Misty

touted as a new marilyn monroe, misty rowe would rather create a legend of her own

Any Resemblance between Misty Rowe and Jean Harlow, Lana Turner or Marilyn Monroe can be traced to a purely intentional kind of alchemy that seldom occurs--except once in a while, in Hollywood, which has as many ravishingly beautiful blondes per square mile as any dreamworld this side of Shangri-La. But it takes more than shrewd press-agentry nowadays to turn a cute kid from Glendora, California, into a certified love goddess. To make her way through the cynical Seventies as a slightly dim but divine sex object, a girl has to be smart, talented, resilient and a hell of a lot tougher than the part she plays. Particularly when the biggest part she has played to date, offscreen and on, is that of Marilyn herself in Goodbye, Norma Jean--a profitable low-budget quickie that has almost nothing to recommend it except an affectingly honest, straightforward performance by Misty, who has spent a good deal of time and energy recently doing promotional junkets on behalf of a film she says she'd rather forget. Her fee for remembering it, claim the disgruntled distributors, is usually in the neighborhood of $1500 a week.

"I make them pay me pretty well," adds Misty with a melting smile, "because I was very disillusioned about this movie, though I believed in it completely in the beginning. We had no lighting, poor make-up, little or no direction. Now they want me to do a Norma Jean sequel. I tell them they'll have to have a much bigger budget."

Misty is miffed, in the second place, because she insists they faked a line of her dialog at the end of the movie. Norma Jean, after being mauled and degraded by every cheap hustler in Hollywood, starts giving head to higher-ups and finally achieves the big screen test that's going to make her a (concluded on page 212)Misty(continued from page 106) star. Her original line at the fade-out, quoth Misty, was: "That's the last time I'll ever have to get down on my knees to anyone." She reportedly burst into tears when she discovered that they had dubbed in, as a substitute: "That's the last cock I'll ever have to suck." Such fine distinctions mean a lot to a girl who cheerfully accepts compromises that may further her career but doesn't intend to become another Hollywood tragedy. "I won't be a duplicate anything. If they wanted Marilyn Monroe, they wouldn't have killed off the first one."

Be that as it may, the first time we saw Misty in action was during the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Paparazzi were all over the Carlton Hotel beach, popping flashbulbs at a comely, topless French starlet--until Misty appeared out of nowhere, all wet lips and cleavage. Wearing a long pink beach dress with sides slit almost to the waist, she undulated quietly along the boardwalk, as if totally unaware that the wind might reveal she had nothing on underneath. There's no mistaking the performance of a pro. Five minutes later, she was the golden girl of Cannes.

Less than 24 hours later, Misty was rediscovered at a table in the lounge of the Cannes Casino. This time she had on a white wrap-around evening dress that left a lot of Misty unwrapped. Across the table, a youngish millionaire film distributor named David Blake could not take his eyes off her, which seemed sensible of him. "It's kind of boring here, isn't it?" Misty observed. "Are these the Beautiful People we've heard so much about?" (Blake and Misty have been a steady duo for more than a year now.) She also said that it embarrassed her to go parading around town as Marilyn Monroe, even though the bit seemed to work for her, sometimes too well. She was referring to the film promoter who'd brought her there to plug Norma Jean and initially had her bags delivered to his hotel room.

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California. Misty's house, a yellow clapboard cottage, is chock-full of antiques, wooden beams and paneling, an ornately carved Victorian sofa, bookshelves laden with Shakespeare and actors' manuals, an old Coke advertising sign, a picture of Lillian Russell on a bicycle and a Marilyn Monroe calendar hanging inside the kitchen-cupboard door. In the large bedroom, there's a huge brass bed. In the small back bedroom, there's an unemployed actor who takes care of the house and a pair of parrots when Misty is away. He's just a friend. David doesn't mind.

Misty is wearing a see-through chiffon blouse, carefully carelessly unbuttoned. Even in such provocative attire, she looks so innocent that you'd fight off ravaging hordes to save her honor.

Since that first meeting in Cannes, Misty had gone back to TV's Hee Haw, her bread-and-butter job ("They're wonderful people . . . we do a whole season of shows during a couple of weeks in Nashville each spring and fall"), and had performed as Maid Marian for Mel Brooks in When Things Were Rotten, a 13-week television series that came and went and was judged unrenewable.

The parallels between MM and Misty, however coincidental, are often striking. When she was still a high school drama major in Glendora, Misty won all the acting prizes and then went on to win 20 beauty contests. Miss Mini Skirt 1971, Miss Wahini Bikini and Miss Radiant Radish are only a few of the titles she held. She was paid $15, she recalls, for being Miss Oldies but Goodies at a music convention, and she impishly touches her bust and bottom to illustrate, "It said Oldies here and Goodies there." Like Monroe, she moved into the Hollywood Studio Club, moved out again because the 11 p.m. curfew seemed a needless hardship and found herself free to attend Hollywood parties where girls meet "dirty old men with Rolls-Royces."

She also learned that she's considered "a very gifted, beautiful and promising actress" by no less an authority than Stella Adler, the grand duchess of drama coaches as well as confidante to Marlon Brando and a galaxy of Hollywood stars (Miss Adler's colleague Lee Strasberg was MM's theatrical mentor). "Misty is one of the great talents I've met, an actress of enormous depth whose dramatic range, I'd like to stress, is simply fantastic. I hope she will have the huge success she deserves," says Adler, who feels her winsome protégée is undervalued simply because she's blonde and utterly feminine.

Small wonder she bridles when anyone equates blonde and feminine with congenital idiocy. "Blonde is not dumb," says Misty, "and I'm not dumb... I'm just quiet." Matter of fact, she shows symptoms of the galloping smarts when it comes to real estate, for she suddenly lets drop that she's about to sell her quaint yellow cottage at a whopping clear profit of $50,000 in order to buy a Spanish-style minimansion in Beverly Hills for $120,000. "Hee Haw paid for this house. What I've made from Norma Jean will get me the new house. I don't care so much about money . . . it's just, you know, I don't want to end up like Veronica Lake."

Among the iffy projects that may work out for Misty are a leading role opposite Burt Reynolds, also a vintage-Hollywood comedy titled Hughes and Harlow. Guess which part they'd want Misty to play? Like it or not, this levelheaded contemporary Lorelei, whose pinup dimensions are 36-24-36, could singlehandedly bring back 24-carat platinum blondes.