Tina Louise

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors
  1. Dolores Gray,  Kismet, 1955.       Sultry Louise was due to make her movie debut as Lalume, in the much-filmed 1911 Edward Knoblock play – Aladdin meets MGMusicals! She preferred staying in TV until getting a better offer. And she did – when director Anthony Mann asked her to be Griselda in his version of Erskine Caldwell’s grittily erotic novel, God’s Little Acre, 1957.

  2. Elana Eden, The Story of Ruth, 1959.   Seeing  the pin-uppy Louise lisated for The Bible’s Ruth was big a shock as finding Jayne Mansfield in Otto Preminger’s choice for  Joan of Arc in 1956.  Except, of course, Tina was the better actress. Or she was in  her film debut, God’s Little Acre, but rarely again in her 84 other screen roles.  Director Henry Koster and producer Samuel  G Engel saw (allegedly) about 300 possible Ruths, testing just 29… including Diane Baker, Myrna Fahey, Ulla Jacobsson (Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish  discovery),  Susan Kohner and Millie Perkins. But Engel bowed to studio pressure about the Israeli Eden (ex-Cooper), one of George Stevens’ final five possibles for The Diary of Anne Frank, 1958, won by… Perkins.  Variety buried Ruth as a “moth-eaten, misleading mishmash of biblical hysterics.” 

  3. Joan O’Brien, Operation Petticoat, 1959.    Tina refused Navy Lieutenant Crandall  in the excellent Cary Grant-Tony Curtis comedy because of too many gags about Crandal’s fulsome breasts. (She was a Lee Strasberg pupil, after all).  Dolores Michaels tested but O’Brien was perfect.   Particularly when feeding a great line to Grant by accidentally dropping her ciggie into his coffee.  “Dat’s all right.  I like a cigarette with my cawfee.”  (Jayne Mansfield never complained about her 1957 Grant film being called Kiss Them For Me).

  5. Judith Baldwin, Rescue from, Gilligan’s Island, TV, 1978.  She enjoyed playing the smokin’ Ginger Grant. She did not enjoy her co-stars. And priceds hewrewlf out of the first two tele-film. Baldwin remained  Ginger for the second, The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island, TV, 1979. Constance Forslund was Ginger in the third, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, TV, 1981.  Gilliganwas made by Phil Silvers’ company. Forslund played This Year’s Blonde– Marilyn Monroe – on TV the following year.


 

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  4