Poseidon Adventure Curse: Carol Lynley Now Makes Seven Actors Dead

Drink

That ain't Carol Lynley

When I'm six feet under, I'm a very skinny lady!

I would think Gene Hackman.

People from a 40 year old movie dying doesn't make for much of a curse

I didn't know she had a child. Any pics of grown Jill?

R2 it's Stella Stevens. Did you not read the post?

She began as a child model.

Didn’t really have enough of a personality to sustain a major acting career, unfortunately.

Carol held nothing back when promoting "The Poseidon Adventure." She loathed Red Buttons and made no bones about it. She also gave Shelley Winters the rough side of her tongue.

Together, they plotted to destroy her career. And won.

1972 Carol Lynley Interview with Roger Ebert: Part I

EBERT INTERVIEW:

It's finally happened. I went to interview a star, and she was eating caviar and drinking champagne. To be sure, Carol Lynley was wearing a kiddie sweater instead of a mink negligee, but what the hell. They probably don't even make mink negligees anymore.

Carol was visiting Chicago to promote "The Poseidon Adventure," a movie about an ocean liner that is turned over by a tidal wave. A handful of passengers (including Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, Stella Stevens, Red Buttons and Miss Lynley) desperately try to escape by climbing through the upside-down ship.

"It was the most physically demanding role you can possibly imagine," she said. "We had to swim underwater, climb across tiny catwalks, walk over flames . . . and they kept us wet all day long. They hosed us down at least 20 times a day. And there were no safety precautions for the first two weeks of shooting. I'd be up there on a catwalk, and if I slipped, it was six stories straight down through flames to a concrete floor."

Did they use nets or safety belts or anything? Stunt men maybe?

"We couldn't. Ronald Neame - he was the director - didn't want to restrict his camera. If you use stunt men, you have to get camera angles where you can't see their faces. He didn't want to do that. When we look scared, it's real."

Why did you take such a difficult role?

"Everybody in town wanted it. This is, you know, a major motion picture. And I'm such a movie buff, I just loved working on it. Some of the others . . . well, for example, Red Buttons wouldn't climb up on those ladders until I did. I had to go first. Then he'd follow. He'd always go a little higher than me or swim a little deeper, but I had to go first, Red didn't like me very much. He made my life miserable because he thought I had a better part than he did. Of course, I did . . ."

She smiled and made herself a little caviar sandwich with some onions and egg yolk on it, and popped it into her mouth. She looked - how can I say it? Almost exactly the way she looked 15 years ago when she was the adolescent fashion model with the perfect skin and the perfect figure, the one all the skinny little girls with acne HATED when they read Seventeen magazine. I asked her how it had felt to be teenage idol.

"It was strange being an adolescent fantasy for other people. I was so cut off from the real world. I went straight into the movies as a teenybopper, and had a very protracted adolescence myself. I was divorced when I was 20, but I was an adolescent until I was 26. Then I was in Europe, living with this fellow and he kind of helped me out. Told me some things about myself."

Carol Lynley unhappy? And every other adolescent girl in the country dying to be Carol Lynley, with her perfect complexion and . . .?

"Actually, I had acute acne," she said. "It's the truth. They had to shoot me in long-shots because close-up the pimples showed. Finally, when I was 13, this director sent me to a dermatologist. He paid for my first visit, which was good, because my mother wouldn't have taken me otherwise. And the dermatologist peeled me. For two years. He had this method. I still have three tiny little surface scars."

She pointed them out, but I couldn't see them.

"They're hard to see," she said, "but they're there, all right."

I asked her what it was like working with such an interesting cast, including all those Academy Award winners like Hackman, Borgnine, Albertson, Buttons and Miss Winters.

EBERT INTERVIEW PART TWO:

"It was incredible," she said. "There was no vanity on this movie. There couldn't be. No makeup. No hair arrangement, because our hair was sopping wet all the time, Shelly Winters really looked awful. She SAYS she puts on weight for her roles, but actually she's that way to begin with. She lost a little weight on this picture. I defended Shelley a lot to everyone who hated her."

Really?

"She can be so selfish. Of course, I make a point never to get into fights with other actors. It's destructive. It depletes your energy. But Shelley can drive others to almost punch her in the nose.

"I was the one who defended her. Then she went on television a week ago and forgot my name. We worked together every day for four months and she forgot my name! She had her secretary call me up the next day and say how funny it was. I said I didn't think it was very funny. After all it was at my expense.

"I have a chance for the Academy Award nomination this role. SHE'S had TWO nominations, and I'VE never had ANY. She gives nothing away."

Silence. Carol ran her finger around the rim of her champagne glass.

"You know what I told her secretary?" she said. "I told her I was going to punch Shelley Winters in the nose!"

She giggled.

"I just love the idea of me leaping at her and putting hands around her neck," she said. "You know, Shelley responds to threats by physical violence. It shapes her up and gets her to cooperate. She was rather unpopular, because of her behavior. I was the one who stood up for her, and then she can't even remember my name.

Silence.

"It's such unprincipled behavior," she said at last.

"Bunny Lake is Missing", with Olivier.

"Harlow", with Ginger Rogers as Mama Jean.

"CAROL LYNLEY SPEAKS RIGHT OUT"

This bit of dirt was unearthed from Earl Wilson's 1974 book "Show Business Laid Bare" with quotes from his lunch encounter with Carol Lynley who gave her unkind remarks to him on Red Buttons which appear in the book. "The premiere tonight, " she said. Oh, Of course, now I knew. It was the premiere of the shipwreck picture 'The Poseidon Adventure' at the new National Theater at forty-fourth and Broadway, a most black tie gala affair to which I of course had tickets. "Isn't that", I said, which was a mistake, "the picture with Red Buttons ?" Very coolly Carol Lynley stated that it was. I didn't detect the true frigidity. "How did you get along with Red I ask."

"How did I get along with him?" Carol said. "I hate him. He's a horrible human being!" Press agent Bobby Zarem nervously spoke up. "Oh I don't think you want to say that."

"I DO want to say that." Carol's voice was clear and distinct. "I do dislike him thoroughly. I had to put up with during the picture, but I don't now."

I hurriedly began taking all this down in pencil in my notebook, from which good interviews are made.

"He and everything he stands for." she said. "he steals scenes; steps on lines. He would do the things any cheap nightclub comic would do, but it wouldn't work with me. He would pretend to be my friend but would try to unsettle me. When we were about to do a scene, he would say, "Gee, Carol, I hope you can do this one, you can do it, baby, don't be nervous.' I don't like him, and he knows it. He is not very good; he is not a funny man. Red is basically a master of ceremonies, and he's a good MC," Carol conceded, "but sitting around on the movie set, he's a cunt."

"A cunt?" I'm afraid I lost my aplomb. "I'd never heard a man called that before, but maybe I hadn't been around in the right places.

"That's what he is, a cunt!" she blazed up. " He has one of the worst reputations in show business and he lived up to it."

"Let me get all these compliments down before you forget them." I was madly taking down her words.

She wasn't smiling. "I have to say it" she said. "I will never work with him again. He's of the school that goes for the jugular and gets ahead by hurting people, by doing in the other guy. He's a cunt. Why don't you print that?"

"I doubt that I could", I said. "Besides, I like Red."

"Red gets on better with men," Carol said. "It's when he regards you as a superior opponent, as he did me, that he tries to do you in. It's distracting every day to put up with this onslaught from somebody who fears you're better than he is.

"But," Carol continued, "I don't think Red can stop it. It's his coming up from the Catskills and vaudeville and burlesque. I think, HE thinks it's normal behavior."

"Does he know how you feel?"

"Oh"-she laughed-"he knows. I told him every day. He was really shitty to me but he would cover up. On our tour"-promoting the picture-"he leaped up and was kissing and hugging me and calling me darling. It was for the benefit of the press-and the benefit of him. It was such a schlocky thing and he's such a schlocky guy."

"Schlock?"

"Schlocky...cheap," Carol explained. "But the best word for him is he's a cunt."

"I'm an amateur etymologist," I said. "and I don't comprehend you calling a man a cunt."

"A cunt" and now Carol was delineating it to me carefully "is not only feminine. It's feline, it's a situation or bitchiness, and it can be applied to a man. I think it's a wonderful description."

"It is," I agreed. "but to a man?"

Carol was patient. "Almost all my scenes in the shipwreck are with him. He plays a person who urges me to try to survive. His character is really subservient to mine, and that's why he tries to do me in. Besides, he used to be shitty to me in front of my daughter." She said. "Mama, why is he like that to you?" He said everything shitty to me that a man can say. Red also gets himself into situations where you think that he is going to die of an overdose of cuteness."

It occurred to Carol that she should make it clear that she was not some kind of troublemaker and she told me she got along well with Ernest Borgnine....and with Shelley Winters....well.....

(To me, Carol merely said that Shelley "wasn't that easy to get along with, but I got along with her. " But I was informed later that she was much more explicit to Roger Ebert of the Chicago-Sun Times in an interview she gave before mine in New York. He reported that Carol said "There was no vanity on this movie. No makeup. No hairstyle arrangements because our hair was sopping al of the shoot because of the shipwreck we were supposed to be in. Shelley Winters really looked awful. She says she put on weight for her role, but she's that way to begin with. Shelley can cause others to almost punch her in the nose. She can be difficult. I make it a point to never get into fights, it's so destructive. I defended Shelley to everyone who hated her.

("Yes", continued carol to Roger Ebert as he reported it. "I was the one who defended her then she went on television and forgot my name. She had her secretary call me and tell me how funny it was. I said I didn't think it was funny...at my expense. I told her secretary I was going to punch Shelley in the nose. I just love the idea of leaping at her and putting g my arms around her neck!.")

"I guess I'll see you at the premiere tonight," I said." Who'll you be with?"

" With my agent, Peter Witt. I'll be wearing a very old 1930's bias cut satin dress that I brought in. With a very short little jacket that's very full here." She said her hands to her bosom.

"I guess Red'll be there," I said.

"Of course. Overdoing his cuteness. He'll rush up and kiss me and hug me, and I'll hug him back. What'm I going to do? Call him a cunt? That's destructive, and I'm not destructive!"

As a longtime acquaintance of Red's I wanted to tell him all the nice things I'd ben hearing about him from Carol, and I went to the premiere with more than my usual interest in such events. We sat in the same row. and as he climbed over me getting to his seat, I told him, "Wait'll you hear what I've got to tell you!"

As I saw the tender scenes between Red and Carol on the screen..... "That's craft." Carol had said.

We went over to the Allied Chemical Building to the Act 1 Restaurant to a post-premiere party, and there I found Red Buttons.

Carol Lynley was there. First off, she had refused to pose for a picture with Red when a photographer asked her to do so.

I had staked out a table at the front window sixteen floors up overlooking Times Square which can be especially beautiful on a wintry night with the clouds and the mist close enough you could almost touch them if the windows were open. Shelley Winters, sitting at an other choice table, was laughing and commanding me to come over, as she called for champagne. But there was Red Buttons.

"Hi, Oil," he said, his third hello to me that evening.

"Hi, you cunt", I replied.

"What was that?" He definitely bristled.

"Just repeated Carol Lynley's favorite name for you," I answered. "She says Red Buttons is a cunt."

Red bit his lips. "How do you spell that?, With a k?"

I tried to apologize. "Red, that's what Carol called you today when I interviewed her." I looked in my notebook. "No, she spells cunt with a c. She spells cunt with a small c."

"Oh, that kind of cunt!." Red shrugged. "No comment!"

"What's the story?"

"Sure." I said, lying in my teeth.

"OK, I got a call today from a radio broadcaster. He said, 'I did a radio interview today with, "The Psycho". I said "Who's The Psycho?" And he mentioned the lady you're talking about. But that's all I know about it, and I don't want to be brought into any feud, because I didn't have any!"

The broadcaster was Earl Doud over at WOR, and he told me of his session with Carol Lynley. His program was laid in a mythical banana country, and he often had his guest interviewees participate with him in a light sketch he or some of his staff had written. When Carol came on his show to plug herself and the picture, he suggested she participate in a sketch of that kind.

She refused in such strong language that he claimed he blushed through his beard.

Red Buttons went through the Carol Lynley horror story for a year. Finally one reporter published what was supposed to be the inside story. Carol was in love with him, and he rejected her! (Earl Wilson did not print the inflammatory word and it did not appear in print until this book. Also of note is that Buttons was a happily married man and father of two. This piece appears in the section titled "Carol Lynley Speaks Right Out." And, Boy, did she ever !!!!

There's a Poseidon dvd with commentary by three actresses together: Carol, Stella, and Pamela Sue. I listened specifically for commentary about Red Buttons but apparently they had made up years later as Carol spoke very lovingly about him.

There's a Poseidon dvd with commentary by three actresses together: Carol, Stella, and Pamela Sue. I listened specifically for commentary about Red Buttons but apparently they had made up years later as Carol spoke very lovingly about him.

Survivors: Eric Shea / Pamela Sue Anderson

Red Buttons was a cunt.

Carol speaks the truth.

Have any of you seen Poseidon: The Musical?

Carol was going to have Red’s baby, but she took a morning after pill.

40 years ago? the movie was 50 years ago!

For God's sake, someone check on Pamela Sue Martin!

Thank God there wasn't a "Gone With the Wind" curse.

[quote]r27 For God's sake, someone check on Pamela Sue Martin!

Pammy's fine. She sends her love.

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