Sex Stars of 1986

It may say something about the sexual temperature of America in Reagan's Eighties that a fresh-faced, wholesome blonde whose career has heretofore largely been limited to flipping through the alphabet and identifying the loot on a television program should be the number-one throb in the hearts of millions of her countrymen (and -women). But Vanna White, hostess of Wheel of Fortune--a (text continued on page 164) syndicated game show seen daily by some 43,000,000 people, including Mick Jagger and Armand Hammer--has become just that. In other years, a woman who qualified as a sex star was likely to have a steamier image--sleeping with rock musicians or flashing in discos, say--but midway through this decade, times have changed, which is a nice way of saying that nobody's getting any without a great deal of difficulty. Anything beyond the missionary position, and that only with a partner certified celibate for the past five years, is suspect. What better era could there be for Vanna's white-bread appeal?

Even she remains puzzled by her sudden celebrity, which includes an estimated 1000-plus fan letters per week, a best-selling poster, magazine covers and countless demands to appear on talk shows (where she's just as unprovocative as on Wheel of Fortune). She's even writing a book with pop-celebrity co-author Bart Andrews.

Equally squeaky clean is this year's hottest young man, Tom Cruise, who doesn't even do posters. After barring photographers from the set during his bare-chested scenes, Cruise insisted that the sweating male bodies exercising in Top Gun had little to do with the success of the picture, preferring to think that the heavy-breathing ladies in the audience had taken a sudden interest in aviation.

Seeking the truth on behalf of her female friends, L.A. Times writer Pat Broeske returned from a Cruise interview with a disappointing assessment. "Let's set the record straight: Movies do magical things. You can't always believe what you see. He may be playing a masterful, macho part on the screen; but in person, he's not much different from a kid sister's boyfriend.... In Real Life, Cruise comes across as a nice, well-spoken and (dare I say it?) cute 24-year-old--who could play much younger." To Broeske, Cruise disclosed the shattering news that he had been much offended by the nudity and bad language in one of his earlier teen films, Losin' It.

Unquestionably, these people don't agree with Woody Allen, who, when asked "Is sex dirty?" replied, "If you do it right, it is."

As noted in earlier installments of Sex Stars, marriage and babies are on the upswing among newly conservative celebrities. Sean and Madonna Penn, a madcap couple, indeed, have been wed more than a year now, suffering month to month through rumors of impending divorce and/or pregnancy, none of which has proved true. As Sean fought photogs and Madonna made herself over into a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, the world press spent millions of words trying to capture the essence of their appeal. But the liveliest description may have come from an unlikely source: Sylvester Stallone's 64-year-old mother, Jackie, who encountered the Penns in a restaurant. "The worst ratty-looking couple came in," Mom recalled. "She looked like she needed a bath and a flea dip--both of them did. Her clothes were shabby and she had no make-up. Madonna doesn't have much to start with--her features are average."

Mother Stallone's point was that her equally famous son always takes the trouble to dress up in public, owning hundreds of suits to choose from. His bride, Brigitte Nielsen, looks equally good undressed, as two Playboy pictorials have demonstrated. Actually, the Stallones met when she was in New York shooting her first Playboy layout, published in September 1985.

The couple who drew the most fanfare this year attracted world-wide coverage for a royal wedding. Prince Andrew and his bride, Sarah Margaret "Fergie" Ferguson, arrived at the altar with a little less star dust than did Prince Charles and his lovely Di five years ago. Andy, of course, had already earned some notoriety via his well-publicized exploits with soft-porn actress Koo Stark and sexy distraction Vicki Hodge, among others his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was not disposed to accept. Fergie's romantic past was also a bit more eventful than her close chum Di's, having included live-in businessman Kim Smith-Bingham and car racer Paddy McNally. But royalty buffs everywhere seemed more interested in the issue of the robust Ferguson's waistline than in that of her chastity. For many, that just made the Cinderella story more wonderful. It's one thing for a commoner to catch a prince; it's even better to do it without dieting.

Close to home, America's unofficial royal family had two weddings, as Caroline Kennedy (daughter of the late John F. and Jackie O.) married Edwin Schlossberg and J.F.K.'s niece, CBS Morning NewscasterMaria Shriver, married Hollywood muscle man Arnold Schwarzenegger. At first, it was a bicoastal marriage for the Schwarzeneggers, with her working in the East and him in the West. According to Arnold, this required a lot of "over-the-phone sex." After the Morning News pink-slipped Maria, however, she joined NBC as a news correspondent in L.A.

Another favored bachelor, Tony Danza of television's Who's the Boss?, abandoned the field with a marriage to interior designer Tracy Robinson--but not without taking to another field for a Saturday-morning soft-ball game on his wedding day, pitching his team to a 10--4 victory. Among the romantic losers for his attention was former Playboy Bunny Sandi Lee, who moaned, "I would have married him in a second, and I'm not that easily persuaded. Tracy must be perfect...."

Elsewhere on the orange-blossom special, Tatum O'Neal finally wed tennis star John McEnroe, regularizing the home life of their infant son, while dad Ryan O'Neal remained matrimonially undecided about Farrah Fawcett and their young lad. Don Johnson and Patti D'Arbanville seem to have decided to remain single parents of their son, Jesse. Don's keeping company with 18-year-old model Donya Fiorentino when he isn't appearing on magazine covers promoting Miami Vice or his new album, Heartbeat.Debra Winger wed actor Timothy Hutton while they were filming Made in Heaven, ending her long romance with Nebraska governor Bob Kerrey. But the good-natured gov, who jokes about a partially artificial leg left over from Vietnam, had to agree with Statehouse wags who noted that, for a while, at least, Winger "had swept him off his foot."

Others were equally sanguine about their breakups. After a bitter divorce and custody fight, Lorenzo Lamas and ex-wife Michele are often now seen hand in hand with their two children, and chums insist that "they are friendlier now than when they were married." Janet Jackson and James DeBarge are still seen cuddling even though their eight-month marriage was annulled at the urging of her record company, which saw their elopement as a threat to Jackson's "teen idol" status. All of this, DeBarge has said, leaves him "very confused"--understandably.

As for Janet's brother Michael, people stopped talking about his resemblance to Diana Ross after she married Norwegian millionaire Arne Naess, Jr., but Michael's feminine features continued to cause confusion elsewhere. Even though Aliens (concluded on page 246)Sex Stars(continued from page 164) opened to smash business, with Sigourney Weaver getting most of the credit, 20th Century Fox pulled her photo from the advertising. Insiders said she looked too much like Michael, down to the square jaw and spit curl. They were perhaps overreacting to the public's recent hooting rejection of Under the Cherry Moon, starring that other sexually ambiguous star, Prince.

After the outbreak of celebrity marriages in the past couple of years, there was the thunder of little feet running everywhere. All the celebrity parents talked endlessly about how delighted they were, but our favorite fatherly observation came from Ozzy Osbourne. Pater to six, the rocker revealed, "I don't allow certain things in my house. Like, I don't let the children leave their clothes lying around, because where am I going to leave mine?"

Scientifically, it can't be proved that giving birth to daughter Kady two years ago affected Pia Zadora's vocal cords. But after a career of critical drubbings, Pia suddenly found herself enjoying piles of praise for her concerts and records. Zadora regularly takes Kady up to Oregon to watch the games of the Portland Beavers, a baseball team of which she owns a piece. "I go and sing the national anthem," Pia noted, "and then I go in the clubhouse and kick butts."

The big news this year, though, was not marriage and motherhood but the probable lack thereof for women at middle age. A Yale sociology study created a national storm with its conclusion that women not married by 25 have only a 50 percent chance of finding a husband thereafter. More surprisingly, a University of North Dakota survey reported that most college students would prefer that their spouses be virgins on the wedding night. That thought remains foreign to many veterans of the sexual revolution. Said Cybill Shepherd, for one, "I think I'd be in deep, deep trouble if I were married to someone who had no previous sexual experience. My philosophy is, if the shoe fits, wear it. But first try it on to make sure that it fits."

As long as there are lovely ladies shopping for shoes, of course, there will be handsome bachelors quite willing to mind the store, at least temporarily. Still footloose at 30, David Lee Roth says he gets a letter a day that goes something like, "Remember me from three years ago in Peoria? Well, his name is Spike and he needs a bicycle."

Reworking an old joke, bachelor Robert Hays, 35, says he's still looking for a girl "with the patience of a saint, spunk and a head flat enough to set a can of beer on." Of his on-and-off steady, recording engineer Terry Becker, Hays reports, "We split more times than Elvis' pants."

As always, some highly eligible bachelors claim they are too busy to find romance. New to those ranks is Bruce Willis, whose devotion to duty has taken him from tending bar in New York two years ago into the multimillion-dollar income range. Now he's a hit in the Moonlighting TV series, a star in Blake Edwards' movie Blind Date, opposite the incredibly gorgeous Kim Basinger, and a well-paid commercial spokesman for Seagram's Golden wine cooler. At 31, Willis, a onetime wild and crazy guy, bemoans a work schedule that gets him up before dawn and returns him home after dark. There's speculation that he'll at least get some action on the tube. His co-star, the sexy Shepherd, confessed to Rolling Stone that she "can't wait to get horizontal."

Cybill's remark is intriguing, but our favorite Sex Star quote of the year came from the aforementioned Basinger. Responding to Time magazine's Richard Corliss, who had panned her performance opposite Sam Shepard in Fool for Love by claiming that there were 46 other American actresses who could have done it better, Kim allowed as how, if she should meet Corliss, "I'm gonna grab him by the balls and say, 'OK, name 'em!' "

And what would Sex Stars be without Brooke Shields? Our favorite Princeton coed has been busy filming Brenda Starr. At a press conference for the movie, she failed to endear herself to the media by observing that she has "spiced up" the role so it wouldn't be as dull as real reporters' lives.

Marriage, babies, too-busy bachelors and a sex goddess born on a game show. That's what showbiz has become--and what do you suppose Dr. Ruth Westheimer, something of a new sex star herself, would make of all that? She might conclude that it fit somewhere on the sexual cycle, that sweetness and light inevitably had to follow 20 years of libidinous excess.

Still, they can't keep the good stuff hidden forever. Remembering the Fifties, we know what's really going on behind those happy façades. Sooner or later, scandal will rear its ugly head again, shocking the moral sensibilities of a nation.

We can hardly wait.

Two in Orbit

The popularity of Tom Cruise, hero of the ultrapatriotic movie Top Gun (with Kelly McGillis, inset), and of Vanna White, apple-pie-fresh hostess of TV's game show Wheel of Fortune (that's her poster, inset), may symbolize sex in the Reagan era: a return to innocence.

Networking

Television--prime-time and daytime--is home to these stellar personalities. Romantic sparks fly when Cybill Shepherd, as Maddie Hayes, matches wits with Bruce Willis, as David Addison, on ABC's Moonlighting every Tuesday night. Friday evenings over at NBC, Don Johnson continues to rule the ratings on Miami Vice; but fans of Kathy Shower, supermom and Playmate of the Year, may miss her on Santa Barbara this season: She has taken off to make films, beginning in January with Bloodhounds, opposite David Keith.

Video Visions

Now that one in every three TV owners has a VCR and more than 41,000,000 get cable, stars multiply via tape and satellite. Among them: MTV favorites Grace Jones (here in Vamp gear), Vanity, whose video boosted her Skin on Skin LP up the charts, and Whitney Houston, whose debut album was history's hottest. Lifetime cable's Good Sex! With Doctor Ruth inspired Film Comment's editors to pose Dr. Westheimer as a gatefold girl.

Getting Physical

Actor/muscle man Arnold Schwarzenegger took himself off the eligible list by marrying Maria Shriver but was replaced by Dolph Lundgren, whose engagement to Grace Jones fizzled. Arnold's latest were Commando and Raw Deal; Dolph's next film is Masters of the Universe. Sybil Danning, the macha warden of Reform School Girls, also hosts her own Adventure Video movie series. "I show that women can be intelligent, beautiful and physically powerful," she says.

Good Sports

The Bears' bad boy, Super Bowl champion quarter-back Jim McMahon, may play around on the field, but he says the only key to this strategically placed padlock belongs to his wife, Nancy. Cubs ball girl Marla Collins was booted by management harrumphers after she bared all for a September Playboy layout. But Marla's faithful fans, who had caught her on cablecasts from Chicago's Wrigley Field, pitched in with job offers. Shapely Heather Thomas has gone from being The Fall Guy's stunt-woman side-kick and a commercial spokesperson for a chain of health clubs to making movies (Deathstone, Cyclone).

Cover Girls

A $100,000 prize was June 1985 Playmate Devin DeVasquez' reward as Star Search's champion spokes-model. Also winners: this month's cover girl and Hollywood's Brenda Starr, Brooke Shields; last month's Playboy Gallery girl, Paulina Porizkova, a regular in Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue.

Rare Pairs

Rock-'em Madonna and sock-'em Sean Penn can't help making news, from art class to courtroom to concert stage to mixed reviews for their new film, Shanghai Surprise. Playboy pictorial subject Brigitte Nielsen won Sylvester Stallone and roles in his movies Rocky IV and Cobra. But the courtship that really hooked celebrity watchers around the world was that of H.R.H. Prince Andrew, the duke of York, and his new duchess, the former Sarah Margaret Ferguson.

The Sophisticates

More overtly sexual in their appeal than either Cruise or White are Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger, who'll be teamed after Christmas in Blake Edwards' Blind Date (inset, opposite page). Willis is best known as Cybill Shepherd's partner in Moonlighting (inset, this page); Basinger has made four films in little more than a year, with Fool for Love and 9-1/2 Weeks already out, No Mercy, with Richard Gere, due soon.

Coming on Strong

Keep an eye on Kelly McGillis, who made her mark opposite Harrison Ford in 1985's Witness and scored again this year as Cruise's lady in Top Gun, and on Rob Lowe, who recovered handily from two flabby sports films (Oxford Blues and Young-blood) with a hit in About Last Night....

"Most college students would prefer that their spouses be virgins on the wedding night."