Carroll Baker's merit as an actress

Oops, meant to link this photo

“Baby Doll” was fantastic; just saw it recently and was shocked and completely blown away by how unexpectedly magnetic (and even sexy?) Eli Wallach was in it....

Came out of left field and was not a performance I thought possible from him!

Carroll Baker was good in it too, but the character does not have enough of her own personality to know if Baker was a *great* actress.

She was great with Eli in it though; here is a still. You have to really see them in motion to see how good they are together, but here is a glimpse at least...

(And why was Baker blacklisted?!? Was this Elia Kazan’s doing...🤔)

R3 no, she was blacklisted after a producer at Paramount named Joseph Levine tried to gerrymander her career/image and allegedly treated her like she was his mistress. She fought back about it and to my understanding, he basically smeared her name in Hollywood. She sued him over her contract and he had Paramount fire her and suspend her paycheck for "Harlow." After that, she wasn't really able to find work in the U.S., so she went to Italy and made a bunch of garbage giallo movies before working her way back into more serious material in the '80s.

Here's Carroll dolled up in Harlow garb to promote the movie, with Levine to her left. He was short, fat, and ugly, so I'm speculating that she refused to fuck him and he probably responded by having Paramount fire her.

Wow, R4, never heard that before; that is super depressing....Poor Carroll :(

I don’t care if actors or actors in Hollywood choose to whore around but they should not be forced to or be forced to prostitutes for producers...

So disgusting.

She looked more like Harlow in that publicity picture than she did in the actual movie which didn't try to hard to recreate the 1930's as in this scene in which Harlow has to fend off producer "Richard Manly" (aka Howard Hughes).

I liked Carroll Baker. Something Wild is her best film.

Always a favorite.....the thinking man's sex symbol.

She was better in The Carpetbaggers as a Harlow-ish star. And I liked her in Giant.

Her autobiography Baby Doll is very interesting. Levine did try to act like she was his mistress and her husband - director Jack Garfein - played along with it. She turned down a lot of movies, including The Three Faces of Eve.

Their son Herschel is a composer and wrote an opera based on Elmer Gantry when he was on the faculty at the Brooklyn Academy of Music....I think he teaches somewhere else in NYC now. Daughter Blanche Baker is married but makes short films....

I like her in most everything she has done. Her turn in Star 80 was wonderful as was her work in Ironweed, The Game, and Kindergarten Copy.

And Bad!

She used to do the autograph shows and had a kind of New York-Actors Studio seriousness about her, but she was always pleasant and talked to everyone who wanted to talk to her. She doesn't go in for plastic surgery or phonies....and she should have an Academy Award for Baby Doll or Bad......

Yup....long time fan. As an actress, she was as good as her director was.

Her blacklisting as she described it in her book:

Paramount wanted to tie her up for several films after the success of The Carpetbaggers. Her contract was still being worked on even after Harlow had been completed and flopped at the box office. The producers wanted nothing to do with her. She sued them for the money remaining on the contract.

It was a long court battle and the judge eventually ruled in favor of what Paramount says was just an agreement for the one film and not a contract for others.

And then, because that wasn't enough for them - Paramount sued her for the remaining films on the contract - which they were never going to make - and they claimed she owed them for.

The judge said - so there was a contract after all.....and gave Carroll all her money....she couldn't believe her good luck. Some junior lawyer at Paramount had thought they could walk all over her AND stomp her into the ground.

Of course no American studio would touch her after that.

Photo from 2011

I think she was a good actress, but she was miscast as Harlow, showing none of Harlow's snap and verve. Baker seemed dreary and dour throughout, which probably was mainly due to the cheesy screenplay and bad direction.

I'll give her a '10' for cocksucking. No gag reflex and she swallowed.

In your dreams, Gadge.

Terrific in Baby Doll. Sylvia, with hunky George Maharis, is fun, with a cast of veteran stars.

A good, lesser-known film of hers is "Bridge to the Sun," with hot (and gay?) James Shigeta, based on the true story of a White American woman who marries a Japanese man right before WW2.

^^^That farewell scene at the end is really touching.

She was robbed of an Oscar for Bad.

John Ford liked her. She did good work for him in How the West Was Won and Cheyenne Autumn. In HTWWW she played a romantically inclined young woman who ages into a weary farmwife. Her farewell scene with George Peppard as her son who’s eager to go to war is very touching.

Baby Doll is one of my favorites. I love how Caroll Baker says “I am a reader of mah-ga-zines”

Was she Luz 2 in Giant?

Rex Reed wrote a wonderful profile in the 1970’s that’s in one of his interview collections. In the profile Raquel Welch was quoted as saying Baker wouldn’t be sexy even if she was tied up and spread eagled! Apparently Baker was still considered competition by Welch.

Her worst work was on Murder She Wrote. Didn't even try.

Van, Carroll not trying is better than you trying anyday.

I think R8 described her perfectly as the "thinking man's sex symbol." She was absolutely beautiful, but did offbeat and challenging work that made her a bit of an outsider in the Hollywood community I think. She seems to have been well-respected by her peers, but the blacklisting at Paramount did irreparable damage to her career.

Ditto on the Harlow makeup. She did some phenomenal promo shots before the production started where she was made up as Harlow, and she looked uncannily like her. I don't know what the fuck the filmmakers were thinking when they got around to shooting, because her makeup and the way she looks in the finished film is a disaster.

She was a beauty. She could look very glamourous or school girl pretty.

I think that it was the usual Hollywood anachronistic approach to fashion in "historical" films. You just wouldn't see an actress in real 30s makeup in 1965. Too bad.

I met Carroll Baker in the early 1980s when the publisher I worked for published her autobiography, which was called, not surprisingly, "Baby Doll." She was very nice and very personable, even when the guy who worked in the mail room gushed about how much he liked her in Andy Warhol's "Bad." She just smiled and said, "I guess it does have a certain cult following."

Glad to hear that. I was also glad to read in her book that she fucked Ben Gazarra.

R27 was she smaller in person, as so many film actors seem to be?

I've always wanted to do this.

a riveting performance here, interesting work

Yes R19 she was Luz 2 in Giant....it was her second film.....

I am loving all of these wonderful comments about her.

She writes in her book that HARLOW started out to be a great project - directed by Carroll Reed....but when Bill Sargent decided to make a knock off version, Paramount got scared and rushed her movie into production. All research and authenticity went out the window when Paramount gave the movie to Levine to produce.

There is no resemblance to Harlow - physically or otherwise - in it. None of Harlow's films are mentioned by name and neither are her co-stars or studios.

Paul Bern - her second husband is around but only as a prop. I especially hate that Harlow is portrayed as a drunk on her way down at the time of her death when she really was at the TOP of popularity. Of course the 60's hairstyles and fashions do no one any favors.

The Carol Lynley version (it's on YouTube) names more names, but it's pretty dismal....even with Ginger Rogers as Mama Jean....

I think Harlow's mother was a Christian Scientist, as was Rogers. Also, Rogers had her own stage mother, the rightwing Leila.

Meryl in Baby Doll.....

Let's not forget....

[quote]R27 was she smaller in person, as so many film actors seem to be?

Not especially, R29. Someone else I met once who did surprise me by seeming quite small was Linda Evans, who as Krystle seemed almost statuesque, but who looked quite tiny in person.

^^ According to IMDb, Carroll is 5'5" (though she's obviously has lost a bit of that by now with age). She never looked short to me onscreen so I'm not surprised. She had an amazing body in her prime—a stunning woman, really.

Did anyone ever see Baba Yaga? It's an utter campfest and a pretty awful movie, but it had Carroll playing a lesbianic witch who sets her sights on a fashion photographer (Isabelle de Funes). It was one of the films she made in Italy. Not particularly good, but fun at least.

I think one of her foreign films was with the lovely Jean Sorel (Deneuve 's husband in "Belle de Jour"). Maybe "The Sweet Body of Deborah"?

Carroll Baker was a fairly serious actress but was saddled by the studios to be a blond sex symbol. She would have had a longer and more successful career if she had been allowed to spread her wings and really act.

Carroll's role in The Carpetbaggers was garbage. Although the movie was a huge hit it did nothing for her or her career and she soon disappeared from the silver screen.

She was quite good in a small role as Dorothy Stratten's mother in "Star 80," the last movie directed by Bob Fosse. Released in 1983, the same year her autobiography was published.

Her early career certainly showed great promise, with "A" movies such as "Giant," before going off with rails with "The Carpetbaggers" and "Harlow."

She had the "serious New York actress" street cred backing her because she came from the Actors Studio. I think it's a shame that Hollywood producers tried to shunt her into the blonde bombshell thing. Her early films were all very good, all the way up to the underrated (and under-seen) "Station Six-Sahara." After "The Carpetbaggers," though, it was a downhill slide. She did have a bit of a comeback in the '80s though, plus her role in "Bad" further cemented her as a cult figure.

Fun fact: Carroll and Marilyn Monroe were friends, having met at the Actors Studio. Tennessee Williams actually wanted Marilyn for the role in "Baby Doll," but it ended up going to Baker after Elia Kazan saw her on Broadway. Marilyn showed up at the film's premiere and worked as an usherette selling tickets in support of Baker and the film.

Baker had a rough start even with the accolades she got for Baby Doll. The Catholic National Legion of Decency set out on a crusade against the film for it being too "racy," and Francis Spellman, archbishop of New York, denounced the film during a sermon at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. It was very controversial, which is hilarious by today's standards as it's so tame. That being said, Baker and Eli Wallach do muster some intense sexual tension during that swing scene.

"Dizzy and fizzy..."

She was on the first season of the original Roswell as a grandmother and she was really terrible. Couldn't even say her lines with conviction.

Wasn't true she couldn't stand George Peppard ?

Who could?

This thread is making my head spin!

A few years ago I went on a Carroll Baker bender and watched almost everything she ever did. She was often great, sometimes so-so. Always riveting. I'm fascinated by this woman and her jaded, rocky acting career spanning back to the golden age of Hollywood. A unique filmography that is probably now the envy of many.

I still haven't read her autobiography. I must!

...and I'd hardly call the Italian horror/exploitation films she did "garbage giallos" as a poster above identified them. Some are better than others. She worked with Umberto Lenzi for Christ's sake! Italian giallos are a whole different way of thinking about film, as Baker herself has correctly pointed out in interviews.

At first I was thinking this was about Carroll O'Connor

Why?

So true R51 - she played love scenes opposite James Dean, Clark Gable, Robert Mitchum, and James Stewart......and she played the wife of Jack Nicholson .... that's quite a resume.

And she was terrific in Kindergarten Cop and The Game....

We haven't even touched on her recording career!

What she said about Peppard:

As I understand it, [he] later became a nice guy, a gentleman, but when we worked together back then, he was pretentious, egotistical, a brat and an asshole--and that's just for starters! He pretended he was seven years younger than he was; he even claimed to be a bachelor and denied he was married--in front of me (I knew better), he denied their existence. The role of Jonas Cord in "The Carpetbaggers" really went to his big head. He acquired delusions of grandeur--thought he was God's gift to women and the movies! His attitude towards me was very bizarre--he acted as though we'd never met! Or that I had a husband! George asked not "if" but "when" we could be intimate together! He came to my house uninvited with an ultimatum--if I don't have an affair with him, he'll have an affair with Elizabeth Ashley! Can you believe this guy? He was totally jealous of any and all attention I received!

LOL.....R55 I wonder how many people think they are one and the same?

"Carroll Baker wouldn't be sexy even if she was tied spread eagled to a bed." - Raquel Welch

"Who SAYS something like that?" - Carrol

P.S. I never liked her voice. Too clipped even in dramatic moments. Got in the way.

Carroll Baker will be 88 this May 28th.

May 28 is her BIRTHDAY.

Tomorrow!

Andy Warhol said something really bitchy about her in his "Diaries". I'll have to look it up.

And Andy was usually so kind!

There was a lttle wavering catch she could do with her voice that was arresting. Exemplified, IIRC, by "Oh, it doesn't matter" spoken in "The Miracle." I also like the way she says her last line in "Baby Doll": "We'll see if we've been remembered. Or forgot."

I’m sorry, but Baker’s exploitative husband/manager Jack Garfein destroyed her career. She was a naturally beautiful actress in “Baby Doll,” “Giant,” “The Big Country” : she had the profile of a Greek goddess from an ancient statue. She had talent and great potential. It’s her husband that convinced her to get an unnecessary nose job that made her look like everyone else and to take increasingly sexual roles in commercial trash to fast-track her to stardom. “Harlow” was a disaster (and had box office competition from a lower-budget version with Carol Lynley) and everyone was sick of how hard she was trying to be noticed: she was the Sylvia Miles of the ‘60s. And the industry hated the way Jean Harlow, who had been loved by all, was slandered in those movies. They blacklisted Carroll and hubby after that, but not before she had made her own career a shambles.

WTF are you talking about? She never had a nose job. Link to before and after please. And the "industry" blacklisted her for her portrayal of Harlow, who had died 30 years earlier? Get your head out of your ass.

Blacklisted???

She didn't work because she was BEYOND DREADFUL in The Carpetbaggers, Harlow and Sylvia. And, though perhaps not her fault, she was saddled with an artificial platinum blonde image that was totally out of style, even by the mid-1960s. Hollywood was changing rapidly by1967 and there was no place for her in the that new world.

I LOVED her in Sylvia! Of course having Maharis in only a towel helped. And Ann Sothern's sweet cameo.

Question for the eldergays here:

Did you just ignore George Maharis' awful toupee like you did with Burt Reynolds 10 years later?

Burt Reynolds' toupees became increasingly preposterous the older he got.

Lots of people have terrible things to say about Peppard. He seems to have been a parody of an egotistical narcissistic backstabbing temper tantrum throwing matinee idol. Also a dangerous nightmare. Had a real crush on him at one time. Then when very young had a hook up with a guy who claimed to be a close friend of Ashley's. He gave me the low down on Peppard. Later everything people said about him only confirmed the horribleness of what this hook up told me.

R59 lol she looks like the aging Michelle Phillips in that pic.

Wow, she looks very Harlow in that still with the hair and make-up, and yet in the movie she had a 1960s cotton candy bouffant and 1960s make-up.

The poster who called Baker's Italian Giallos garbage is trolling, OP.

Baker made some very good movies in Italy.

If you're curious bout Carroll Baker, the Italian thrillers are worth checking out.

"Knife of Ice" is a good place to start.

I read the behind the scenes scuttlebut on the set of Giant filming in Marfa and hollywood. Eliz Taylor and Rock Hudson were of the opinion Dean was a stronger actor and stealing the show and they wanted him brought down to size. So they snuggled up to Carroll Baker( who they considered a great actress) off camera to see if she couldnt knock Dean down a peg or two on the screen.

I only really remember Baker in Harlow................its was panned by the critics but I loved her in it.

Per R72, Carroll on working with George Peppard:

[quote]As I understand it, George Peppard later became a nice guy, a gentleman, but when we worked together back then, he was pretentious, egotistical, a brat, and an asshole... He pretended he was seven years younger than he was; he even claimed to be a bachelor and denied he was married—in front of me

Oops, just saw R56

A rather iconic fan encounter with Carroll regarding one of the Italian films she made

Carroll's first husband was Louie R. Ritter, a furrier and owner of Madison Avenue's Weylin Hotel, whom she married in 1953 when she was 21 and he was 54. They met a year earlier, when she was a chorus girl and he, a willing sugar daddy, showered young Carroll with clothes, furs, and diamonds, and let her stay at the Weylin free of charge. He accompanied her to California to screen test for Joe Pasternak for a small part in the Esther Williams feature "Easy to Love," and bribed the film crew with furs.

But several months later, Caroll would enroll at the Actors Studio, where she would meet Jack Garfein and fall in love. She was off to Mexico to get a quickie divorce, then shacked up with Garfein, whom she would marry in 1955, at a ceremony in Lee and Paula Strasberg's NY apartment.

Among her illustrious paramours were Ben Gazzara, Harry Guardino, Franco Nero, and Italian Prince Carlo Borromeo, whose daughter would marry Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco.

Prior to her contract with Paramount, Carroll had tried to buy out her contract with Warner Bros to go freelance. Columnists used to write near weekly items about her, describing how difficult she was on movie sets.

She was no Diane Baker!

We need more comments that are as trenchant as that of R73. STAT!

She was no Josephine Baker!

Her daughter Blanche Baker created the role of Shelby (Julia Roberts) in the original off-Broadway production of Steel Magnolias, which also featured DL fave Margo Martindale in the role Dolly Parton eventually played (spacing on the character's name....flame me!)

Plus her daughter won an Emmy for Holocaust the miniseries.

Truvy ,R85

Blanche was great in "Sixteen Candles". Not so great in anything after it.

She's certainly no ME!

She was no Mary Baker Eddy!

She was no Chet Baker!

I'm just a bit early but May 28 is Carroll Baker's birthday and she will be 88 years old.

I tried to pick out a non sex symbol photo of her. Here she is with Jimmy Stewart and Debbie Reynolds (Carroll is on the right) in How The West Was Won. She and Debbie were friends in real life.

Happy Birthday Carroll!!

What on earth is your problem R67? I said the nose job was unnecessary, didn’t I? Nevertheless, she went from having a high nose bridge to having a little scooped-out nose, because Garfein told her she would look better. Both Harlow films were considered trash, and there were still plenty of veterans who remembered Harlow when she was a top star, and were turned off by the films (particularly as both were flops that received scathing reviews)..

Garfein over-sexualized Baker’s image and they sold her too hard as a sexpot. She was showing up to premieres in see-through gowns with her tits hanging out. It was distasteful to people, it reeked of desperation, and Hollywood felt her husband was virtually pimping her out, trying to reproduce the Vadim/Bardot dynamic in Hollywood. It didn’t work. It was a huge turnoff to columnists, the press, the industry.

I've always liked her. She could be really great or really terrible, depending on the film or the role or director.

She was no J. Carrol Naish.

Carroll Baker's Italian movies were also sexualized. A scene form Paranoia.

Who is her co-star there, r96? He looks just like Robert Wagner.

from Orgasmo.

I'm not r67 but I'd also challenge you to post pre- and post-nose job photos, r93.

It's not so much that I doubt it happened but I just don't see any difference in the early and later photos.

R97 that's the lovely French actor Jean Sorel.

"...I just don't see any difference..."

That's probably because there is none.

R100 The handsome Jean Sorel.

Mon dieu, Sorel is hot. Reminds me a little of Ian Ogilvie.

Sorel played Claudia Cardinale's incestuous brother in Luchino Visconti's "Sandra" (Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa).

She was no Carroll Nye!

Was it in a review for Harlow where she was panned as the new bomb blondeshell? I always remembered that one.

She was no Carroll Gardens!

I adore her. And her memoir BABY DOLL is very well written...better than most.

The reason her career didn’t go further is because after 2 big respected films, her studio kept wanting her to do trashy/sexy parts like TOO MUCH, TOO SOON and some Erskine Caldwell adaptations. She reluctantly agreed to do THE MIRACLE, about a nun who abandons her church to become a kept flamenco dancer (really), but then she hated the final cut and bought her way out of her contract.

The momentum following her Oscar nom had been lost, and her studio had refused to lend her out for CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, THE THREE FACES OF EVE, and THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE. She became strictly B List after that.

Sometimes you just have a short window of time in which to make it really big.

THE MIRACLE

David McCallum and lovely Carroll Baker in Disney’s “The Watcher in the Woods” (1980).

^^ Love "The Watcher in the Woods." Carroll has a small-ish part in it, but gets to share the screen with Bette Davis. I first saw this movie when I was a kid—I rented it from the video store because it sounded spooky, and my parents approved because it was a Disney VHS. Talk about misleading. It fucked me up so bad I had to sleep on my parents' floor for a week. As an adult, I adore it, but it still has images in it that are truly horrifying, especially for young kids.

She’s no Tammy Faye Bakker!

In Carroll's earlier films, up to "How the West Was Won" she is pretty, but wholesome looking and non-threatening. Even in the scandalous "Baby Doll," there is a childlike innocence about her. This also may have made her easily castable and versatile, playing ranch wives, rape victims, and overseas brides. Then with "Station Six Sahara" in 1963 and thereafter, she was clearly marketed as a sexpot. The problem is by the early '60s there was a glut of curvy sexpots in Hollywood and they couldn't all be in A+ pictures. Also, the Hollywood studios were churning out "racy" fare to try to compete with European films, but they couldn't quite break the taboos that European filmmaker were doing. The results were often films like "The Carpetbaggers" or "The Pleasure Seekers," which tried to titillate audiences with adult subject matter, but ended up being shallow, formulaic studio pictures.

Boney My sang an homage to her.

Odd side note: the film ORGASMO was called PARANOIA in the U.S., and got an X rating. Though in 1969 it didn't take much to earn one.

The film PARANOIA was called A QUIET PLACE TO KILL in the U.S.

Wow. Well, Carroll certainly never married for looks! Here is Carroll and second husband Jack Garfein in a wedding photograph....

I saw Carroll Baker a few years ago at Film Forum for a post screening Q and A following Something Wild. Though a bit hard of hearing she was still quite sharp and the audience enjoyed it. A few people also asked her questions about Ironweed.

R116 her Emmy winning daughter looks like the ugly husband.

I expected John Garfein to look like John Garfinkle. He's anything but.

"I didn't sign it. (2...3...4...) I never would have signed it."

Garfein made the very odd and homo-erotic indie, "The Strange One" with Ben Gazzara--it's on the festival circuit and worth seeing.

Imagine naming your kids Blanche and Herschel--in the 20s, maybe, but not in the 50s or 60s.

R118 - that drag queen is Paul Gilbert, adoptive father of & Melissa & Jonathan - but not Sarah.

Happy Birthday, Carroll!

Blanche and Herschell were both family names....

Her daughter Blanche is lovely. The son is a musician. Garfein survived 5 concentration camps. Tough guy still with us.

In that wedding pic the Baker nose is the one we knows.

I know it's pure trash, but I adore her in Kindergarten Cop. She made a great villainess.

I'm your fairy godmother!

In "The Strange One" Gazzara is vile and sizzling. There's a shower scene where his sleek torso and a bit of upper butt are on tantalizing display.

Pre-bun Julie....

R130, thanks for that testosterone blast.

Sounds like she painted herself into a corner by allowing her image to become so sexualized. She probably made a calculation that it was the only way it was going to happen for her, and she'd have to accept the consequences.

Happy 88th to Carroll; glad she's still with us. She did a fantastic audio interview for the Criterion release of Something Wild a couple years ago. Still sounded sharp and witty then. I've always thought she had a unique voice. I'm guessing she opted for the audio interview for the sake of vanity, but God bless her.

R132 I don't know if that's entirely true, as it had already sort of "happened" for her before she started appearing in those sexpot roles. She'd already had Oscar and BAFTA noms, plus winning a Golden Globe. It wasn't like she was unproven talent. I think the sex-siren image probably started subtly and quickly became something she couldn't control. I've never believed Carroll set out to make a name for herself as some sexpot starlet, because her early work, training, and background all point to the opposite. I think she was a talented, serious-minded actress who got waylaid by the studio system because she also happened to be beautiful.

The issues with her sexpot desperation were that they happened too late in the American cultural landscape and the public had moved on from taking platinum blonde MM copies seriously by the mid-1960s.

Were there any other blonde sexpot MM copies who were more successful than Baker? NO, because the type had become a tired stereotype by then.

I have sexpot desperation!

Yes, I know it's neath my station

As a budding method actress

But I must blondine my black tress.

And forget about the Chekhov--

I must get my bra the heck off.

Was Bad any good?

I liked her in Star 80 as DorothyStratten’s mother.

"Must get my bra the heck off"?

I was lucky enough to sit next to her at a Christmas dinner party in Palm Springs about 20 years ago. I've always loved her, and gushingly told her so. She was flattered and very sweet about it (blathering idiot unfortunately seated next to her and all). She was very down to earth and lovely.

As someone else said above, the quality of her performances depended a lot on the scripts and the director. She had a very short window in the 50's and early 60's when she did decent to very good films. He output in the 80's and 90's was variable as well, but she was good in STAR 80 & THE GAME, and excellent in IRONWEED.

R138, BAD is full of very dark humor and a few shock scenes, but the direction is lackluster and the film drags after a while.

I saw BRIDGE TO THE SUN last summer and she's very good in it, but the film is just OK. Only seen one of her giallo films - PARANOIA (aka ORGASMO) and it was mostly dull and sloppily made. Not suspenseful for a moment.

As far as I know, she didn't do any stage work once she started in films.

Perry King is in Bad, too? And Susan Tyrrell? Seems like a must see. King was so gorgeous and Tyrrell is probably one of the most endlessly fascinating and watchable actresses of all time.

In 1964/65 she was quite busy in films. Either making pictures emphasizing her platinum blonde sexpot image (Carpetbaggers, Sylvia, Harlow) with roles in which she played more wholesome types (How the West Was Won, Cheyenne Autumn, Mister Moses and a cameo in Greatest Story Ever Told). But Levine, Paramount and her husband certainly promoted the sexpot side of her more and thought that's where she'd make their money for them. But changing styles and that competing Harlow production spelled doom for her as a sex symbol star. BTW, Cheyenne Autumn and Mister Moses are decent films and she's good in them.

Her IBDB page.....

Carroll headlined a road show production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in 1966.

Is Mister Moses the film that got her the cover of LIFE Magazine, dancing with a couple of Masai warriors? IIRC that was a hugely popular issue and got her a lot of publicity even though I don't think the film was ultimately particularly popular (or memorable). I don't even remember who played Mister Moses. Robert Mitchum maybe?

I think part of her initial appeal in the mid-1960s was because of a wrongheaded desperation in Hollywood to replace Marilyn Monroe. But it was also Baker's downfall as she bore no resemblance on any level to Monroe (much less Jean Harlow).

Something so touching about IBDB entries. That's all that remains of those shows, all the work and hope that went into them. Most of the actors dead. No longer living in their chic but modest little East Side flats and hanging out at the local,coffee shop with their other single friends who sometimes go back to Wilkes Barre or Duluth for Christmas, when their married siblings who never left show off their kids to Uncle Bob or Aunt Jane.

Carroll Baker was not the first choice for the female lead in The Carpetbaggers. Even one of the producers joked in front of a crowd that there was no one else left for the role so they gave it to Carroll.

Wouldn't been better had she turned it down.

Her memoir Baby Doll is one of the best that I've ever read.

R151, actually the joke concerned Harlow. She discusses it in her book. There was a big PR event announcing Harlow in which the gates of Paramount would be opened for the first time in a long time. Baker was to be dressed as Harlow and go through the gates in a 1930's luxury car with wolfhounds on her side as well as producer Joseph E. Levine. According to Baker, the emcee announced "Isn't there anyone more suited to play the role of Jean Harlow then Carroll Baker?" Apparently Otto Preminger, who was there, yelled out "Of course not, everyone else who could play the part is dead!". Baker said she laughed at the tastelessness and audacity of Preminger.

As for The Carpetbaggers, Baker said she was at a party when Levine approached her and said he had a role in his upcoming production that would be her best part since Baby Doll. She agreed there on the spot and then found out she was cast as Rina Marlowe in The Carpetbaggers, based on the massive selling novel by Harold Robbins. The picture was the top box office draw of 1964 and while it got terrible reviews, Baker was back on top, momentarily, and signed a contract with Paramount with the aim of doing the Harlow bio-pic. The same year the move The Carpetbaggers came out, the trashy Irving Shulman book "Harlow an Intimate Biography" (in which much of it was poorly researched and fictionalized) was a huge best seller. So at least in 1964 there seemed to be a large audience for platinum blonde bombshells and trashy stories about Hollywood in the 30's. So it made sense to make a bio pic about Harlow starring Carroll Baker who was a big part of The Carpetbaggers, a trashy story set in 1930's Hollywood.

R130 I didn't know that Stormy Daniels was a legit actress!

R156

Neither did I.

"I don't even remember who played Mister Moses. Robert Mitchum maybe?"

Yep, it was Mitchum.

Btw, I LOVE The Strange One.

And George Peppard is in it.

Wasn't Peppard, among other things, a drunk?

IIRC Elizabeth Ashley's autobiography, I think it's just called ACTRESS, was pretty no-holds-barred. But I don't remember if she wrote much or at all about Carroll Baker and their interactions on The Carpetbaggers.

Carroll Baker and her third husband Donald Burton did some theatre in London and she did some stock appearances....but no Broadway as is shown in her IBDB listing above.

She is pretty philosophical about her "sex siren" image in her book and writes that as her reputation as a sexy woman soared....her personal sex life went to hell because her husband was busy promoting her career and ignoring her....

I liked her in The Carpetbaggers, but the fact that they didn't include Rina's death scene - including a reconciliation with Jonas Cord - in the hospital was a great disappointment. I was looking forward to it....as my 13 year old self.....and they skipped it.....Virginia Graham (!) says; "She's dead....she died twenty minutes ago....."

I think Alan Ladd's role in that was one of his last.

Yup his very last.....movie role....

In her memoir does she write about her social life while living in Italy? That was quite a magnificent time at Cinecitta and many international film stars called Rome home.

She ends the book with moving to Italy. Perhaps she planned a sequel.

She did do a novel called A ROMAN TALE (didn’t read) about an actress in Italy, so some experiences must have ended up in that.