Yankee Stay Here (1966)

In 1966, Jocelyn appeared in a pilot for a comedy TV show called Yankee Stay Here, starring Jeremy Slate as an American officer in World War II that has been ordered to lead a motley crew of Italian partisans behind German lines.  Very little information is available about this production.  The pilot was never sold, so this bit of film/TV history has fallen into obscurity, probably lost forever, never to be seen again. 

  

The January 27, 1966 Variety reported that Jocelyn had "been signed by producer-director Jerry Thorpe as feminine lead in the MGM and ABC-TV pilot, 'Yankee Stay Here.'  Jeremy Slate previously was cast as male lead.  Pilot was penned by Arnie Sultan." 

Here are some publicity photos:

The back of the last picture says:  "After parachuting into World War II Italy for MGM-TV's 'Yankee Stay Here,' Jeremy Slate as an OSS agent finds his assignment brightened by the charms of lovely Jocelyn Lane.  Appearing with them in the comedy are Vito Gooti, Nico Minardos, Johnny Goven, Oscar Beregi and Rudy Rattaglia."

Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre: One Embezzlement and Two Margaritas (1966)

Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre was an American anthology series that ran on NBC from 1963 through 1967 and was sponsored by Chrysler.  The format ran from musical to comedy to drama.  Generally, each episode ran for an hour, but there were some special presentations that ran for 90 minutes.  Although he starred in some episodes, Hope usually just introduced each episode with a few jokes.  In syndication, without an opening or closing by Hope, the series was billed as Universal Star Time and Theatre of the Stars.

Jocelyn starred in an episode called One Embezzlement and Two Margaritas, which originally aired on May 18, 1966 (Season 3, Episode 20).  Based on reports in Variety, the episode was produced in December of 1965.

In this episode, Jack Kelly plays the part of Frederick Piper, a sort of playboy/Yale-graduate private investigator that takes only cases that sound fun to him.  In a prelude to Charlie's Angels, he has an assistant, Barbara Fremont (Karen Jensen), who only talks to him by phone and has never seen him (much to her chagrin).  Piper is hired by a group of Trust Company executives/owners who need to track down their partner, Edward Parker Greene (Michael Rennie), who has skipped town with over $3 million.  They simply want to keep everything quiet and get the money back, not actually have him arrested.

Piper uncovers a clue indicating that Greene has gone to a Mexico resort town to meet up with an English woman, so he heads down to Mexico to scope out the appropriate flight from England.  Piper and a friend see an elegant woman, Maureen Hollings (Antoinette Bower), and presume that she must be the English woman meeting Greene, so Piper sets out in pursuit of her.  They are wrong, however, as another passenger, the ditzy, gold-digging young starlet Ellie Randell (Jocelyn) is actually the mystery woman.  The rest of the story follows Piper as he learns of his mistake and pursues Ellie and Green aboard Greene's boat.  Things become more complicated when it turns out that Ellie has a couple of "managers" that are after Greene's money as well.  Ultimately, Greene becomes disillusioned about Ellie's intentions, is confronted by Piper, and returns to his partners at the Trust Company (where he is forced to retire quietly and pay Piper's fee with his own funds).

For the most part, the episode is rather light-hearted and humorous, but there are some serious injuries/deaths in a couple of fight sequences, which seem a bit out of place with the overall tone.   The episode plays like it could have been a pilot for a show about the adventures of P.I. Frederick Piper.

As for Jocelyn, taking into account that there are a few TV appearances that I have not been able to locate, this is hands-down her best TV work.  She is wonderful as the ditzy Ellie, with a thick British accent and lively persona.  It is also one of her sexiest roles, as she is wearing bathing suits for the most part, and does a significant amount of dancing.  One scene is in a one-piece bathing suit on Greene's boat, and the other is in a polka-dot bikini and black boots at a watusi party.  She really hit a home run with her work on this episode.  If only parts like this could have lead to more film roles.  It seems like Jocelyn was the go-to actress whenever producers needed a "foreign" girl for a guest role on an American TV series in the mid 1960's.  If you're a Jocelyn fan, this one is worth the effort to track down.

Unfortunately, as evidenced by the screen caps below, I have only been able to view this episode in a poor-quality VHS recording from a syndicated TV broadcast.  As far as I can tell, the series has not been released on any home video format.  Let's hope that one day it will see an appropriate release so that we can enjoy Jocelyn's fine work here in the quality that it deserves.

Here are two modeling-type publicity shots of Jocelyn that appear to have been taken in conjunction with her appearance in this episode, because it looks like she is wearing the bathing suits that were worn on the show.

Run For Your Life: Who's Watching the Fleshpot? (1966)

Run For Your Life was an American drama series that aired for three season on NBC, from September 13, 1965 to March 27, 1968.  It starred Ben Gazzara as Paul Bryan, a lawyer who has been told that he only has between nine and eighteen months left to live.  Armed with that information, Bryan decides to do all of the things that he never had time to do, traveling from place to place, meeting new people in new situations.  The character of Paul Bryan had been introduced in an episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre called Rapture at Two-Forty, which aired on April 15, 1965.

Jocelyn appeared in an episode called Who's Watching the Fleshpot?  (Season 1, Episode 22), which originally aired on March 7, 1966.  Based on notices in Variety, it appears that this episode was shot in the latter part of November 1965.

In this episode, Bryan arrives in a seaside town in France, where he encounters an old buddy, Mark Shepherd (Bobby Darin), who is living the life, hanging out with beautiful women and running a travel agency of sorts (or dating service, at times, so it seems).   Shepherd wants his buddy Bryan to hang out and work with him for a while, which comes in handy as Mame Huston (Eve Arden) arrives, seeking a couple of guys to show her and her daughter Marcia (Davey Davison) a good time in the city.  Huston drives a fancy convertible sports car that catches the eye of a couple of criminals, who sabotage the car so that they can take it to a repair shop and hide diamonds in it for smuggling back to the U.S.

Bryan is Marcia's date, but she wants nothing to do with him, because she wants to be back at home with her conservative fiance.  Mame, on the other hand, is trying to get Marcia to realize that she is not really in love with the fiance and break off the engagement.  Of course, Marcia eventually warms up to Bryan's charm and decides to do just that.  As a thank you gift, Mame decides to give the car to Shepherd and Bryan, rather than having it sent back to the U.S.

When the thieves find out what has happened, they try to steal the car back in order to retrieve the hidden diamonds.  The remainder of the episode involves action, fights, and chases as Shepherd and Bryan try to get the car and diamonds back.

This is the only episode that I have watched of this series, so I'm a little perplexed as to what to make of it.  It was interesting enough that I would like to watch some other episodes to get a better sense of the series, but it was not so good that I am jumping for the chance to watch more.  Gazzara has always been a well-regarded actor, and Darin was OK in this episode.  It was almost like two different shows, the first half being sort of a romantic comedy and the second half being more of an action-thriller.  The episode was filmed on-set in California, but stock footage is used well in setting the mood for the location being on the French seaside.

As for Jocelyn, she only has about 60 seconds of screen time in the first few minutes of the episode.  In fact, she did not even get billing as a "Guest Star" at the beginning of the episode.  Her screen credit was at the end.  She works for Shepherd and is there to greet Bryan when he arrives, pointing him to the beach where Shepherd is hanging out with some lovelies, including Thordis Brandt, who showed up as eye candy in several television shows and movies of the mid-to-late 1960s.  Jocelyn makes the most of her brief screen time, looking as lovely as ever, and delivering her lines in a great French accent.  Once again, we're left to scratch our heads and wonder how Jocelyn could have been so woefully underutilized.  If you're only interested in this show because of Jocelyn, it's probably not worth the time and effort to track down this episode.  

Run For Your Life has never been released on home video, as far as I can tell.  It has, however, aired occasionally in syndication through the years.  I was able to watch this episode from an old VHS recording off of a TV re-run, but the quality was very weak, as evidenced by these screen captures.

Here is a an ad about Jocelyn's appearance in this episode that ran in the August 19, 1966 edition of the Cleveland Press TV magazine.  The picture used does not appear to be from the episode itself.

Burke's Law: Whatever Happened to Adriana and Why Won't She Stay Dead? (1965)

Burke’s Law was an American detective TV show that aired for three seasons from 1963 to 1965 on ABC.  It starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, a millionaire homicide detective.  However, in the third and final season (which only lasted for 17 episodes), the series was converted to a spy show called Amos Burke, Secret Agent, and Burke was working for a secret government agency without any of the supporting characters from the first two seasons.  

Jocelyn guest-starred in one of the third season spy episodes called Whatever Happened to Adriana, and Why Won’t She Stay Dead? (Season 3, Episode 11), which originally aired on December 1, 1965.   Variety was reporting in late July that Jocelyn had been signed for the episode.  Based on some other notices in Variety about the series, and an October 7 report that Jocelyn was scheduled to return from shooting Poppies Are Also Flowers in Italy, leads me to believe that this episode was probably shot in mid-October of 1965.

In this episode, Burke is sent to Sicily to track down a drug dealer that is also smuggling missiles.  The drug dealer is getting the missiles from a Colonel, whom he is blackmailing.  The Colonel’s girlfriend died of a drug overdose, creating a major scandal, until a family came forward to say that the body of the dead girl was their daughter, Adriana.  It turns out, however, that Adriana (played by Jocelyn) is really alive and well and in the custody/care of the missile smuggler.  Burke comes into contact with her, and she helps him stop the smuggler as he helps her to escape.  Burke ultimately has to free Adriana, retrieve the girlfriend’s body from the cemetery, and win over the Colonel in order to stop the missile smuggler.

Jocelyn, as is the case for several of her U.S. television appearances, plays the role of a young European woman, speaking her English lines with an Italian accent.  She did a respectable job with the accent.  There were only a few words here and there where I noticed that her pronunciation slipped back toward the English sounds for some vowels.  The episode is in black and white, but you can tell that she generally has the same red hair that she wore for all of her U.S. work.  She has a decent amount of screen time, and she has a shower scene that I’m sure was considered quite scandalous for mid-1960’s U.S. television.  Barry is pretty good in his role.  He seems rugged enough, though he doesn’t look to be in particularly good shape for a super spy.  He adds a bit of flair that sometimes comes across as something like Dean Martin’s Matt Helm character.  For Jocelyn fans, this one is worth tracking down.

 

Season 1 of Burke’s Law has been released on DVD in the U.S. (2008) and the U.K (2006), but seasons 2 and 3 may never be released.  The series has aired on the TV Land channel, and the version of Jocelyn’s episode that I viewed had been recorded from TV Land and posted by someone on youtube.

Poppies Are Also Flowers (1966)

U.S One Sheet Poster

Poppies Are Also Flowers (aka Danger Grows Wild), is a crime drama of sorts, billed as a French/Austrian/American co-production and shot in English.  It features an all-star cast, including (in addition to Jocelyn) Senta Berger, Stephen Boyd, Yul Brynner, Angie Dickinson, Hugh Griffith, Rita Hayworth, Trevor Howard, E.G. Marshall, Marcello Mastroianni, Nadja Tiller, Eli Wallach, Oma Sharif, Grace Kelly, Marilu Tolo, and Howard Vernon.  The general storyline is that two narcotics agents (I suppose) of the United Nations are trying to track down a shipment of drugs that originated from poppies grown in Iran.  The poppies had been injected with radiation, and the intent was to follow the shipment in order to identify the network of drug dealers.  The U.N. lost track of the shipment, however, before it made it out of Iran, so the two agents (Howard and Marshall) try to find it across Europe through the radioactivity angle.  I'm not going to spend more time describing the plot, because this film is terrible.

How could a movie that was shot in places like Iran, France, Monte Carlo, and Italy with an all-star cast, in a story inspired by Ian Fleming and directed by Terence Young (after he had already directed Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Thunderball) gone so wrong?  The movie even has the guy that played Oddjob in Goldfinger (Harold Sakata) appearing in a bad guy role.  I don't know what went wrong, but it did.  Perhaps the U.N. involvement had something to do with it.  The film even had retired Grace Kelly delivering an opening monologue.  Despite the locations and all of the stars, this is a mess of a movie, boring and ugly (despite the exotic locales).  I initially tried to watch it a few years ago and gave up, because I couldn't stay awake.  I watched it all the way through this time in preparation for this post, and it was not any better.  If I were developing a top ten list of movies that were turkeys, this one would definitely be on it.  For crying out loud, if you've got Jocelyn Lane, Angie Dickinson, Senta Berger, Nadja Tiller, Rita Hayworth, etc. in a movie and can't make it interesting, then the train has definitely gone off the track somewhere.

In an effort to say something positive, the last 20-30 minutes of the film are better than the rest.  Howard's falling into the hands of the drug kingpin is rather jolting and well-done.  

My recommendation is not to waste your time on this film, unless you are just a big fan of one of its stars and can't stand to miss it.  Don't say I didn't warn you, though.  If you only care about seeing Jocelyn at work, skip to about the 66-minute mark.  She plays a photographer/reporter who is in a Monte Carlo club to cover a Trini Lopez show, and she briefly appears within about a 5-minute sequence, delivering 2 or 3 lines of dialogue in a French accent (which she did quite well).  Since it is unlikely that I will ever locate any publicity stills or other material featuring Jocelyn from this film, here are a few screen caps to show what she looked like in this very small role.

The film was financed as a one-time television special by Xerox and made under the Telsun (Television Series for the United Nations) Foundation aegis for the United Nations and then acquired by distributors for theatrical release.  I guess it was intended to be sort of a public-service anti-dope film, with proceeds going to a UN charity (UNESCO).  Apparently the stars worked free of charge (or for a nominal $1 salary).  Filming commenced around the first of October of 1965 and was completed in the early part of 1966 after shooting in several locations across Europe.  Based on a note in Variety, it appears that Jocelyn did her work around the first week of October.  The final cost as the project grew was reported to have been about $1.8 million, with $600,000 coming from Pacsun and $1.2 million coming from Wiener Stadhalle (Austria's largest event center, which acquired worldwide distribution rights).  I'm not sure how the Xerox financing played into the total.  

The film premiered in the U.S. in an 80-minute Xerox-sponsored version on ABC TV on April 22, 1966.  Eli Wallach won an Emmy award for his role.  Variety reviewed the television showing in its April 27, 1966 edition, generally giving a weak review:  "For all its star power, this last of the Telsun Foundation UN dramas still could have used a battery charge, namely in the plot and script values.  ... [It] was strictly lowercase cloak-and-dagger stuff. ... Withal, the UN was short-changed again."

After that TV showing, the world theatrical premiere was in Vienna, Austria on May 7, 1966 at the 3,000 seat Wiener Stadhalle auditorium, where a huge lineup of stars, Austrian officials, UN officials, and 400 reporters attended according to Variety.  Nadja Tiller introduced her colleagues that starred in the film, including Jocelyn.

Then, following a rollout over the next few months in a number of countries around the world, it was released in October of 1966 to U.S. theaters in a 100-minute version under the title The Poppy is Also a Flower.  It was re-released in the U.S. in 1971.  

Variety reviewed the film's 100-minute theatrical release in the U.S. in its November 23, 1966 edition based on a viewing in New York on October 16, 1966.  This review was significantly more positive than its earlier review of the 80-minute TV showing, noting that the extra 20 minutes of footage concentrated on characterization and violence-laden suspense that might have been considered too much for TV.  Praise was heaped on the cinematography, and on the performances of Howard, Marshall, and several  others in the cast (with no mention of Jocelyn).  Variety concluded:  "This one is much too good to let linger on the shelf of a tv film library and should have an excellent chance as a theatrical release once the word gets around."

Based on reports in Variety, it appears that the film generally performed well in the U.S. and other countries.  The U.N. was expecting to make about $3 million from the venture.

As for home video releases, the film was released on DVD in Italy in 2013 (95 minutes):

In the UK on VHS (Poppies are Also Flowers) and a video to DVD version (Operation Opium, 100 minutes) (Note:  This DVD version is the one that I watched, and it does not list a title in the opening credits; you can tell where the title was removed from the opening):

 

On VHS video in the U.S. in 1989 (100 minutes):

At the top of this post is a 1966 U.S. one sheet poster.  Here is another one sheet poster, a half sheet poster, an insert poster, and a lobby card set:

Here is the 1971 U.S. one sheet re-release poster:

U.S. stills:

An ABC television still:

It was released in the U.K. and Australia under the title Danger Grows Wild.  Here is a British quad poster and an Australian daybill.

The film was released in the rest of the world under various titles.  Here are some Italian posters:

German posters:

An Israeli poster:

A Danish poster:

A Japanese poster and programs:

Yugoslavian poster:

A Mexican lobby card: