TMS Muse of the Week: Joey Heatherton
(via pinterest.com)
Ann-Margret, Brigitte Bardot, Julie Newmar, Raquel Welch, Tuesday Weld. These are some of the most iconic screen ladies to be labeled a ‘sex kitten.’ A flirty, attractive young woman who uses her sexuality for mostly her own amusement and gain. Of course, there’s also the naïve sex kitten along the lines of Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate and Jayne Mansfield, who is blindly unaware of her appeal to men. This week I’m going to go into detail on one of the most popular sex kittens of the 1960s who toddles both types: Joey Heatherton. Daughter of Broadway and radio star Ray Heatherton, Joey is one of the earliest precursors I can think of to compare to a modern social media influencer. She’s technically an actress and singer, with a few B-movies and a self-titled album to her name. But most of her claim to fame was appearing on many, many variety TV programs where she performed musical numbers in a mini-skirt or lingerie, and flirted with the host. What starlets like Ann and Tuesday did once in a while during press tours for their films, Joey actually did for a living.
Not one for classic TV as much as classic films, the main reason I know about Joey is because she was apparently involved with Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison right before model/future wife Pattie Boyd. One of George’s earliest songs, ‘I Need You’ off the 1965 Help! soundtrack is considered to be about Joey rather than Pattie. Probably not much of a surprise, Mum Harrison supposedly didn’t care for Joey as much as Pattie. This would actually some of the tamer gossip associated with Joey, funnily enough. The socialite coming from a showbiz family makes sense, since she probably didn’t feel the need to expand to acting full time like fellow dancer Ann-Margret or cut back on the sex kitten antics like Tuesday did after a while. Though, Joey clearly had enough cred to sometimes perform in serious projects, like Daniel Taradash’s 1960 stage adaptation of Christopher Davis’ ‘There was a Little Girl’ [co-starring another Hollywood kid, Jane Fonda]; and Boris Sagal’s crime drama Twilight of Honor (1963)—where she successfully nabbed a Most Promising Newcomer nomination at the Golden Globes. Film director Edward Dymtryk was apparently a fan of Joey’s too, since he recruited for the all-star B-movie dramas Where Love Has Gone (1964) and Bluebeard (1972). But for the most part, Joey appeared to prefer to have fun singing and dancing on TV than attempting a legitimate dramatic screen career.
By the late 1960s, Joey wasn’t only regularly appearing on variety shows like “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall” (1960-61), “The Dean Martin Show” (1965-1970) and “The Mike Douglas Show” (1967-1976); but also performing regularly on Bob Hope’s USO tours overseas for US Armed Forces from roughly 1965 to 1977. A lot of these performances were filmed and used as archival footage on Bob’s TV specials as well. Unlike some of these famous sex kittens, who either aged out of their shtick or chose to abandon stardom, Joey’s popularity came to a halt when the 1970s barely started. In 1969, she married Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Lance Rentzel, only to separate a year later and eventually divorce in 1971 after the football player was arrested for exposing himself to a 10-year-old girl. Some believe the shock and mortification of being associated to her shamed husband affected her both psychologically and publicly [which might be true regarding the former, since Joey never remarried or had kids]. The blonde later had her own personal-turned-public issues such as cocaine use and two assault charges for slapping a clerk of Manhattan’s US Passport Agency in 1985 and attempting to stab ex-boyfriend and former manager Jerry Fisher during a heated argument in 1986. These are the kind of stories we would hear from celebs like Sean Young and Emma Roberts in the future. I can only imagine the reactions TV fans had in the 1980s seeing an old ‘60s primetime face with headlines like these.
(ABC Photo Archives)
Save for a cameo in John Waters’ cult spoof classic Cry-Baby (1990), we haven’t heard much from Joey in the past few decades. Those who are longtime fans know she posed for a special issue of Playboy in 1997 and also gained some attention for the 2004 re-issue of her LP featuring an old topless photo of her as the cover art. Amusingly, these days Joey and Tuesday seem to get mistaken for each other a lot by casual old Hollywood fans. Though Joey was very much a lady of her generation, you can’t really call her a nobody or has-been either. How many people have inspired a Beatles song? Or co-starred with legends such as Bette Davis, Richard Burton and Susan Hayward? You have to wonder if ladies like Pam Anderson and Bijou Phillips would exist as we know them without someone like Joey to pave the way. I’m not exactly a fan of the ‘famous for being famous’ route, but I’ve got to admit it’s impressive when someone can make the bare minimum run for over a decade. Looks, moves and notoriety in an industry where ‘no publicity is bad publicity,’ Joey left a mark.