/ 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.
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).
She's right. Kim Novak couldn't act. Jx
ReplyDeleteWell, you had me right up until the Cosby comments... but then, she's another generation, so perhaps that is why she doesn't 'get it?' I still adore her. And you're right about Harlow. So much fun. Thanks for sharing the fun facts, too. News to me. She's gorgeous, isn't she? Kizzes.
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