Sex Stars of 1979

It was a year that would have brought transports of delight to Louella herself: screens full of happy, old-fashioned entertainment, Hollywood ballrooms aglow with rich, successful celebrities and tycoons and, best of all, the constant whisper of scandal, up to and including adultery, broken marriages and what used to be called shotgun weddings.

For a while there, the private lives of our sex stars were becoming as boring as many of the pictures they made. A little spice was sorely needed, what with the big screen's being turned over to sexless period romances, monster films, more disasters and international spy capers, cute teenage sports comedies and big-budget cartoons. When we were kids, one of our first titillating thoughts was that Superman could probably see a girl's panties through her dress; little did we know that one day we'd have to pay five dollars to confirm this hot guess--and still not get to see the panties for ourselves.

History, in fact, seems to be repeating itself. Back in the Fifties and Sixties, when the U. S. was still gripped by puritanism, it was foreign films that first provided a dash of spice onscreen. Then imports faded as America grew bolder. Now, once again, U. S. film makers are going for PG ratings and the kiddie mentality, leaving a vacuum for sexy fare from abroad, and beauties like Laura Antonelli are becoming the Brigitte Bardots of our time.

Antonelli is the (text continued on page 396)Sex Stars(continued from page 251) embodiment of mature sexiness. Her age varies from press release to press release (it's been given as high as 44, but she's most likely in her late 30s). Born to a poor family, she planned to become a gym teacher but got into Italian nudie films in the late Sixties. As her talents as well as her figure gained attention, she gradually made her way into higher-class film fare. For the past several years, she's been the companion of actor JeanPaul Belmondo.

Except for Antonelli and some of her Italian and French counterparts, however, American screens haven't offered much in the way of new sex goddesses lately. Not surprisingly, the small screen proved even more bland, reneging on its sexy promises of a year earlier. Tits and ass went flat, mainly because network executives chickened out in the face of a minority of protests but also because the public seemed to tire quickly of the constant tease from busty stewardesses, investigative reporters and vapid space travelers.

When it comes to sex, as we've all discovered from time to time, there's nothing better than imagining that there are secret places where the sex is hotter than anything we've ever known.

Recently, we were privileged to accompany two of today's reigning porno stars, Carol Connors and Desiree Cousteau, to the hard-core equivalent of the Academy Awards, presented by the Adult Film Association of America, and you'd be amazed at the number of calls we got the next day from otherwise suave Hollywood men, wise in the ways of actresses, starlets, hookers and just plain housewives, dying to know what Carol and Desiree are really like.

Frankly, it was easy to grow a bit weary of Farrah Fawcett-Majors' undying devotion to hubby Lee, which could be one reason she plummeted so fast from favor with a public that not only rejected her first starring film, Somebody Killed Her Husband (despite generally good reviews from the critics) but wouldn't buy her shampoo, either. But did her separation from Lee, and her plan to drop the hyphen and sever his surname from hers, suddenly make Farrah more sexy? You bet it did, at least for the men who, theoretically, at least, now have a chance to be the Six Million Dollar Man's replacement after hours. And if further proof were needed that bionic isn't better, matrimonially speaking, Lindsay(Bionic Woman)Wagner divorced actor Michael Brandon.

Is there any screen role that poster girl Cheryl Tiegs could play to equal her real-life affair? She, too, had one of those perfectly syrupy marriages, to director Stan Dragoti, and how they billed and cooed, promising to live happily ever after. That lasted until she got off on safari--how romantic--with handsome photographer Peter Beard and never came home. Enough there for three B movies; but wait, there's more.

Busy at home, Stan comes up with one of the year's hit pictures, Love at First Bite, taking it to the Cannes Film Festival to celebrate. On the way there, however, he ends up in a German jail for smuggling cocaine. After nearly two months in the can instead of Cannes, Dragoti begged off a possible ten-year sentence with a plea for sympathy: He'd been driven to snort his sorrow by Cheryl's love affair. She, incidentally, visited him in jail but still refused to come home.

Almost as good was Sylvester Stallone's leaving wife Sasha, taking up with Goldengirl Susan Anton, who in turn split from her husband-manager Jack Stein. Poor Sasha. Sly leaves her when his pictures are failures (e.g., F.I.S.T., Paradise Alley) and he leaves her when his pictures are hits (Rocky, Rocky II). Sasha, understandably, finally filed for divorce. As for Anton, despite a superhyped drive for public attention, two flop TV shows and a movie bomb in quick succession, Stallone was her only prize.

Rocky II, in fact, rolled over a couple of other marriages. Talia Shire left composer David Shire (and dallied a bit with her Prophecy director, John Frankenheimer), while Burgess Meredith separated from his fourth wife, Kaja Sundsten.

In other unmade beds, Bianca finally went to court to begin a messy divorce with Mick Jagger, presumably a wrangle to equal their messy marriage. Producer Robert Evans tried again, marrying Phyllis George, but the former Miss America and CBS sportscaster called time after only 11 months, going on to marry John Y. Brown, Jr., then co-owner of the Boston Celtics. Peter Sellers, after two years of happiness, telephoned transatlantic to tell bride Lynne Frederick he wasn't coming home, making her the fourth of his wives to get the same news. Marjoe Gortner and Candy Clark--who so romantically slipped across the Mexican border to marry last year--soon found their love turning colder than yesterday's tamale. And Robert De Niro dumped his spouse, Diahnne Abbott.

But marriage isn't the only bond that can be broken--at great expense--and the language this year got a new word, palimony, thanks to the historic court decision awarding Lee Marvin's girlfriend Michelle $104,000 for the time spent under Lee's roof without benefit of clergy.

Inspired by this legal landmark of love, there are Marvin cases now pending all over: Model Cynthia Lang wants $5,000,000 from Alice Cooper; Karen Louise Eklund seeks $2,500,000 from Nick Nolte; Flip Wilson has double trouble, with separate suits from Rosylin Taylor and Kayatana Harrison pending.

But Peter Frampton managed to beat back a similar suit from Penny McCall, with whom he lived after they left their respective mates in 1972; and Rod Stewart settled a reported $500,000 on Britt Ekland, the two-year live-in mate he left before marrying Alana Hamilton.

Rod Stewart married? Shocking though the news was to many, after a quick courtship with George Hamilton's ex, Stewart took the plunge--but didn't promise to stop acting like one of the world's most eligible, and athletic, bachelors. He did say he would try to be faithful, especially after Alana turned up pregnant. In any case, she isn't likely to find the union boring, which was her complaint about her marriage to George.

Among other sexy newlyweds, Jill Clayburgh married playwright David Rabe after two years of living together; and Season Hubley wed Kurt Russell, her co-star in Elvis. But that was about it this year for honeymoons; the trend was clearly away from the altar and toward the courtroom.

Once again, the viewing public proved it can be fickle, too. Rarely has a superstar plunged so far so fast as John Travolta in his dive from the heights of Saturday Night Fever and Grease to the laughable depths of Moment by Moment, his attempt at a serious screen romance with Lily Tomlin. But Travolta was far from alone in his travail. Paul Newman couldn't save Robert Altman'sQuintet, a frozen turkey guaranteed to put any career on ice, and Sophia Loren's comeback in Brass Target fizzled. Despite her blossoming beauty, young Brooke Shields slipped in Tilt and Wanda Nevada but was aided by George Burns's presence in Just You and Me, Kid.

Ali MacGraw topped her Convoy wreck with an even bigger dud, Players--which was no help for her sexy young co-star, Dean-Paul Martin, who said all along he would be just as content to give up acting to play tennis and live with skater Dorothy Hamill.

Dustin Hoffman failed in not one but two pictures, Straight Time and Agatha, though he went to court on the latter in an effort to prove it wasn't his fault. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal couldn't connect in The Main Event, and Richard Dreyfuss cracked on The Big Fix.

Among the other superstars, Marlon Brando wasted away in Superman and Apocalypse Now, while Steve McQueen simply wasted away without another picture. At least Robert Redford went back to work, with Jane Fonda--fresh from her China Syndrome triumph but rebuffed by California politicos who refused to confirm her appointment to the state's Arts Council by buddy Jerry Brown--in The Electric Horseman. Least and last, Donny and Marie Osmond were hit on the head so hard by Goin' Coconuts that the Osmond family promised to get out of the film business forever, proving that ultrainnocence won't sell, either.

But there was cheerier news. This year's two box-office smashes introduced Sigourney Weaver in Alien and Christopher Reeve in Superman. Weaver gave a healthy boost to feminism as a tough, courageous heroine while giving the men a great crotch shot as she warded off the monster. Reeve was more anxious to save the world than to romance curious Margot Kidder ("How big is it?" she asked upon introduction. "I mean how big are you?"). But Superman II promises to add more steel to their relationship. Offscreen, Reeve and girlfriend Gae Exton were trying to stave off the stork until her divorce came through from British socialite David Iveson--like Dragoti, busted for coke smuggling. (Is this the latest fad for estranged husbands?)

In addition to Weaver, a couple of other newcomers managed to heat up theaters in a year of sparse screen sex: Belinda Bauer's enthusiastic orgasms in Winter Kills were worth seeing but didn't save the picture. Likewise, Season Hubley was a torrid trollop in Hardcore, with George C. Scott, but that was another film going limp. More successful was Manhattan'sMariel Hemingway, the sexy teenager with a subteen voice.

Speaking of Manhattan, it was kind of kinky for a comedy, but who says sex isn't funny. Putting aside his nebbish act for a change, Woody Allen became one of this year's hot screen lovers, carrying on with Hemingway and Diane Keaton. But he wasn't the only comic suddenly accustomed to the ladies' adulation. Following Chevy Chase into the movies, the other guys in the Saturday Night Live gang were everywhere. John Belushi starred in Animal House and teams with Dan Aykroyd in 1941, while Bill Murray proved lovable in Meatballs. In addition, most of the Saturday Night cast, plus Carrie Fisher and Margot Kidder, were on the big screen in Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, originally planned as a 90-minute TV special that NBC shelved because it was vulgar and raunchy, just because it included an explicit salute to stag movies and a parody called Celebrity Deformities.

In addition to his stage shows, recordings and a best-selling book (previewed in Playboy last June), Steve Martin starred in his first film. The Jerk, and Robin Williams proved to be the year's most talked about newcomer, winning millions of hearts with a smile.

While a sense of humor helps, there's still nothing better than incredible good looks to win a lady's favor. Fortunately for George Hamilton, he has both, coming up with a big sleeper hit, Love at First Bite, playing a wacky Dracula. Encouraged, he'll next tackle a swishing Zorro in Zorro--the Gay Blade. Having watched Hamilton in Bite, it was impossible not to chuckle a bit as Frank Langella tried to play it straight in Dracula. But Langella's succulent love scenes ultimately turn the mind to more serious matters.

Two of those other handsome, funny fellows, Burt Reynolds and Warren Beatty, took time off from filming to frolic with their real-life ladies, Sally Field and Diane Keaton. But the handsome, somber one, Robert De Niro, had a big hit in The Deer Hunter, which introduced Chris Walken, equally serious and good-looking.

Jon Voight trod water with The Champ, getting constantly upstaged by little Ricky Schroder, who replaced Brooke Shields as the sex idol of elementary schools everywhere. Clint Eastwood proved durable in Escape from Alcatraz and gossips continued to try to link him with Sondra Locke, his co-star from the earlier Gauntlet. They were seen together more than once, presaging the announcement that his 25-year marriage was in trouble.

Charlie's Angels lost another of the original trio as Kate Jackson followed Farrah out of the fold. Newly wed to Andrew Stevens, Jackson said series work interfered with smoking, drinking and staying out late and wasn't good for her sex life, either. Presumably, Stevens was pleased at her career decision, though it isn't known if he favors her drinking, smoking and staying out late.

After a cat fight for the role among many of Hollywood's pretties, Shelley Hack emerged victorious to replace Jackson and the reconstituted Angels will now consist of her, Cheryl Ladd and the remaining original, Jaclyn Smith.

Although TV generally abandoned its craze to clone other trios of beauties like the Angels, some pretty spiffy ladies showed up to decorate other series, including busty Catherine Bach on The Dukes of Hazzard,Loni Anderson on WKRP in Cincinnati and Charlene Tilton on Dallas. But the top-ten ratings were still dominated by sexless comedies.

Fortunately, the music world suffered no other shocks to equal Rod Stewart's marriage. British guitarist Eric Clapton finally married George Harrison's ex, Patti Boyd, but they had been together for four years. Like Cheryl Tiegs, Linda Ronstadt thought Africa might be romantic going on safari with California governor Jerry Brown. Hounded by the press, however, Linda pouted a lot during the trip and the romance seems to have cooled since they returned.

The Village People emerged to challenge the Bee Gees as sex symbols, though it wasn't quite clear which sex the People were aiming at, if it makes any difference. And throughout the land, discos pulsed to the throaty pleas and promises of Donna Summer and Blondie's Deborah Harry. On the quieter side, but no less sexy, were newcomers Rickie Lee Jones and Nicolette Larson.

Disco even gave Cher her first big record hit in years with Take Me Home, but she ironically wasn't out often enough to be taken home. She cropped her hair and the men in her life at the same time, preferring to live alone for the first time since she was 16.

Except for an occasional date with friend, not lover, Gene Simmons of Kiss, Cher says nobody ever asks her out and she prefers to stay home with her two kids, except for a few nights out at the roller rink.

Oh, well, it's probably too much to expect that every sex star's private life be thrilling.

"Is there any screen role that poster girl Cheryl Tiegs could play to equal her real-life affair?"