DANCING DIVA II

In my haste to post the previous Pamela Tiffin clip from Harper (1966), I forgot to include Pamela's comments about making the movie from my interview with her for Fantasty Femmes of Sixties Cinema. See below for an excerpt:



After playing a number of ingenue roles, Pamela finally got a chance to act sexy and sophisticated in Harper (1966) starring Paul Newman. She portrayed Lauren Bacall’s stepdaughter Miranda whose father has disappeared. As a sex-starved heiress, Tiffin almost steals the film with her seductive dance in a bikini atop a diving board. Newman (whom Pamela describes as being “attractive, professional, and a car lover”) played a private detective hired by Elaine, an icy paralyzed equestrienne, played by Bacall, to find her missing husband. As the hated daughter and stepmother, Tiffin and Bacall have a number of great catty moments, which were superbly acted. After hearing that Miranda has been rejected by her husband’s bodyguard (Robert Wagner), Elaine maliciously quips to Miranda, “I should think you’d be accustomed to not being loved by now.” Miranda responds, “I love your wrinkles. I revel in them.” When an unmoved Elaine learns that her husband has been murdered, she calls out to Miranda in a singsong voice, “Miranda! Mommy has something to tell you!”

“I was very impressed with Lauren Bacall but she was very tense and stand-offish,” remarks Pamela. “Since Paul Newman likes to rehearse, we gathered around a long table and ran lines for a week, if not more. Everyone was there except Lauren Bacall because she wanted to be the big movie star. I couldn’t be angry at her or feel slighted because I thought she was fascinating!”