Fade In: A kitchen in New York City on a very hot day in the mid-Thirties. Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (Tony Curtis), the infamous contract murderer and head of what Walter Winchell dubbed Murder, Inc., is sitting at the table, eating. Beside him is the lovely widow Marion (Mary Wilcox). She is running an ice cube down her bare leg and complaining about the heat. Suddenly, she removes her bathrobe, revealing her lingerie, and Lepke tells her to stop acting like a whore. . . . Fade out. "I'm constantly being cast as a whore," says Mary offscreen. "It's funny, because I've always seen myself as the girl next door." Starting as a ballerina in Indianapolis at the age of four, she eventually abandoned professional ballet for the screen ("A ballet instructor once told me I had prima ballerina in me from the waist up") and has played minor roles in Marlowe, Love Me Deadly, Willie Dynamite and the aforementioned Lepke, starring Curtis. In the film, directed by Israel's prize-winning Menahem Golan, Mary provides Lepke with a hideout, but nothing ignites between the two until. . . . Fade in: The kitchen again. Same heat, same crook, same lingerie. Marion says good night. Lepke follows her into the bedroom, sees the silhouette of her naked body in the doorway. He walks toward her; she walks toward him. They meet at the bed. She takes off his suspenders. . . . Fade out.
Lepke jumps bail and leaves his wife and adopted son to go into hiding. Hiding turns out to be no fun, but the widow Marion provides a few diversions.
"Tony Curtis was great to work with," says affable Mary. "Always professional and willing." With emphasis on the willing, no doubt.
Before Lepke, Mary co-starred in a surrealistic film called The Kirlian Effect, as a sexy private nurse who teases old men.
Although she frowns upon much of the special treatment most famous actresses receive, Mary's acting ambition is to live in a foreign country and have scripts sent to her.
"I always wanted to be a ballerina," says Miss Wilcox, "but I just couldn't knock off those extra curves. Ballerinas have to be thin as bean poles." That's showbiz.
