Saturday, March 3, 2012

Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper

AKA Louella Rose OettingerBorn: 6-Aug-1881
Birthplace: Freeport, IL
Died: 9-Dec-1972
Location of death: Santa Monica, CA
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Buried, Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, CA
 Executive summary: Hollywood queen of gossip

 Louella Parsons (August 6, 1881 – December 9, 1972) was the first American news-writer movie columnist in the United States.  She was a gossip columnist who, for many years, was an influential arbiter of Hollywood mores, often feared and hated by the individuals, mostly actors, whose careers she could negatively impact via her radio show and newspaper columns.

 Hedda Hopper (May 2, 1885 – February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.


Death

Hopper died of double pneumonia at the age of 80 in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood. She is buried at Rose Hill Cemetery, Altoona, Pennsylvania.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hopper has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6313½ Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

 Once there was a different Hollywood. High-powered producers, directors, or stars did not control it. The big studios were run by some of the most powerful men in Hollywood: Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Irving Thalberg; but they all cowered before two women: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the two most powerful gossip columnists in history. Because of the power of their columns, Louella's in the Hearst papers; Hedda's in the Los Angeles Times, they were a force to be reckoned with whether you were a producer, director, established star, or budding starlet. If you were going to become anyone in Hollywood you would eventually have to pass muster by one of them and be favorably written about. If you were out of favor by them, you might as well get on the bus back to Podunk because you were never going to do more than wait on tables, pump gas, or become a hooker or a producer's wife.


Here an article Mamie Van Doren wrote about Hedda Hopper:



If Louella Parsons was the Bitch Goddess of my career, Hedda Hopper was my Guardian Angel. As the other most powerful gossip columnist in Hollywood, Hedda was constantly in competition with Louella. Since Louella didn't like me, Hedda took me under her wing and became my champion.
Hedda was more flamboyant than her archrival. Hedda wore her trademark hat whenever she appeared in public. (In fact, her column in the L.A. Times was titled, "Under Hedda's Hat." The column was syndicated in more papers than Louella's.) Adorned with everything from feathers to cityscapes, Hedda's hats were as wildly outrageous and eccentric as she was.
She first wrote about me when "Yankee Pasha," starring Jeff Chandler, Rhonda Fleming, and me opened. It was my second movie and I was as happy as the Universal Publicity Department to see that Hedda was climbing on my bandwagon.
When my third movie, "Francis Joins the WACS," premiered, the Publicity Department called and told me to go meet Hedda in her office because she wanted to do a story on me. Dutifully, I went to the interview and found that Hedda and I hit it off. She wrote a wonderful article about me that ran under the title "The Wacky WAC" on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. As time went on we developed a genuine affection for each other, but I was always wary of Hedda. She could be as savage with her enemies as Louella. I never said anything to Hedda that I didn't want to read the next day on the front page of the Times.
In 1954 Hedda called me to make an appearance on the television show, "The Colgate Variety Hour." It was a live TV show to celebrate the gala grand opening of the brand new Beverly Hilton Hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy would be co-hosting the show with Hedda. These were the days before videotape when television was really live. I had done a few live shows by then and didn't particularly want to do it. I tried to make some lame excuses to talk my way out of it, but Hedda kept selling me.
"You've got to do it, Mamie," Hedda insisted.
"Why don't you give Jayne (Mansfield) a call?" I suggested, thinking quickly.
"Pah! That Jayne Mansfield!" Hedda snorted in disgust. "She'd shit out the May Company window if it would get her publicity. No, Mamie, I insist! Do this show with me. It'll be a great little appearance for you."
So I did. You can see a clip from the show here>>.
I was looking for a house in 1956 right after the birth of my son, Perry. His father, bandleader Ray Anthony and I were not getting along too well, but I wanted a place where I could comfortably raise Perry. One day I got a phone call from Hedda.
"Mamie, I've found the perfect house for you. The place next door to me is for sale. It's got everything you'd need. You must come look at it."
The house was next door to the Beverly Hills Hotel-some of the best real estate on the planet. Ray and I looked it over, but he didn't like it. Not an impossible obstacle, but the living room floor was sagging from termites. Even that wouldn't have been so bad, but when I looked out the window, I saw that Hedda's windows were just a few feet from mine. This, I thought, was all I would need. Hedda Hopper ten feet away while my husband and I argued. Whenever she had a slow day in the column, all she would have to do was print the latest from Mamie's house.
Hedda is credited with appearing in 140 movies from 1916 to 1966, sometimes as Hedda Hopper and other times as Mrs. DeWolf Hopper. She had political aspirations as well. A staunchly conservative Republican, she made a bid for a city council seat but lost. When Kennedy ran against Nixon in 1959, she began to enlist all her friends against Kennedy. She hated JFK with a passion. She called and asked me to make an appearance with her and some other celebrities at a rally for Nixon. Though I was a supporter of Nixon (and really liked him-at the time), I begged off by saying that I had something to do that day. Not thinking any more about it, I went about my business.
I was driving home and made the turn off of Sunset Boulevard on to Sunset Plaza Drive when I saw Hedda with Dick Powell and some other celebrities on a flatbed truck with a jazz band. Hedda was bellowing, "Vote for Nixon!" through a bullhorn at everyone who drove by. She stopped in mid-sentence and glared at me as I wheeled past. Hedda never spoke to me again.
In early February 1966 I was in San Francisco to do the Gypsy Rose Lee television show. I was walking up the steps to the studio and was stopped by a group of reporters who asked if I had heard that Hedda had died. I hadn't, and when they asked for my reaction I hesitated. Dozens of pictures of her raced through my head-all the parties where we'd laughed, all the pieces she'd written about me, how she'd taken my side against Louella. I don't remember now what I told them. I mumbled something appropriately nostalgic, I guess. Looking back now, though, I can say that I lost more than a friend, I lost an ally.


Mamie Van Doren about Louella Parson:


When I started my career in Hollywood, I knew that they were there and I knew that their power meant life or death for a movie or a starlet. Unfortunately, I ran head long into Louella. My manager was her boyfriend.



Jimmy McHugh was a successful song writer who had penned such hits as "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby," "Don't Blame Me," and "I'm in the Mood for Love." Living comfortably in Beverly Hills on his royalties, Jimmy managed a few starlets and female singers. He took an interest in my career and became my Svengali. Jimmy was also Louella's escort to many gala Hollywood affairs. She was invited to all of them, of course. Jimmy was usually on her arm. Did they do any more than show up at parties and premiers? Did they fuck? Thinking back on Jimmy's bald head and Louella's pinched face and raptor eyes, it's a frightening thought.
Did I mention that Louella was a power-mad, nasty, destructive, vengeful bitch? Watch the video of the premier of "A Star is Born" to see her give me the evil eye here>>.



Here's how Louella ascended to her position at the Hearst papers as the most powerful movie-slash-gossip columnist around. She acquired lifetime tenure with Hearst because she was on board the newspaper magnate's yacht, Oneida, when a series of mysterious events occurred. In celebration of the 43rd birthday of film director Thomas Ince, William Randolph Hearst, fifteen guests-including Hearst's live-in girl friend Marion Davies and Charlie Chaplin-and a complete jazz band, embarked on a cruise from Los Angeles to San Diego. Ince, the story goes, was caught paying too much attention to Marion. Hearst got the gun he always kept on board and shot Ince in the head. Ince's body was taken off the boat in San Diego and immediately cremated. The first stories in the Hearst papers said he became ill and died at home, but too many people saw him being taken off the boat. Chaplin's secretary swore that she saw a bullet hole in Ince's head. Everyone on that cruise that day was taken care of for the rest of their lives. Louella's payoff was the permanent column.
Louella was recently widowed at the time she was going out with Jimmy McHugh. Her late husband had been a doctor with an interesting special practice. He took care of abortions and venereal disease cases for the movie studios. All very hush-hush. When I was a showgirl in New York as a teenager, one night backstage the other girls were all a-twitter with the news that "Doc Martin" was in town. When I asked who he was they said he was Louella Parson's husband. He breezed into town occasionally looking for young girls to, um, date. "He pays!" the girls squealed. (My comment at the time was something like, "You mean you can get paid for that?" I was a late bloomer.)
When Jimmy was my manager, Louella became jealous of the time and attention that he paid to me. Jimmy sent me to one of the best acting schools in Hollywood-Ben Bard's Theater-personally gave me voice lessons, and got me screen tests at the major studios. However, there was never a quid pro quo between Jimmy and me. Never once in the many times we were together at his home, at the theater, at dinner-anywhere-did he make a romantic advance to me. (By now you know that you can trust me. I'd tell you!) Besides, he was far, far from being my type, and it never entered my mind to go to bed with him. Louella, however, was unconvinced. She began a campaign of terror against my budding career.
First she pressured Ben Bard to get me out of his acting school by threatening to boycott his plays and his students who were aspiring to stardom. At the same time she twisted Jimmy's arm (or whatever appendage) by threatening that he could be replaced by someone else on her arm at the many functions to which he accompanied her. Jimmy had made his career as a songwriter in relative obscurity. Now, he was enjoying the limelight.
At about this time Jimmy got me a screen test at Paramount. The material I tested with was a scene from Clifford Odets' "The Big Knife." A couple of days before the test, I was fitted for wardrobe by the Academy Award-winning costume designer Edith Head. Seeing that I was big-busted, she arranged for me to wear the gown that Elizabeth Taylor had worn in "A Place in the Sun."
I pulled out all the stops on that screen test. It felt right. I drove home and waited for the answer. Two days later the phone rang and Jimmy said that Paramount loved the test and they were going to offer me a contract. I was walking on air.
It wasn't long, though, before the bubble burst. The negotiations seemed to be taking a long time. Jimmy called back to say they'd hit a snag: some of the executives at Paramount thought I looked too much like Marilyn Monroe.
My heart sank. Everything was falling apart: pushed out of Ben Bard's and now Paramount was turning sour. The next day they made their decision. They would not sign me. I was desolate.
You can't give up, a voice inside me argued, you can't quit now.
I was scheduled to start at another acting school where Jimmy had enrolled me on the sly. Harry Hayden and Leila Bliss ran the Bliss-Hayden Theater in Beverly Hills where Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Reynolds, Veronica Lake, and many other successful actresses had been showcased early in their careers. When I showed up Harry and Leila immediately offered me the ingenue role in William Inge's play "Come Back, Little Sheba"-the role of Marie that Terry Moore played (and for which she was nominated for an Oscar) in the film version. We opened in three days.
During that frantic rehearsal I found out that Paramount had not turned me down because of my superficial resemblance to Marilyn. Louella Parsons had pressured them into not signing me by making it clear that if they did she would never again give Paramount, its pictures, or its stars a line of publicity in her column.
I was furious with her and furious with Jimmy for being so craven as to knuckle under to her. Time was short, though, and I had no time to waste on anger before opening night. I took it out instead on memorizing my lines and getting in character to be Marie, and Miss Parsons and Mr. McHugh bedamned!
We played to an enthusiastic first night audience and the crowd obviously liked me. The next day Jimmy got a call from Phil Benjamin, a casting director from Universal who had been in the audience. Benjamin thought I would be right for the role of a nightclub singer in a Universal picture called "Forbidden" starring Tony Curtis and Joanne Dru.
Things began happening fast. I drove to Universal the next day and met Benjamin, veteran producer Ted Richmond, and the director Rudy Mate.
"Can you sing?" Mate quickly asked.
I responded by singing "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby."
He smiled approvingly. "You're going to have to start right away because we've got to shoot this scene, " he said. It was Friday.
My mouth dropped open. "Oh, my God!"
Benjamin said, "They'll give you the song and the movements. Go home and work on them. You'll get fitted for the costume on Monday."
"When will we shoot it?" I gulped.
"On Monday," Mate said blithely, already walking quickly across the room. "Now, here's how I want you to move..."
Things were moving so fast that my head was spinning. The song was "You Belong to Me." That weekend was blur of rehearsing the song and the movements in my parent's living room, and chewing my fingernails down to the quick.
Monday morning I woke to the day that would change my life forever.
At the studio the wardrobe people sewed me into the long white satin gown while makeup people glued on fake fingernails. I was in a fog, concentrating on my song while everyone orbited me pinning, sewing, dabbing, retouching.
Finally I was led onto the elegant nightclub set, and when Tony Curtis, Joanne Dru, and the other actors were in place, Rudy Mate shouted, "Action!"
I barely remember anything about the actual performance. I just put my heart and soul into singing "You Belong to Me." The next thing I knew, Mate shouted, "Cut! Check the gate!" There was a pause while the camera operator checked for dust or hair in the small opening ("gate") where the film passes in front of the camera lens.
"The gate's clear!"
"Print it!"
It was over in one take, but my new life was just beginning.
Ted Richmond came over and told me what a great job I'd done. "Everyone one thinks you're just dynamite, Joan. We've been talking about a contract for you here at the studio." He gestured to a group of men disappearing through the back door of the sound stage. As luck would have it, the top executives-including Milton Rachmil, head of Universal's parent company, Decca Records-had flown out the day before from New York to meet with the local studio execs.
Time really began moving fast. The next day Ted called to say that the executives had seen the rushes of my scene and were, indeed, going to offer me a contract. They began negotiating with Jimmy McHugh.
I was teetering between ecstasy and terror. Ecstatic that I was being offered a contract; terrified that Louella would swoop down on me again with a thunderbolt. But this time Fate was in my corner. Louella had left for Europe to have cosmetic surgery. While the evil bitch was getting her face lifted, her eyelids tucked, even her fat sucked, I was signed to Universal Studios. McHugh negotiated a comfortable 7-year contract with 2-year options and a handsome salary (for 1953) of $260 a week.
By the time Louella returned from her surgical sabbatical, it was too late to keep me from getting in the door, but she would try mightily to shove me back out of it. She lavished praise on my sister glamour girls while studiously ignoring me.
The final blow Louella struck, however, was the lowest blow of all. I had been a starlet for a while at Universal and had gotten used to my new name: Mamie Van Doren. One day I was called into the head office and told that there was a story about to surface in the sleaziest tabloid of the day: Hollywood Confidential. The story was that my mother and I had been prostitutes. I blanched. I assured the executives that there was not a shred of truth to the story. I left and headed straight for the office of my friend and attorney, Jerry Giesler.
Giesler was a legendary lawyer in Hollywood. He was as smooth as Perry Mason, as crafty as Johnny Cochran, and as fearless as Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird." Jerry listened to me tell him through tears of fury what was about to happen. And then he did a strange thing: he calmly put his arm around me and said, "Don't worry about it, Joan, um, Mamie. Go home and get a good night's sleep. I'll take care of it and call you."
When he called the next day, he said, "You have nothing more to worry about from Hollywood Confidential."
"Just like that? Why?," I asked incredulously.
"I phoned the gentleman who is the editor at that fine publication and introduced myself and you. I then told him that I hoped he was very sure of his source of the story about you and your mother. Very sure. Because he would most certainly have to prove the story in a court of law, and because I was very sure that he could not, he had better get out his checkbook or you and your mother would most certainly be the new owners of Hollywood Confidential."
"And?"
"And he assured me that the story would not ever, ever run."
"Did he tell you where the story came from?"
"It's better you don't know, Mamie."
"Please, Jerry. Please."
"He swore me to secrecy. It was Louella Parsons."
"Damn her. But it's over?"
"I assure you, it is."
Louella Parsons died on December 9, 1972. Almost no one noticed. By then Hollywood had changed a great deal. But when told about her death, many veterans of this industry town still breathed a sigh of relief and secretly hoped that someone had driven a wooden stake through her heart.

Photo of the week Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow (March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde" (due to her platinum blonde hair), Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute.

Full Film,Salome 1953 with Rita Hayworth

Salome (1953) is a Biblical epic film made in Technicolor by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by William Dieterle and produced by Buddy Adler from a screenplay by Harry Kleiner and Jesse Lasky Jr. The music score was by George Duning, the dance music by Daniele Amfitheatrof and the cinematography by Charles Lang. Hayworth's costumes by Jean Louis. Hayworth's dances for this film were choreographed by Valerie Bettis. This film was the last produced by Hayworth's production company, the Beckworth Corporation.
The film starred Rita Hayworth as Salome, as well as Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton and Judith Anderson, with Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Badel and Basil Sydney.


Plot

Although based on the New Testament story, the film does not follow the biblical text. In Galilee, during the rule of Rome's Tiberius Caesar, King Herod (Charles Laughton) and Queen Herodias (Judith Anderson) sit on the throne and are condemned by a prophet known as John the Baptist (Alan Badel). Herodias resents John's denunciation of her marriage to the king, her former husband's brother, and the Baptist's claim that she is an adulteress.
Salome falls in love with a heroic Roman soldier (Granger) who converts to Christianity. In a direct reversal of the Biblical text, she dances for Herod to save John the Baptist from being beheaded, but is unsuccessful. Horrified, she renounces her mother Herodias, who planned and ordered the execution, and also becomes a Christian convert. The last scene shows Hayworth and Granger listening to Christ (whose face is not shown) delivering the Sermon on the Mount.

Dance of the seven veils

According to her biographers Hayworth's erotic dance routine was "the most demanding of her entire career", necessitating "endless takes and retakes".

Cast

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Daryl Hannah




























Daryl Christine Hannah (born December 3, 1960) is an American film actress. After making her screen debut in 1978, Hannah starred in a number of Hollywood films throughout the 1980s, notably Blade Runner, Splash, Wall Street, and Roxanne.


Early life

Hannah was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Susan Jeanne (née Metzger), a producer and former schoolteacher, and Donald Christian Hannah, a tugboat and barge company owner. Her parents divorced and her mother subsequently married Jerrold Wexler, a businessman and brother of Haskell Wexler, a cinematographer. She grew up with siblings Don and Page Hannah and half-sister Tanya Wexler, in Long Grove, Illinois.
Hannah became interested in movies at a young age, partly due to insomnia. She says she was very shy and may have had Asperger Syndrome. Hannah attended the progressive Francis W. Parker School (where she played on the soccer team) before enrolling at the University of Southern California.

Career

Hannah made her film debut in 1978 with a brief appearance in Brian De Palma's horror film The Fury. She turned down many roles early on in her career, including the role of Emmeline Lestrange for The Blue Lagoon (that ultimately went to Brooke Shields). Her first notable role came as the acrobatic and violent replicant Pris in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner, in which she performed some of her own gymnastic stunts. That same year she appeared in the summer hit release Summer Lovers. She then was cast as a blonde mermaid in Ron Howard's 1984 fantasy Splash, which starred Tom Hanks and was a major financial success, establishing Hannah as a high-profile film actress.
Hannah's successes in the remainder of the 1980s ranged from 1986's film version of the best seller The Clan of the Cave Bear and also in 1986 Legal Eagles and the Academy Award-winning Wall Street (for which she received her Razzie Award). She starred in the title role of Fred Schepisi's 1987 film Roxanne (also 1987), a modern retelling of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, a performance described as "sweet" and "gentle" by film critic Roger Ebert. and ended the decade with Crimes and Misdemeanors (alongside Woody Allen) and Steel Magnolias (both 1989).
She also appeared in The Pope of Greenwich Village with co-stars Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts and played the daughter of Jack Lemmon's character in both of the Grumpy Old Men comedies. In 1995, Hannah was chosen by Empire magazine as #96 of the "100 Stars in Film History." That year she appeared as homicidal sociopath Leann Netherwood in The Tie That Binds.
Of her most recent roles the most memorable may be that of the one-eyed assassin, Elle Driver, in Kill Bill, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her performance in this film and her appearances in Speedway Junky, Northfork, Michael Radford's Dancing at the Blue Iguana, John Sayles' Casa de los Babys and Silver City, have been described by some as a comeback.
Hannah wrote, directed and produced a short film, The Last Supper, which won an award at the Berlin Film Festival. She directed, produced and was cinematographer for the documentary Strip Notes. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK and on HBO and was about the research Hannah did for her role as a stripper in Dancing at the Blue Iguana. Hannah currently has several projects in post-production, including Shannon's Rainbow and A Closed Book.
She appeared in Robbie Williams' video for the song "Feel", portraying Williams' love interest.
Hannah also is an accomplished theatre actress, reprising Marilyn Monroe's starring role in The Seven Year Itch in 2000 at London's West End. Reviews of the play commended Hannah's performance, with Lizzie Loveridge of Curtain Up! saying that the play was the "perfect vehicle" for Hannah to "show her talents as a comedienne." She was also in films Cord and First Target in the same year.

Personal life

Hannah and actress Hilary Shepard Turner created two board games, "Love It Or Hate It" and "LIEbrary", with Hannah previewing the latter on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show in 2005.[citation needed]
Hannah, an active environmentalist, has her own weekly video blog called DHLoveLifeon sustainable solutions. She is often the sound recordist, camera person and on-screen host for the blog. Her home runs on solar power and is built with green materials. She drives a car that runs on biodiesel. In late 2006, she volunteered to act as a judge for Treehugger.com's "Convenient Truths" contest. On December 4, 2008, Hannah joined Sea Shepherd's crew aboard the MV Steve Irwin, as part of Operation Musashi.

Hannah with Jackson Browne at the Academy Awards 1988
Hannah has never married, although she had long-term relationships with singer Jackson Browne and John F. Kennedy, Jr. She is the sister-in-law of music producer Lou Adler, who is married to Hannah's sister, Page.
Hannah is a strict vegan.
On June 13, 2006, Hannah was arrested, along with actor Taran Noah Smith, for her involvement with over 350 farmers, their families and supporters, confronting authorities trying to bulldoze the nation's largest urban farm in South Central Los Angeles. She chained herself to a walnut tree at the South Central Farm for three weeks to protest the farmers' eviction by the property's new owner, Ralph Horowitz. The farm had been established in the wake of the 1992 LA riots to allow people in the city to grow food for themselves. However, Horowitz, who had paid $5 million for it, sought to evict the farmers to build a warehouse. He had asked for $16 million to sell it but turned down the offer when the activists raised that amount. Hannah was interviewed via cell phone shortly before she was arrested, along with 44 other protesters, and said that she and the others are doing the "morally right thing". She spent some time in jail.
Hannah has also worked to help end sexual slavery and has been traveling around the world to make a documentary.
Hannah was among 31 people arrested on June 23, 2009, in a protest against mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia, part of a wider campaign to stop the practice in the region. The protesters, who also included NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen, were charged with obstructing officers and impeding traffic after they sat in the middle of State Route 3 outside Massey Energy's Goals Coal preparation plant on Tuesday, the The Charleston Gazette reported. In a Democracy Now! phone interview on June 24, 2009, Hannah spoke briefly on why she went to West Virginia and risked arrest.
In 2010 and in 2011, Hannah supported environmental activist Tom Weis' project Ride for Renewables to promote renewable energy.
On May 14, 2011, Hannah and actress Sheryl Lee attended the iMatter March in Denver, Colorado to raise awareness about climate change.
She was arrested on August 30, 2011 in front of The White House as part of a sit-in to protest the proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. In October 2011, Hannah and other pipeline opponents rode horses and bicycles and walked from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Rosebud Reservation to protest the project.
She is a member of the World Future Council.




Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Full Film,Baby Love 1968 starring Diana Dors

Baby Love is a 1968 British drama film, directed by Alastair Reid and starring Ann Lynn, Keith Barron, Linda Hayden and Diana Dors. The film tells the story of a schoolgirl who seduces her adoptive family after her mother commits suicide.
Reid went on to work in television, while Linda Hayden, who was only 15 at the time of filming, went on to star in sexploitation movies, notably two of the films in the Confessions series, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977). The film features an uncredited appearance by Bruce Robinson, later to direct the cult film Withnail & I.


Plot

Luci (Linda Hayden) lives alone with her sluttish, alcoholic mother (a strange, mute, cameo by Diana Dors) in a poor suburb of London. Coming home from school one day Luci discovers her mother's body in the bathtub, her mother has slit her wrists.
Robert (Keith Barron), her mother's high school true love, discovers that she wrote a last letter pleading with him to look after Luci. Robert agrees and takes Luci to his home where she meets his rich wife Amy (Anne Lynn) and their teenage son, Nick (Derek Lamden).
Luci holds Robert responsible for her mother's tragic life and death because he not only left her to go on to university, but left her pregnant. Luci's wanton sexuality and resentment soon starts to cause friction in the household as one by one the family comes under her spell.
At a clinic, Luci subtly offers herself up to an older man (a mute role for the prolific Vernon Dobtcheff) in the seat next to her, awaiting his touch on her bare leg, barely disguising the obvious thrill of that touch until the disgusted (yet entranced) Nick pulls her away. But Luci comes across as a young woman simply craving the love and closeness she has never had, in the only way that seems possible to her due not only because of her upbringing but due to the fact that with her mother gone there seems no chance now for the parental love she really wants, so she makes do with the less innocent kind. Even the sexual 'love' of a stranger is better than no love at all.
The relationship with her 'adoptive' mother is a fascinatingly murky one at first. Amy feels a void in her life at never having a daughter. The coldly masculine influence of her son and husband (plus their now equally cold marriage, shown perfectly in a bedroom scene where she says goodnight to Robert but receives no kiss only a grunt.
Amy comes into the bathroom when Luci is in the bathtub and comforts her (due to Luci's obvious distress when the hot, steaming, water reminds her of her mother's suicide scene) and lightly bathes her takes on a pointed lesbian feel due to how old Luci is. Later Luci crudely offers herself sexually to Amy in a desperate attempt to secure her place in the household.
The easy-going family of Robert, a doctor, Amy, his wife, Nick, their teen-age son are each magnetized by the girl but, rather naively, are unaware of each other's reactions.

Cast