Keeley Hazell at the beginning of her
career. Impressive! You better hold your jaw in place before
clicking on that first one. That's gotta be pretty close to the most
beautiful topless pic I've ever seen, and in super hi-res to boot.
Amanda Peet in the Whole Nine Yards in HD
Just for fun, Lindsay Lohan and Gollum
The women of Eaten Alive ...
... Me Me Lai
... Paola Senatore
... Janet Agren
Janet Who?????
A spectacular beauty, Janet was one of that generation of liberated Swedish
actresses born in the mid-1940s who started to attract international attention
in the late 60s when the cultural revolution forced a liberalization of the
nudity standards. And there they were, ready to get naked on camera. Marie
Liljedahl, Ewa Aulin, Lena Nyman, Louise Tillberg, Uschi Digard, Jeannette
Swensson, Pia Degermark, Essy Persson, Licka Sjoman, Anna Bergman, and Britt
Ekland are also in this club. Camilla Sparv, once Mrs Robert Evans, would be in
the club, except that she managed to keep her clothes on. I suppose there are
several more that have faded from my memory.
There were some long careers in there, some brief ones, and a tragedy or two.
- Janet Agren, who I'm supposed to be writing about here, had no
tragedies to speak of. She spent about 20 years in the film biz,
mostly making crappy Italian movies, and her career just quietly
burned out when she was about 40. She now lives in Miami and works
as an interior designer.
- Pia Degermark became world famous after playing the title role
in Elvira Madigan. She was 17. Fame, however, did not agree with
her. She battled anorexia for years, and was washed-up at 22,
never to work again. Later in life she became a homeless drug
addict and a grifter. She eventually went to prison in the 1990s
for passing bad checks and assaulting a civil servant. She's just
trying to be a normal person now.
Here is a 2004 article about her.
- Ewa Aulin (Candy) just quit acting when she was about 23. She
realized she had almost no talent, and was doomed to work in more
films like Microscopic Liquid Subway to Oblivion, so she went back
to school to become a teacher, and has stayed out of public life
for 35 years.
- Essy Persson was the second or third woman I ever saw naked in
a film. For many American baby boomers, she may well have been the
first, because "I, a Woman" hit the States in about 1965, right at
the time when the culture was liberalizing. There is no indication
that she has died, but nobody seems to have any idea what she is
doing now. She disappeared without a trace from the film/TV world
around 1983.
By the way, the first naked woman I ever saw on
screen was Romy Schneider, an Austrian. I am indebted to Romy for
starting me along the path toward studying and archiving film
nudity.
I have written that story many times before, but
here it is again, for the record, and fro you newer guys.
It was the early part of 1963. I don't remember the
exact date, but I remember that it was still wintry at night. I was
a high school freshman when my friend, the Wily Duck, persuaded me
to join him in an expedition to see Boccaccio '70, an arty, bawdy,
European comedy with a tiny bit of nudity. The Wily One wasn't
called that for nothin'. He was a crafty kid, and he had a plan.
There were two theaters about a block apart. My mother would drop us
off and pick us up at the one which was showing a revival of Darby
O'Gill and the Little People. We would pretend to go to that movie,
then skulk around to the other theater. If the theater showing
Boccaccio '70 didn't let us in, we'd simply return and suffer
through ol' Darby and his banshees. The plan went off without a
hitch. The art house showing Boccaccio '70 sold us tickets and never
asked us any questions, even through we were 13 or 14. We saw the
entire film, and snuck back to the rendezvous with my mom, who
didn't suspect a thing.
We actually enjoyed the film. I have subsequently
read that the European version of Boccaccio '70 consisted of four
separate stories from four different directors, but there were only
three stories in the version which we saw. Each of the three
segments was memorable in some way. We thought that two of the
segments (directed by Fellini and DeSica, starring Anita Ekberg and
Sophia Loren) were terrific - very entertaining and very sexy,
albeit without nudity. The third segment was a totally boring
Eurosnob thing directed by Visconti, but I'll always remember it,
for it was in that segment that I saw my first naked woman on
screen.
