Quote:
Originally Posted by riichkay
Anyone know where these folks are sitting?....
Actress Natalie Wood, actor John Smith, actor Bob Fuller, Lance Fuller and actress Jayne Mansfield at a table outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, CA....June 13 1955...
More from the same photo shoot....
This is at a Wil Wright's Ice Cream Parlor....
John Smith and Robert Fuller appeared as regulars on the television Western "Laramie", 1959-'63.....in the '70's Fuller had a continuing role on the Jack Webb-produced series "Emergency!"
Lance Fuller had a minor career in B-pictures and a handful of TV guest shots....he went a little nuts on 10-30-1968 (his age is misstated here, he was 40 in '68)....
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Thanks, riichkay, for the interesting photos of these up-and-coming stars in happier days.
A bit of gossip for those who may be interested. A recent book, "Brainstorm," by Attorney Sam Perroni, makes the most compelling case yet that Natalie Wood's strange death off Catalina was second-degree homicide and that there was a concerted cover-up by the Los Angeles Police Dept., (involving Police Chief Peter Pitchess) along with Frank Sinatra and mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, all who wished to protect their friend Robert Wagner. Wagner's current wife, Jill St John, had a serious affair - Stella Stevens did too - with long-married Korshak in earlier years. Sinatra wrote an angry letter to the police chief, excoriating Coroner Thomas Noguchi, whom colleagues described as "acting strangely" during Wood's autopsy, (as though "part of a cover-up") and he was demoted. His autopsy findings in that case are still disputed, just as they were after Marilyn Monroe's autopsy. The Sinatra letter "disappeared" when the author of "Brainstorm" tried legally to look at it. One of Hollywood's mysteries.
The item about Lance Fuller getting shot while yelling "I am Jesus Christ!" is bizarre, but he had a long life. In the early 50's he was married to gorgeous blonde bombshell Joi Lansing, who in her last years was in a romantic relationship with a young woman. - who has written a book about their love affair.
Handsome young John Smith, whose chisled Nordic face was familiar in the 1950's, sadly became a "passed-out-in-the-dirt" drunk in his later years & lived in the Crenshaw area bungalow he'd inherited from his parents.
The photos of Jayne Mansfield looking rather ordinary (compared to what she looked like a couple of years later) show what a team of expert stylists and personal trainers can do & later did to turn her into the unreal creature of 1956's "The Girl Can't Help It." Most everyone knows that by the mid-60's Jayne was a sad, alcoholic parody of herself who died with her male companion in a horrific car accident in Mississippi.
Robert Fuller is still going at age 90, apparently living in Texas, and one hopes he's doing well - the only survivor of this photo shoot.
A note about the photo supposedly taken at Wil Wright's upscale Ice Cream Parlor, probably the one on Sunset Strip, (8641 Sunset Blvd.) although there was one in Westwood Village & one in North Hollywood/Studio City. Wil Wright's was famous for their hand-packed, ultra-high-butterfat ice cream in exotic flavors ("Jamaican Ginger" etc.). Hard to believe they would've had a soft-serve machine, but if that's what the photo says, so be it. It seems more likely that the photo was taken at the same diner-drive-in where the carhop was passing out Cokes, and the photographer or publicist located it at Wil Wright's since that was known to be a glamorous locale frequented by stars.