Sex Stars of 1980

First the bad news: As a nation, we are consuming sex stars at an alarming rate. Now the good news: There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of them.

Maybe it's the inflationary times we live in, but the public seems to want to juggle five new heartthrobs where one used to do. Indeed, it's hard to recall a year so tough on the favorites or one so frantically ripe for newcomers, or at least willing to give some old flames a second chance.

While Farrah was flagging, Suzanne was sagging and Shelley couldn't hack it, a single film created an overnight phenomenon in lovely young Bo Derek, easily the only true sex superstar to emerge in the past year. Significantly, Bo played an obtainable (text continued on page 250)Sex Stars(continued from page 237) fantasy in "10", and that may have been just what fans were looking for after so many empty flirtations with television cuties and lukewarm performances by the ladies of the big screen.

But, as any devoted student of womanhood knows, there are no 10s in real life. There can't be, perfection remaining beyond the grasp. Consequently, even though Bo is a solid 9 or an 8 1/2 at worst, she shares the honor with hundreds of others. So what makes her so special?

Our private theory, totally unprovable, gives the credit to husband John Derek, who has to rank as a major sex star of 1980 himself, even though he hasn't appeared oncamera in 15 years. Who else--at 54--could boast a wife of 23 who was but a fortunate heiress to a manly persona previously cherished by beautiful brides Ursula Andress and Linda Evans? The torrid trio not only loved him then and now, they're all still terrific pals with one another, presumably swapping erotic tips and remembrances along with recipes and laundry lists.

For young men looking forward to one, two or three doting, beautiful wives and for older men looking back on one, two or three ex-wives who won't speak to them, much less to one another, Bo Derek is a symbol of more than feminine perfection. Thanks to John, no mean promoter, she personifies every man's dream.

One of the strangest sex stars to come along in recent memory is Larry Hagman, best known as the nefarious J. R. Ewing from Dallas. By all definitions common among the ladies I know, J.R. is a true creep--vain, selfish, conniving, chauvinistic and indifferent in bed, to boot. But, for some reason, the women love him--and Hagman has become a sex object whose sudden emergence in middle age is as surprising, and as inspirational in its own way, as John Derek's. (Hagman, though, has had only one marriage--duration 26 years--and he takes his wife, Maj, everywhere to share his new glory.)

Could it be that, despite all the feminist nagging to raise male consciousness, women still harbor some secret admiration for the louse who can dominate them--and that the menfolk know it's so, or at least wish it to be?

But there is also Richard Gere to consider. After his discovery in an important but minor role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Gere flopped at the box office as a I soldier in Yanks. He was then rejected for the part of the hired heartbreaker in American Gigolo in favor of John Travolta, who was theoretically perfect for the job. However, Travolta backed out, saying he preferred playing more sensitive characters, and Gere wound up with the part after all.

In a film widely trashed by critics, Gere proved perfect as the handsome, impeccably turned-out Beverly Hills gigolo willing to do anything to a lady for a price (even when the husband paid to watch). The ladies in the audience paid, too, in impressive numbers, to see Gere stand naked in front of the camera.

American Gigolo catapulted Gere into the majors as a romantic lead of the love-'em-and-leave-'em type, but he nearly blew his femme following by segueing into Bent on Broadway, where he played--graphically--a homosexual in a Nazi war camp. It was a courageous artistic decision, but one that spread panic among daydreaming girls. Gere was forced to emphasize his private life with steady girlfriend Sylvia Martins (not to mention his many earlier ladyfriends, including Barbara Carrera, Penny Milford and Tuesday Weld). As a hunk, Gere is definitely somebody to keep an eye on, at least as long as he's wise, lucky and continues to get the parts Travolta rejects.

Surprisingly enough, there is some innocence left in the land. One of the box-office hits of the year was The Blue Lagoon, a syrupy romance suggesting that two beautiful children left naked on a South Sea island would grow up to be two beautiful teenagers naked on a South Sea island, doing what came naturally.

(For a wonderful piece in the L.A. Times, however, Joe Saltzman consulted tropical medical experts who concluded that the teenage couple would have grown up to have "matted hair, lots of pimples, blotchy pigmentation, chronically blistered and peeling noses, wrinkles and lines around the eyes, chronic sunburn, scars from various wounds and draining abscesses, scratches and a variety of minor, but ugly, bacterial, yeast and fungi infections all over their bodies.")

In a promising screen debut, handsome Christopher Atkins played Blue Lagoon's boy and Brooke Shields its girl. After her start as a subteen whore in Pretty Baby and other tender sexpot parts, Shields's virginal appearance here seems to indicate she is growing up onscreen in reverse. Despite Lagoon's R rating, the teens who aren't supposed to get in without parents went as couples, holding hands and breathing heavily. But, as we've so often noted, any teenager with five dollars in hand who can't get into an R movie, at least in most cities, has personality problems that are beyond harm or help from films.

Kids with money, in fact, had a lot of sweetly smutty pictures to choose from this year, many starring teenagers who theoretically couldn't get in without their parents, either. There was Jodie Foster as a sexpot in Foxes, joined by blonde beauty to watch Cherie Currie (a former Runaway lead singer now paired with twin Marie on their first album). Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol squared off in Little Darlings as two maids competing to lose their maidenheads. Since even teens have some taste, both pictures flopped, as did Roller Boogie, starring former teen queen Linda Blair, now 21.

Privately, the young ladies fared better. Foster, the brainy one, was graduated from high school (rendering the commencement address in fluent French) and had her pick of Ivy League colleges; she chose Yale. McNichol, the fun one, was all excited about moving away from home for the first time, into her own house. And O'Neal, the sophisticated one, still had her hands full chaperoning bachelor dad Ryan, especially after he took up company with Farrah.

Farrah? Farrah? The name sounds familiar, but it's hard to place the face. Is she the one who used to be on Charlie's Angels? Oh, yeah; whatever happened to her?

Poor girl. After her marriage to Lee Majors strained at the hyphen, she still had her film career to fall back on, even though she had bombed in her first two pictures after deserting Charlie. With all that beautiful hair and those teeth, her third try at the movies was bound to click; but it didn't. Saturn 3 was quickly lost in space, despite the baring of one breast by Farrah and an entire, though wrinkled, backside by co-star Kirk Douglas.

Farrah at least had the companionship of many other TV stars who tried to break out into feature films. Most noticeably, and embarrassingly, two from Three's Company were awfully lonely up there on the big screen without an audience. Suzanne Somers flopped in Nothing Personal and John Ritter flubbed in Hero at Large. Saturday Night Live'sJane Curtin made a shaky debut in How to Beat the High Cost of Living, while John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd went down in flames in 1941 before being rescued in The Blues Brothers.

If it was any consolation to television's hopefuls, however, many of the biggest names in films were having their troubles, too. Most surprisingly, Clint(continued on page 357)Sex Stars(continued from page 250)Eastwood was tossed into the dirt by Bronco Billy, though he drew his best reviews ever as the fey leader of a broken-down wild West show. Eastwood fans obviously want him to stay with his tough-guy image. Burt Reynolds' followers were no more eager to see their good of boy gussied up and trying to play Cary Grant in Rough Cut. Reynolds, who considers himself a serious actor, had already suffered the additional humiliation of watching his two co-stars in Starting Over,Candice Bergen and Jill Clayburgh, get nominated for Oscars while he was ignored.

The high-powered pairing of Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bisset couldn't add a moment to the life of When Time Ran Out, nor could Natalie Wood and George Segal save The Last Married Couple in America. Still struggling for a comeback, poor Ali MacGraw wound up with one more sour footnote to her career in Just Tell Me What You Want.

Steve McQueen, who gets top money without having had a hit in years, added two more losers, I, Tom Horn and The Hunter, to his list. Al Pacino was daringly good, but in the wrong picture, the controversial Cruising; while Jack Nicholson was daringly bad in The Shining.

On the plus side, Angie Dickinson returned to the big screen in the sexy hit Dressed to Kill, taking her shower with her. And Airplane!, while introducing Robert Hays, proved to be an unconventional career boost to such veterans as Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen and Lloyd Bridges.

After his disastrous Moment by Moment, John Travolta regained considerable lost ground with Urban Cowboy, but it still wasn't the big box-office smash that was expected. Furthermore, Travolta has to fight for attention in the film against menacingly sexy Scott Glenn and yield the movie's raciest scene to newcomer Debra Winger atop a mechanical bucking bull. Winger's writhing made it fairly evident that she wasn't fantasizing about machinery and it must have pained the censors a lot to give the picture a PG. But after all, it wasn't a real bull.

With the economy collapsing, the ticket-buying public was obviously more selective in picking among the stars. Movie buffs, however, were absolute spendthrifts compared with music fans, who suddenly stopped buying records and attending concerts, tossing the industry into a panic. And any film about music--such as Willie Nelson's vehicle, Honeysuckle Rose; Roadie, with Meat Loaf and Deborah Harry; Allan Carr's Can't Stop the Music, starring the Village People with the plus of the pneumatic Valerie Perrine; and Olivia Newton-John's latest feature, Xanadu--was destined to die in the summer cross fire. (The Blues Brothers was a possible exception, but that picture was more about spectacular car crashes than about music.)

As their dollars dried up, the music stars' private excesses did, too, almost to the point of discretion. Contrary to expectations, Rod Stewart stayed married all year, to Alana; Cher was scarcely heard from, while her stormy ex-husband Gregg Allman settled down in matrimony with a former cocktail waitress, Julie Bindas.

Only the porno industry showed continuing strength, which just proves that passion cannot be controlled by the pocketbook. Blonde newcomers Jesie St. James and Seka were both prettier than usual in several pictures; while Marilyn Chambers made a welcome return in Insatiable, taking the time, too, to defend hubby Chuck Traynor against all kinds of wild accusations from ex-wife Linda Lovelace, who wrote a book claiming he had forced her to do Deep Throat and other dirty deeds.

But for every entry in porno, there must be an exit, and the industry lost one of its loveliest stars when Nancy Suiter simply disappeared after a brief but energetic career, capped by Ecstasy Girls. That film's other distinction was that two of its beauties--billed as Lovely #1 and Lovely #2--were featured often on marquees and in magazine photos, despite the fact that they never appear nude in the picture, much less do anything outlandish. These two straight actresses, Bonnie Werchan and Jaquita Johnson, simply showed up in evening gowns for a poolside party scene, took the cash and signed the releases--and later found to their dismay that they were porno stars.

Although that may have shocked the poor girls' parents, there was little else going on in Hollywood that would. After a lot of carrying on the year before, 1980 slumped through the slow side of the scandal cycle. Sure, it was somewhat amusing that Lee Majors asked buddy Ryan O'Neal to look after Farrah while he was out of town, returning to find that O'Neal had looked after her exceedingly well. But Majors and Fawcett had separated by then and Lee and Ryan weren't such good friends, anyway.

The incident did bring to mind the last time great pals split over a lady, when Glen Campbell stole Sarah Davis from Mac. But what goes around comes around; Sarah has now dumped Glen and shown some renewed interest in Mac, who hasn't quite reciprocated.

Oh, yes, Playboy ran the nude layout on Suzanne Somers, which would have been nice and not at all shocking if she hadn't been so prissy in denying earlier rumors that she had once shed all for the chance to be a Playmate. When the truth came out, Somers explained that she had done it only as a starving starlet trying to support her child (the same excuse she used two years ago, when an old bad-check arrest was exposed). This time, as then, she came out on top with a big publicity build-up.

There was, as usual, the string of broken romances. Burt Reynolds cooled it with Sally Field, though they remain friendly. Lovely Lesley-Anne Down wed Henri Gabriel, an assistant director on her forthcoming Sphinx--but the union lasted a matter of months. Erik Estrada married the older Joyce Miller and dumped her immediately in a big mess, with her accusing him of violent threats and of keeping her clothes. But the only breakup to catch the world by total surprise was Anita Bryant's decision to divorce manager Bob Green after 20 years together meddling in other people's morals.

Looking back, it seems that the most unusual performers to create a genuine sexual frenzy across the nation were those legions of handsome, well-built gentlemen willing to bare their bodies nightly for screaming female audiences in club after club staging special ladies-only shows. The lads have been pinched, pulled, groped at, yelled at and whispered to beyond the call of duty, all the while forbidden by most local laws to show any physical appreciation--no matter how much the horny ladies screamed for more. When their gentlemen friends and husbands are finally allowed to join them in the clubs, the women are said to be more than eager for action--thanks to the dedication of these selfless show-business troupers.

And if that's not a sex star, what is?

"Hagman has become a sex object whose emergence in middle age is as surprising as John Derek's."

"Winger's writhing made it fairly evident that she wasn't fantasizing about machinery."