DVR ALERT

Set those timers for Thursday July 12 at 4:15pm as TCM will be presenting a rare airing of the amusing sex comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree starring Jack Lemmon and Carol Lynley giving a wonderfully charming performance as a coed who tries to live platonically with her boyfriend Dean Jones while trying to fight off the amorous advances of landlord Lemmon. Paul Lynde and Imogene Coca lend fine comedic support and the scenery is decorated with the lushious Joy Harmon, Lyn Edgington, Jane Wald, and Pamela Curran all featured in my upcoming book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood.

Though Under the Yum Yum Tree was the 14th highest grossing film of 1963, this sex comedy is considered one of Lemmon's weaker efforts. This is a constant in Carol Lynley's career and hampered her from becoming a bigger movie star. When she co-starred opposite some top leading men it was in films that either the critics disliked or the audiences ignored. For example, Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas in The Last Sunset and Laurence Olivier in Bunny Lake Is Missing. Then instead of working opposite such leading men as Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford or Paul Newman, Lynley got saddled with the forgetable Richard Beymer, Stuart Whitman (twice), Gig Young, and Paul Burke. And she herself blundered such as when she was offered a co-starring role opposite Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces then turned it down because they were only paying scale!

Finally since I will be in Viva Las Vegas for a few days, early birthday wishes to Edy Williams best known for her campy performance as the voracious sex star Ashley St. Ives in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Check out this funny YouTube clip of Edy getting a Rolls in the hay.