became shockingly apparent when a box bearing See’s newly wizened image showed up as a Mother’s Day gift. “Land’s sake!”…
Peering from beneath a thicket of false eyelashes, the ageless Acquanetta carefully scrutinizes a publicity photo of the four young women who call themselves the Aquanettas. “It’s been very strange,” admits the 69-year-old one-time horror movie starlet as she examines a cassette copy of the Aquanettas’ Love With the Proper…
Sometime back in 1960, a full decade before Earth Day I, a Texas-bred hausfrau rolled out of her bed in Hawaii, donned one of her trademark muumuus (which she fashioned from old shower curtains or cast-off bedspreads), parked herself in front of her typewriter and forever changed the way America…
A sampling of sleaze from your defunct corner newsstand: Strip for Murder, by Richard S. Prather (Gold Medal, 1956) “I cupped the glass in my hand and aimed it at Garlic’s face like a small bazooka. He was just about to swing at me, so hot he’d undoubtedly forgotten where…
“YOU DIRTY HOG!” Eyzie Miles slashed at Bo Bodell with a kitchen knife. “Go wash yourself before you handle me,” she flared . . . In her heart, though, Eyzie knew that Bo would come back for her. But she never dreamed that when he did return, he would find…
It’s ten minutes until show time and the crowd pouring into the Royal Palms Inn’s dining room is eagerly awaiting the entrance of “The Dear That Made Milwaukee Famous.” Befitting the East Camelback resort’s reputation for “old-world elegance,” the largely geriatric audience is decked out in debonair, if slightly dated,…
Want something hot and spicy delivered right to your doorstep? Well, don’t call Domino’s, dial Out of the Blue, a Scottsdale-based service that’s believed to be the Valley’s (and perhaps the nation’s) first XXX video delivery service. Operators are standing by now to take your ardor. Here’s how it works…
As a child of the Jetson Generation, I thought I’d seen it all. I’d braved the blinding flash bulbs of the amazing Polaroid Swinger, sat at the dock of the bay with the Popeil Pocket Fisherman, thrilled to the thermodynamic miracle of Jiffy Pop. Little wonder, then, that I’d grown…
Between his first major exhibition in 1982 and his AIDS-related death earlier this month at age 31, New York graffiti artist Keith Haring defaced the nation. And for a brief period, the world (not to mention Haring himself, who allegedly died a millionaire) was a richer place for it. During…
Two years ago, American toy manufacturers thought they’d captured invisible lightning in a bottle. At the center of all this high-tech hubbub was Mattel’s Captain Power and the Soldiers of Fortune, a line of toys designed to operate in conjunction with a specially produced TV show of the same name…
