The Grindhouse Years, part 2: Nudie Cuties and More. 1963-1965

Nudie Cuties dominated grindhouse cinema in the early 1960s, and chief among them were movies about nudists, or people who pretended to be for a few hours.  Coming in a close second were movies that attempted to tap into the existing market for print nudes by showing how it was all done, sometimes with photographers and other times with artists. 

Art School for Nudists (1965) was a two-for-one deal, then.  The women who played nudists for a day were

Christy Foushee,



Darlene Bennett



and the good-enough-to-eat Gigi Darlene



plus a couple of unknowns.

 

Here is the film clip. You might notice these nudists play a game that only vaguely resembles volleyball - more like catch it and throw it ball - and you will notice they wear bikini bottoms while doing so.  I suppose they are to nudists what people who eat fish are to vegans, the pescatarians of nudism. 

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Then there is Artist Studio Secrets (1964), in which the only secret is the artist’s phobia for painting unclothed women. His hang-up fails to stop his models from undressing in the studio or at home. 

Four women play models, two of which I could not identify.

Here is one.



The other appeared with Marlene Eck (read on for more of Marlene)

The two I could identify were the vastly under-rated Marlene Eck

and, once again, the goddess Gigi Darlene. 

Let me stop here for a moment and say a word about Gigi. She emigrated from Germany in her late teens and spent some time modeling, both fashion and glamour, before hitting the motion pictures. After three and a half years and 25 appearances, Gigi got married and disappeared from movies. She was so popular that everyone in gindhouse mourned her absence. One director even filmed a scene with a message on a graffiti-filled wall that read, Where In The World is Gigi Darlene? This will not be the last time I send in pictures and clips of her.

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Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera (1963) and Calendar Pinup Girls (1965) take a much more direct approach to showing off partially clothed women and dispense with plot or dialogue or anything that might be called a story.  I grabbed the trailers for the two (Nude Camera, Pinup Girls) from some disk and found

Christy Foushee again,



plus Dolores Carlos



and Sandy Sinclair in Calendar Pinup;



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and Allison Louis Downe



and Davey Decker in Bunny Yeager.

 

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Ran that same play - grabbed the trailer and captured some images - for 1963’s Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls, which starred (so to speak)

Joan Bamford



and Sandy Sinclair.

The plot is a familiar one, with Ms. Bamford playing an outsider who cannot imagine nudism as a lifestyle until she gets to a camp and throws herself right into the mix. Let the celebration begin.