Sex Stars of 1981

Year after year, ever since she was a small child, Brooke Shields has ranked in the big leagues of sex stardom, all the while insisting she has barely had a date in real life and would be content to remain a virgin until she marries--sometime in her 20s. Yet here she is again in 1981, writhing through Endless Love with a look of sheer abandon on her beautiful little face. Director Franco Zeffirelli finally explained why--offcamera, he was pinching Brooke's beautiful big toe until it hurt enough to get the look he wanted. And that, dear fans, is how sex stars are created, if not made.

On the other hand, this year's other repeat goddess, Bo Derek, looked as if somebody should have pinched her toe, or something, in Tarzan, the Ape Man, a remake that swung far above critical arrows to prove again that Bo's body in sufficient proportions is a solid box-office attraction. Tarzan, in fact, earned more bucks in its opening week than any other film in MGM history. A Playboy pictorial, we modestly suggest, probably helped.

Thanks to the obvious attributes of Bo, Brooke and some of the other sex stars of 1981, we were not limited this year to the question, Is Schizo Sexy?--a provocative puzzler posed by such other big hits as Superman II, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blake (text continued on page 274)Sex Stars(continued from page 235) Edwards' S.O.B. Each picture promises in its own way that what you get can be more than what you see, since even the gentle and the sweet--the dull, if you will--may be hiding hot passions. As Lois Lane, fetching Margot Kidder still had to put up with klutzy Clark Kent while hankering for Superman, both, of course, again played superbly by Christopher Reeve. When she finally bedded both in one package, to her delightful surprise, it was easy to suspect the hearts of young girls in movie theaters everywhere hoped the mild-mannered fellow seated next to them also hid secrets of steel.

Similarly, there's no question that Harrison Ford was dashing as the daring archaeologist surmounting the dangers in Raiders, but he, too, led a double life as a meek professor. Still, even as the schoolteacher, he was more attractive than poor Clark. Ford received one of this year's sexier comic compliments when an adoring student closed her eyes to reveal I Love you painted on the lids. Ford's own eyes, though, were only for spunky Karen Allen.

Then we have previously sugary Julie Andrews, who let it all hang out in S.O.B., surely inspiring the most jaded, red-blooded males. After all, if Julie would show her tits, couldn't one expect the same from an equally angelic date?

Even James Bond seemed to undergo a complete change of character in For Your Eyes Only, staying chaste while chased through much of the film. Although Roger Moore remains as charming as ever, there's simply no explaining 007's sudden lack of interest in girls. Playboy readers last June had a better deal: They were treated to close looks at a lot of girls barely glimpsed in the final cut of Albert R. Broccoli's 12th Bond epic. Those included lovely Robbin Young, who had been picked for a small part in a contest sponsored by Playboy and United Artists.

Far more interesting than the picture itself, in fact, was the flap over its advertising campaign, which featured a photo of Bond visible in the distance through the shapely legs of a feminine adversary. In the ad's original form, the legs were nicely joined at a rear end fetchingly covered by a drawn-up bathing suit (actually, the front crotch of the suit worn backward for flash), but many newspapers cropped the ass out altogether or painted in tacky hotpants. At least three photo models, Nancy Stafford, Jane Sumner and Joyce Bartle, emerged to claim credit for the sexy legs and there was some truth to the story of each, with Bartle the winner. At any rate, there were six great legs involved, none deserving the addition of hotpants.

And when it comes to hotpants, there was plenty of heat over the ones worn in those television commercials by the aforementioned Miss Shields, who can't seem to stay out of trouble. Squeezing her size-seven frame into a pair of size-five jeans (nothing about Brooke is quite as it appears oncamera), she uttered the now-infamous line: "You know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."

Although other 16-year-old girls probably didn't take her literally, parents took considerable umbrage at the double-entendre and a number of TV stations were forced to dump the commercial in the wash.

Even trying to do good, Shields suffered. She volunteered to do an antismoking TV spot, sticking cigarettes in both ears to show other teens how silly the habit is. Under tobacco-industry pressure, the Department of Health and Human Services killed the commercial, setting off a Congressional investigation that brought Brooke up to testify.

Beyond that, Shields's sexy love scenes were enough to get Endless Love a threatened X from the rating board, fearful of showing explicit teen sex. As usual, Brooke's nudity was doubled (this time by 27-year-old Christine Jacobsen), but newcomer Martin Hewitt had to do his own stripping. At one point in the shooting, Shields's mother, Teri, saw that the double had a blemish on her butt, which would obviously never be true of Brooke. So a good deal of trouble was taken to cover the unsightly mark, which ended up on the cutting-room floor, anyway, as the picture was trimmed from a potential X to an R.

When Love was released, its press agent was also handling another opening, John Travolta's Blow Out, and that somehow developed into a much-publicized summer romance between the 16-year-old girl and the 27-year-old actor, with both understandably insisting the whole attraction was Platonic.

Obviously, Brooke is growing older, if not fast enough for John; as she progresses into her dotage, there's a search on for a replacement. Favorite of the moment is 13-year-old model Cusi Cram, already making $1000 a day posing for fashion mags and appearing regularly on the One Life to Live soap. Indeed, daytime TV these days is a veritable spawning ground of Lolitas, with Kelli Maroney, Kristen Vigard and Genie Francis among the sexiest of the teen queens.

For those who like their women a bit older, there's still Nastassia Kinski, now turned 20 and a star to count on after the success of Tess. To many fantasies, Kinski has always been what Shields should have been. After all, if you're going to trade on teenage sex, you might as well go all the way and have an affair at 15 with a director such as Tess's Roman Polanski, who's still a fugitive from U. S. justice because of an earlier affection for an underage lady.

To Kinski, however, Roman is a fling of the past ("As a director, he was ten times more wonderful than as a lover," she has been ungraciously quoted).

But enough about those nubile newcomers. Let's move on to something substantial, maybe a married woman of some maturity, a woman whose name has been linked with that of a somewhat less famous director. Like Bo Derek.

After having taken off her clothes in the wildly successful "10", 24-year-old Bo took off just as many clothes and flopped in her next picture, A Change of Seasons. But husband-of-lovelies John Derek (Ursula Andress and Linda Evans preceded Bo) is a persistent believer in his wife's allure, especially if she's unclothed and if he's directing. So, since cartoons are in fashion, the lovely couple chose to remake Tarzan, the Ape Man.

By actual count, there have been 21 Tarzans in screen history, all hunks and each doubtless leading female fans to speculate that all those muscles must look pretty spiffy in the raw. But for some odd reason, John did not plan to remake Tarzan with his doodaws dangling from a tree. Instead, he offered us Bo as Jane while Tarzan (Miles O'Keeffe) grunts in the background. The estate of author Edgar Rice Burroughs, who granted remake rights in 1931 before Jane's boobs had become hot box office, protested and persuaded a Federal court to cut the picture. The judge took out some shots of a naked orangutan, which made no more sense than anything else in this strange dispute. As a matter of fact, if animals were eligible as sex stars, the orangutan--Clyde Junior, or C.J. to friends--would certainly have to qualify, having now swung one way with Bo after swinging the other twice with Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way but Loose and Any Which Way You Can.

Never a mild fellow, John Derek carried his protest over the film's scissoring to the press, contending the picture "stinks."

But Derek was not the only director-husband of a star to get upset. Blake Edwards, who discovered Bo for "10", in which she upstaged wife Julie Andrews (isn't Hollywood incestuous?), followed with a bitter salute to the film industry based on the miserable years he spent after Andrews turned box-office sour because she was so maddeningly sweet.

Edwards, conceding it was all a bit biographical, dreamed up a movie about a family-musical star who bares her breasts to revive a sagging career and help her director-husband. By a strange and complex coincidence, S.O.B. wound up in the hands of Paramount Pictures, the studio at which it was aimed, setting off a public publicity war between Edwards and Paramount.

Of all the participants involved in "10", only one conducted himself this year with true style and grace. Dudley Moore surpassed his terrific performance in "10" with an even better job as a lovable, rich drunk in Arthur. There are, of course, lots of girls these days who insist the one thing they cannot abide is a man who drinks to excess. But, as Liza Minnelli demonstrates in the movie, excess is not so wretched when it's backed by $750,000,000.

In real life, Moore stands as an inspiration not to tipplers but to short fellows. At 5'2", he climbed to romance with statuesque Susan Anton (5'11"); that, in fact, was her most notable show-business accomplishment of the year, after many opportunities that didn't pan out (including a previous romance with Sylvester Stallone).

But Moore wasn't the only slight suitor to find real love in the heights. At 3'11", Fantasy Island's Herve Villechaize married 5'8" Camille Hagan, who has worked as Kate Jackson's stand-in, but not at the altar.

Speaking of television, after lo, these many years of inspiration to Sex Stars, it is time to bid a fond farewell to Charlie's Angels, as its stars sink in the West. The series' final recruit, sexy Tanya Roberts, was no help to its sagging ratings and ABC at last gave up. Thus, Tanya joined Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, Cheryl Ladd and Shelley Hack in Charlie's discard heap.

At least they went quietly. Not so Suzanne Somers, who launched a full-fledged publicity assault in an effort to save her job on Three's Company, where she had been relegated to one-minute solo segments after previously miscalculating how much the producers needed her. This time, however, the publicity counterattack didn't help: The producers easily found another pretty blonde, Jenilee Harrison, to play the part.

On the other hand, that covey of cuties on Dallas,Victoria Principal, Linda Gray and Charlene Tilton, held firm, though the show itself may be in a ratings letdown after the frenzy set off by the shooting of good old J.R., Larry Hagman. Success may have cost Principal a husband, but she soon replaced him with singer Andy Gibb, eight years her junior. On another front, Victoria went to court against a nudie magazine that published revealing photos taken when she was 17, contending she was drugged at the time the pix were shot. (Without drugs, Victoria had fortunately posed for Playboy in 1972, prior to Dallas.)

Although her onscreen marriage to handsome newcomer Leigh McCloskey was a ratings coup for the prime-time soap, Tilton had a familiar complaint about her private life: Anxious to do well in her first acting job, she's too busy for romance. So manager-boyfriend Jon Mercedes, who discovered Charlene in a T-shirt shop, has moved out of the house.

Another victim is Loni Anderson of WKRP in Cincinnati, who said her actor husband, Ross Bickell, took flight when her career outpaced his and he could no longer stand being called Mr. Anderson.

For all the pitfalls and problems, however, actresses still rush toward stardom. A couple of this year's big winners were Morgan Fairchild, a hit in a Dallas duplicate, Flamingo Road, and Catherine Hicks, who made a splash in a Marilyn Monroe bio on TV and next stars with David Niven, Maggie Smith and Art Carney in Whose Little Girl Are You? on the big screen.

Another lady to watch closely is sultry Kim Basinger, an ex-model and TV actress who garnered terrific reviews for her film debut in Hard Country with Jan-Michael Vincent. Susan Sarandon also hung in there in Atlantic City with Burt Lancaster, who proved he can still do a sexy turn himself.

While Angie Dickinson rested a bit after Dressed to Kill, being seen principally in an ad campaign for California avocados, another mature sexpot, Maud Adams (35), got her first big break in Tattoo. Maud vigorously denied co-star Bruce Dern's quoted braggadocio that they really had made love while filming. (Later Dern said he didn't mean he'd gotten to know her in the Biblical sense.)

But the year's biggest break went to Martin Hewitt, Shields's co-star in Endless Love. A year ago, he was tending bar and parking cars in Pasadena when he read about an open casting call on the picture and answered the ad on a whim. His luck almost matches that of Cathy Moriarty, who went from a receptionist's job to an Oscar nomination for Raging Bull. As Tarzan, Miles O'Keeffe certainly got good exposure, but it will take bigger roles to establish him as a star. He's unquestionably better off than that other newcomer, Klinton Spilsbury, who bombed so completely as the masked man in The Legend of the Lone Ranger that his voice had to be overdubbed by that of James Keach, a man of far greater dramatic abilities if somewhat less conventional good looks.

Meanwhile, back off the ranch, Debra Winger, who got her start in Urban Cowboy, landed another plum role co-starring with Nick Nolte in Cannery Row. Unfortunately, it was at the expense of senior sex star Raquel Welch, fired from the film shortly after it began.

Among the funnymen, Richard Pryor bounced back from personal tragedy to score two gigantic hits, Stir Crazy and Bustin' Loose.Bill Murray chalked up another hit with Stripes, but Chevy Chase came up short with 150 little people in Under the Rainbow.

After years of glory, Robert Redford topped even himself by winning a best-direction Oscar for Ordinary People but remained out of view, while that other super superstar, Burt Reynolds, again proved he can wheel in the cash with a crash in The Cannonball Run. Burt now says he's had it with autos and will join Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Aside from Dolly, who made a smashing start in Nine to Five, it was another rough year for music stars trying to cross over. Neil Diamond was a dud in The Jazz Singer;Ringo Starr and bride Barbara Bach were buried in Caveman; and Paul Simon slipped off his One-Trick Pony. Blondie's Deborah Harry did OK in Union City, but it was a small film; her big test is yet ahead. Although he's had plenty of successful parts in the past, Kris Kristofferson this year had the distinction of starring in one of Hollywood's most monumental financial disasters, Heaven's Gate. Also on the down side, Barbra Streisand took a nonsinging role in All Night Long with Gene Hackman; it barely lasted until morning.

What was supposed to be this year's hottest pairing--that of Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice--failed to answer the door after it was cut and recut to avoid an X rating. Hollywood insiders are enjoying watching the original, steamy version at home, even if the public can't. A much less ballyhooed film, Body Heat, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, turned out to be the picture Postman should have been.

As the year drew to a close, Harrison Ford's Raiders was pulling ahead of Christopher Reeve's Superman II in the box-office wars. Ironically, although Ford had been the handsome hero of two of history's most successful films, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (and had filled parts in Apocalypse Now and American Graffiti, two other monster hits), producer George Lucas didn't even think of him for Raiders. Ford was the last actor Lucas and director Steven Spielberg got around to interviewing.

Cynical and laconic, Ford has already been likened to Humphrey Bogart. That's enough in itself to cause the girls to take notice, and they've been doing it by the thousands, causing some problems for his private life, which he's tried to keep simple since his divorce from his first and only wife (by whom he has two teenage sons).

Ford, in fact, would probably be the first to say he doesn't really care to be a sex star. Sometimes, though, a fella just has no choice.