/ Pictured: Carroll Baker in the sixties /
My quick thoughts on the fascinating but
problematic Hollywood Reporter podcast interview on 6 July 2021 with the
fabulous Carroll Baker, who I venerate as a trash cinema goddess. (I call her
that with love! It’s a high compliment!). The profile is meant to commemorate the 65th anniversary of Baker's film debut (actually, Baker's show biz roots stretch all the way back to the dying days of vaudeville!) ... but it goes in an unexpected direction towards the end!
90-year-old Baker is impressively sharp-witted, extremely articulate and has a treasure trove of juicy anecdotes from fifties and sixties
Hollywood. Some highlights:
Baker was offered the Natalie Wood part in Rebel
without a Cause (1955) - but turned it down because she disliked the script!
There was talk of Baker playing Madge in Picnic
(1955), but studio mogul Harry Cohn’s protegee Kim Novak got the role instead (Baker
makes a rare bitchy dig at another actress here: “Kim Novak couldn’t act!”).
On Giant (1956): Baker and James Dean were
already friends from their Actors Studio classes in New York, but once they
made Giant together, the social-climbing Dean swiftly dropped her to befriend
the more famous Elizabeth Taylor. Baker admits that at the time, she disparaged
the acting ability of Hollywood movie stars Taylor and Rock Hudson (whereas she
and Dean had "serious" Method training). Looking back now, to her credit Baker admits
she was a snob and appreciates how genuinely good their performances were.
Later, when Baker inexplicably rejected the
role of Maggie in the 1958 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof, Taylor was ecstatic, telling her, “Carroll! You’ve given me a whole
new career!” Which was true: Cat reinvented Taylor as a gutsy, risk-taking overtly
sexual adult actress (and began Taylor's fruitful association with Tennessee Williams).
Baker is eloquent and sympathetic regarding
her peer Marilyn Monroe. She recalls how Monroe would drink straight vodka and
pop Seconals while partying with the Ratpack, then at the end of the night the
men would simply pour her into a cab and send her home, so she found Monroe’s
death grimly inevitable.
/ Pictured: Baker as a young starlet around the time of
Baby Doll /
Obviously, Baker is asked about her most
famous movie Baby Doll (1956), but I loved hearing her discuss the underrated avant-garde
Something Wild (1961). Baker’s ultra kitsch sex kitten-era films The Carpetbaggers (1964),
Sylvia (1965) and Harlow (1965) are routinely dismissed as dreck – but I happen to love
them! Her post-Hollywood Italian filmography is entirely skimmed over.
Then interviewer Scott Feinberg mentions
Harvey Weinstein and inquires whether Baker ever encountered “the casting couch”.
She volunteers, “My heart is broken for Bill Cosby … he’s a wonderful human
being”, does some horrifying victim-blaming and asserts, “He’s a very sexy
man!” Oh, Carroll!
/ Baker (and her sequined nipples) around the time of
The Carpetbaggers (1964) /
Listen for yourself here.
Further reading:
My reflections on Something Wild (1961).
My reflections on Harlow (1965).
My reflections on Andy Warhol's BAD (1977).
