Feature & Interview with Iconic Actress, Dancer, and Photographer, Barbara Parkins

The Raven-haired sylph who: “walks in beauty like the night… Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright; Meet in her aspect and her eyes…” — Lord Byron

Barbara Parkins is an icon of the 1960s, appearing in two of the decade’s most popular and legendary film and television productions.

Barbara’s exquisite beauty is undeniable, but her captivating performances in Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls truly secured her legacy in Hollywood history and our collective consciousness. As beloved – Betty Anderson in the television series Peyton Place and as Anne Welles in the notorious adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s sensational novel Valley of the Dolls (1967). These memorable roles continue to resonate with audiences today.

But beyond any of it, the glamour, serious drama, pulp fiction, or even the camp, there is an actress who possesses an otherworldly beauty and a depth of character and quality. Not only has she touched our hearts with her performances as these two classic heroines, but she is also one of those recognizable actresses who project strength, confidence, and poise.

Barbara Parkins will undoubtedly be remembered for her portrayal of Betty Anderson Cord in the iconic 1960s prime-time operatic melodrama Peyton Place, which ran from 1964 to 1969.

Based on Grace Metalious’s ‘dirty book,’ Peyton Place blew the lid off of the hypocritical conformity of small-town America, capturing the complexities of American morality through high drama, showing the dark underbelly of a quaint community of ‘wholesome’ families striving for normalcy amid controversial issues. That everything is not safe, it’s not always comfortable, and it is without real struggle. And sometimes, life can be downright ugly. Her novel captures the “complexities of human existence—the dramas, highs and lows, conflicts, and teenage sexuality—depicting life’s un-romanticized, unvarnished reality. While the book offended some readers, it intrigued others, and despite being a popular show, critics often deem it shocking yet captivating.” (The Baltimore Sun 1999 Laurie Kaplan article THE WOMEN OF PEYTON PLACE)

“Barbara Parkins has caught the public’s eye, partly because of her beauty, partly because she is a capable little actress. But mostly because she seems to have an inner fire. She’s a volcano in a tight dress.’’ (From an article BARBARA PARKINS: MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER – Niagra Falls Gazette March, 1965 by Dick Kleiner)

As Betty Anderson, Barbara Parkins broke ground in a role that framed her as a young woman whose trajectory became more empowered as she actualized her identity within a small, moralistic New England. A town like Peyton Place that would, at first, judge her. She learned self-reliance and a newly mined self-respect through painful, solitary self-discovery.

Barbara had this to say about the original television shows that focused on nice middle-American family-oriented stories –
“The television family at that time was always depicted in an Ozzie and Harriet-type fashion where every family was nearly perfect or strived to be. The real conflicts, frustrations, and demons within the family structure were never explored. Peyton Place was the first television series to bring things out that were considered hush-hush and secretive. Families are highly complex, and our show explored the complexities of teenagers, mother-daughter relationships, and family conflicts within a small-town atmosphere.”
Peyton Place 1966 Full Cast Promo – ABC tv series Los Angeles CA 1965 photo ABC/Getty Images.
“Everything was nice families, were lovely and everybody dressed nice, and everyone sat at dinner tables, and everything was nice. Well, in life, everything is not nice in families, and that’s Peyton Place – Grace Metalious wrote the book, and she showed how people – you know, the dramas in life, the ups and downs, the arguments, the teenage sex you know, it just showed life as life is not dreamy and pink and pretty.” (Interview, James Rosin, 2010)

I have always been drawn to Barbara Parkins’s inherent sensuality, sophistication, and dreamy, elegant voice. A deep well of desire and poetry is simmering below that obvious beauty. She brings that sensuality to every versatile role as an actress. And that is why I’ve been mesmerized by her since the first time I saw her on the big screen.

Barbara Parkins was among the women notable photographer Patrick Lichfield chose to be included in his 1983 book, “The Most Beautiful Women.”

Canadian-American actress and singer Barbara Parkins, UK, 19th April 1974. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Catapulting to fame on a cherished television series to gracing the silver screen with a captivating film career, Barbara Parkins continues to hold a magnetic presence for her loyal admirers.

Eventually, Barbara decided to walk away from the whole deal—the Hollywood hustle, film, and television. She would turn the lens in on itself and begin photographing the world with its inherent wisdom to be gleaned and the natural world imperatives that need to be acknowledged. Instead of becoming the photograph’s subject, she aimed her camera outward from the other side of the lens.

Barbara Parkins was born on Wednesday, May 22, 1946, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and adopted by a Canadian couple; Barbara’s father passed away when she was in grade school. Growing up in Vancouver, Barbara loved to dance at her aunt’s dance school, where her mother played piano. Barbara had dreamed of joining the Martha Graham Dance Company, but she also wondered what it would be like to become a star, watching those glamorous movie stars up on the big screen.

Barbara Parkins at 5 years old.

When her mother got a better job in Los Angeles at the Falcon Dance School, they sold their house, hopped on a Greyhound bus, and headed for Hollywood.

At sixteen, Barbara embarked on a new chapter with her mother after relocating to Los Angeles. Enrolling at Hollywood High School, she couldn’t wait to get out, having more interest in dance than anything. She graduated in 1960; beyond the traditional academic setting, she immersed herself in the performing arts world. Barbara Parkins further honed her craft at the Falcon Dance School, where she studied acting, tap, ballet, and fencing while her mother provided musical accompaniment on the piano.

Barbara started working at a little movie theater down the street, selling candy and ushering people to their seats so she could pay for drama lessons. After she joined a little drama group, who had put on a play when two agents from MCA (the biggest talent agency at the time) looking for talent came to the school and spotted Barbara. They approached her mother and said, “We think your daughter is beautiful and interesting. Could she come and do a scene from the play for us?” And she did, and they signed her.

Before she began knocking on casting director’s doors, she answered an ad in Variety looking for dancers to back up Donald O’Connor in Lake Tahoe at the Harrah’s Club. O’Connor chose Barbara to do a song and dance duet with him.

“A couple of agents saw me, and the next thing I knew, I was featured with Donald O’Connor, tapping away on a three-month song and dance tour. One of the tuners we did together was a soft shoe, Me and My Shadow. All in all, it was a marvelous experience.”

She debuted in the low-budget crime drama 20,000 Eyes (1961), starring Gene Nelson and Merry Anders. Then, the young actress began appearing in episodic television shows such as Leave It To Beaver’s Season 5 episode, No Time for Babysitters. She also appeared in popular shows like Wagon Train and The Wide Country.

She appeared in the rare and under-appreciated 87th Precinct (1961) in the episode Lady Killer and in the highly charged episode of Dr. Kildare (1962), The Soul Killer. After that, she appeared in The Untouchables and Perry Mason.

Barbara worked as an usher in a cinema to pay for drama lessons. In 1962, she recorded a song on Baronet Records called “A Tiny Little Teardrop.” The song was reviewed in the September 22, 1962, Billboard MusicWeek Magazine issue and reached the Billboard charts.

Her agent called and told her there was an interesting part in an upcoming television series that they would like her to test for.

United States – Nov. 8 Peyton Place Episode 27 & 28 11/17/64 Kasey Rogers, Barbara Parkins, Henry Beckman (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images.

In 1964, she was soon offered the pivotal role of “Betty Anderson,” the daughter of a small-town millworker, in television’s first prime-time soap opera, Peyton Place, with its literate and intelligent writing. In the novel, Betty Anderson is referred to as having the ‘morals of an alley cat.’ In the television series, Barbara got top billing for her role as the American small-town ‘bad girl.’ Peyton Place brought real-life taboos – divorce, infidelity, and teenage pregnancy – of that period to the small screen. Though by today’s standards Betty wasn’t a ‘bad girl,’ the show packaged her with that title, promoted her as such, and even symbolized in one of the earliest scenes where she serves as an example of the original transgressor – signified by the pillory that sits in the middle of the square that tells the story of the first marked woman who was driven out of the puritanical town of Peyton Place 300 years ago. Betty loses her virtue to the Mill owner’s son (Ryan O’Neal). This point is emphasized in the opening of the third episode.

As Betty walks to the center of town and reads the plaque- The Voiceover goes like this: “On a sunny morning almost 300 years ago, a young woman was drummed across this square to do public penance in the pillory. Afterward, they shaved her head and sent her out of town forever.’’Betty Anderson has heard this story, but she cannot fight against her hunger to be loved.”

To me, Betty Anderson was the re-emergence of the pre-Code heroine. The pre-Code era had a sympathetic utterance of complicated women like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, and Jean Harlow.

Women in American cinema took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, led unapologetic careers, and acted the way we think women acted only after 1968. The Production Code, by 1968, let go of the reigns, but in 1967, it still had its hand in censorship.

Betty was classified as a bad girl. She liked to be provocative and experimental, kind of a wild child of that period. Allison was more introverted, wanting the comforts of a teenager and love in her life but not exploring it. Monash was concerned that his characters would not become involved in static situations.” (Barbara Parkins interview with James Rosin 2010)
Ted Post, who directed Peyton Place from 1964 to 1969, said of Barbara Parkins, ‘’Barbara had a warm grasp of Betty Anderson, captured the emotional needs of her character, and engaged the audience immediately.’’
Barbara Parkins has said of director Walter Doniger, ‘’What I appreciated about Walter was that he would encourage me at times to speak more with my eyes than with my words. He’d allow me that moment of silence where the look would sometimes express much more than the dialog.’’

Parkins’s portrayal of Betty Anderson was initially conceived as a short-lived arc, slated to be tragically cut short by a car crash within the first six weeks of the season. However, the audience reaction proved overwhelmingly positive. This outpouring of support for the character forced the creators to rethink their plans, transforming Betty Anderson from a fleeting presence to an overwhelming success and household name. The role and the show brought Barbara Parkins fame and notoriety.

Peyton Place US October 12 ‘Barbara Parkins Home Layout 5/4/66 Barbara Parkins (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images.

Her performance as Betty Anderson is deeply intimate, moving, and emotionally driven, elevating what could have been a pulpy nighttime soap to another level. Because of its insightful writing, Peyton Place became a powerful admittance into American homes. The cast delivered performances that were both authentic and sensitively portrayed.

“Barbara was very talented and a very pretty girl off-camera. However, on-screen, she was exquisite!” (Lee Grant played Stella Chernak from 1965 to 1966)

This memorable performance earned her the nomination for an Emmy Award in 1966 for “Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series. Other Nominees were Barbara Stanwyck for The Big Valley and Anne Francis for Honey West.

Barbara Parkins lost to Barbara Stanwyck that year, and ironically, Barbara Stanwyck would play Barbara Parkins’ mother in the 1971 made-for-television chiller A Taste of Evil.

Barbara Parkins Ryan O’Neal Promotional Photo for Peyton Place Los Angeles CA 1964 promotional photo for ABC TV series episodes 3&4 9/22/64 – 9/22/1964 Photo by ABC via Getty Images.

Barbara was the only female star to remain with the show for its remarkable five-year run from 1964 to 1969. She and co-stars Ryan O’Neal and Ed Nelson were the only cast members to appear throughout the show, she and Ed Nelson being on the first (1964) and last (1969) episodes of Peyton Place. She has spoken highly of actor Ed Nelson, a sexy, highly underrated, and busy actor.

Ed Nelson, Dorothy Malone, Warner Anderson, Mary Anderson, Paul Langton, Barbara Parkins, Ryan O’Neal, Mia Farrow,promotional photo for ABC TV series Photo by /ABC via Getty Images.

Betty Anderson became so popular that the network planned to do a spin-off series called The Girl from Peyton Place, in which she leaves Peyton Place and goes to New York, but the show never came to fruition.

In 1965, Barbara Parkins was named “Hollywood’s Deb Star of the Year” by the Association of Hollywood Makeup Artists and Hairstylists. In 1965, she won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award for Best Newcomer. In 1968, she was nominated for “The Golden Laurel” Award for Top Female New Face.

Peyton Place ‘Barbara Parkins Home Layout’ 5/4/66 (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

On the set of Peyton Place -Century City, CA Barbara Parkins on location filming Peyton Place on April 1, 1968, at 20th Century Fox Studios (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage.)

Barbara Parkins: Getty Images 517771528 photo by Bettmann

There is no question about the depth of Barbara Parkins’s performance on Peyton Place. She’s never hidden her confidence in the power of her beauty. Despite her sultry good looks, the haunting inflection of her voice, and the position she attained as a celebrity on television, she still needed to broaden her horizons.

While Barbara was at the center of the hottest pop cultural phenomenon of Peyton Place, she became more vocal about her ambitions to differentiate herself from Betty Anderson.

” To become other than just another pretty lady in pretty clothes, you’ve got to become a fighter—a fighter for survival. Because that’s what it is – survival. But also a fighter to search out your own identity. You have to fight for your independence and not that dirty word— a starlet. The other day, I heard a producer say he was looking for a Barbara Parkins type. That’s the second step. The third is when you become a legend.” (Barbara Parkins)

Parkins’s ascent to stardom was further cemented in 1967 when she got top billing as Ann Welles in Hollywood’s lurid spectacle Valley of the Dolls, directed by Mark Robson. The film featured a screenplay by Helen Deutsch (I’ll Cry Tomorrow 1955 starring Susan Hayward) and Dorothy Kingsley (Pal Joey and Kiss Me Kate.)

Part of the sparkle that gives Valley of the Dolls its everlasting allure is costume designer William Travilla, who is responsible for the dazzling fashions of the four leading actresses.

“I didn’t have a script, so I read the book and then the script once I got one.” Travilla explained “I met with the director and producer and asked how they felt about each character. Then, I met with the girls and asked them what they liked and didn’t like and how they were feeling. Then I sat down with my feelings and captured their feelings, too.” (William Travilla)

Based on Jacqueline Susann’s best-selling 1966 novel (which sold more than 30 million copies), Valley of the Dolls, though crucified by critics, somehow managed to gross $50 million when it was released on December 15, 1967, and would become a ‘Pop Culture juggernaut.’

Jacqueline Susann will always be recognized as a glamorous, flamboyant, and skilled self-publicist in vivid Pucci prints, flaunting a jet-black bouffant and hyperbolized eyelashes. She experienced her fair share of misogyny after she published her unapologetic roman á clef. Despite her success in portraying women’s desires, she was chastised by critics like Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, and her work was labeled amoral, vicious, and untalented. Mean-spirited Capote scoffed on a TV talk show that she looked like a “truck driver in drag.’’ and Gore Vidal dismissed her as an author – “She doesn’t write – she types.“ These brutal chastisem*nts were merely coming from an inflated sense of artistic entitlement. (Source: Lindsay Baker-BBC)

Roger Ebert called it “a dirty soap opera. . . . capable of the most offensive and appalling vulgarity ever thrown up by any civilization.” In a 2017 Vanity Fair article, Donald Liebenson points out that this comes from the co-writer of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, released three years later!

Susann rebutted one television interviewer who claimed it wasn’t high art, Susann saying, “It’s just fun; it doesn’t have to be high art.” Susann elaborated, “I think great fun is high art… “ Yet, despite the enduring popularity of her work, critics’ dismissal may have influenced perceptions of her novel and its adaptation as lacking seriousness.

In support, critic Rex Reed, who is usually hyper-critical and self-appraising, said ‘’She tells a hell of a story!… and for years, Mickey Spillane wrote the same dialogue you never called his stuff sordid.”

The ‘dirty book,’ such as Grace Matalious’s Peyton Place, Navakov’s Lolita, and Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, is generally considered to be “low -and high-culture templates for the quasi-genre, but as far as mainstream impact and even sales were concerned, scandalous content took precedence over literary value.” (From Glenn Kenny’s fantastic essay: This Merry Go Round)

‘Valley’ has several female archetypes we all recognize. There’s the fading star, the ambitious young rival, and the doomed beauty. There are shades of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Bette Davis in All About Eve…

…Valley of the Dolls makes for brutal reading, and its candid, unflinching depiction of the female experience was certainly ahead of its time in 1966, before the Women’s Liberation Movement had taken off. (from Lindsay Baker for BBC Culture article 2016)

Though Susann’s pet memoir is a brooding and, at times, subversive ‘critique of the gender norms’ (Paul Burston) of that era, it is as wonderfully satirical as Samantha Ellis’s views. “The comedy in the book is completely intentional and masterfully done. “It’s a lot of fun,” she says. “As a comic novelist, I think Susann is underrated.” The famous scene in which Neely grabs Helen Lawson’s wig in the ladies’ powder room and pulls it off is “very funny and very believable; it’s the kind of incident you might read about in the gossip pages.” (playwright Samantha Ellis)

20th Century Fox hosted a month-long premiere party on a luxury liner to promote the film. At a screening in Venice, according to Barbara Parkins, Susann said she was ‘appalled’ by the film. Susann also thought Hollywood “had ruined her book” and asked to be taken off the boat. At one point, she reportedly told Robson directly to his face that the film was “a piece of sh*t.” (From a Mental Floss article in 2017 by Garin Pirnia)

The film maintains a huge cult following with its saturated Technicolor scenes, outrageous costumes, high melodramatic, colorful dialogue, montages, notorious adult subject matter about desperate ‘lost girls,’ and some of the best high drama and camp.

Not to mention one of the most evocative film scores by composer John Williams, the theme song by André Previn, and lyrics by Dory Previn sung by iconic songstress – Dionne Warwick.

It is Barbara Parkins who would bring Warwick to the attention of the producers. At the urging of Barbara Parkins, the song was given to Warwick. Barbara would be monumental in bringing Warwick and the Fox producers together, making it possible for Valley of the Dolls to be immortalized for featuring one of the most memorable and moving film scores.

Andre Previn’s incredibly moving score, Anne’s theme, became a significant touchstone of the film because of its exquisite melody sung by Dionne Warwick in her evocative voice. Valley of the Dolls’ score uniquely asserts ownership of the story.

You’ve got to climb Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls. It’s a brutal climb to reach that peak. You stand there. Waiting for the rush of exhilaration, but it doesn’t come. You’re alone and the feeling of loneliness is overpowering.

Barbara’s opening soliloquy, a seductive whisper that draws us into the film’s world, is followed by Andre Previn’s incredibly moving score, known as Anne’s theme. A melodic anthem, the music would become a significant hallmark of the movie. Dionne Warwick, one of the most evocative songstresses of all time, brings it together, so Anne’s theme uniquely asserts ownership of the story. There is no way I can listen to Anne’s theme without feeling it at my core. I clench my heart, and the waterworks begin.

Valley of the Dolls features other memorable actresses: Patty Duke, Lee Grant, Sharon Tate, and Susan Hayward.

Potential casting ideas included a sexy contract player at Fox – Raquel Welch, who was offered the part of Jennifer but turned it down, fearing it would typecast her as a ‘brainless sex pot.’ Ironically, the same year, she starred in One Million Years BC in a nonspeaking role clad in very little, just a spot here and there — of fur.

Bette Davis desired the role of Helen Lawson and was convinced she knew how to navigate the role perfectly. Davis understood this actress intimately, the ‘aging star with a lonely life,’ having done All About Eve and Baby Jane.

Parkins is one of the few actresses who remained unpunished and immune to the film’s bad press. – “Barbara Parkins is perfectly poised and reserved and glamorous and beautiful” (Michael Musto) as Anne Welles, and she’s got “those damn classy looks!”

The opportunity to star in Valley of the Dolls materialized when Barbara Parkins made a bold move. Barbara heard about Susann’s sensationalist book, read snippets, and watched Susann in interviews. She heard that there were three great roles sought after. Actresses were going in and being tested. But she wasn’t being tested, so she decided, “I gotta go there!” And so she went to Zanuck’s office and demanded that screen test. Which she did – for Neely’s role. Ultimately, Patty Duke got the part. But, Barbara would forever immortalize the role of the naive girl in the big, wicked city, who would move through Valley of the Dolls like an ethereal New England ingénue.

Barbara Parkins established herself as a star because of her high profile in Valley of the Dolls. Anne Welles is described as “the ‘good girl’ with a million-dollar face and all the bad breaks – who took the green pills.’’

Barbara Parkins and Judy Garland:

On Barbara’s first impression of the legend, “Oh, I was in awe you know, I thought I’m just working with a legend. And she’s beautiful, and she had a charisma about her, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.”
(From Barbara Parkins & Ted Casablanca: Commentary from Criterion’s extras on the special edition)
“Judy Garland was cast in the Helen Lawson role… It was the talk of the town. It was the first scene I did with her. …I was just caught up in; she was so the legend, she was so charismatic, and I just loved being with her.”(Also from Barbara’s Commentary on the Criterion extras)

Barbara interview (source): “I could see that she was kind of nervous herself, and she’d come up and she’d give me these funny little hugs and then more hugs, and by the end of the day, she’d grab my arm and she’d say we’re gonna do the scene we’re gonna make this great you know this great film, and I said you’re gonna make it great because your singing is absolutely going to explode off the screen.”

Unfortunately, Barbara Parkins’ brief collaboration with Judy Garland on Valley of the Dolls was cut short. Garland reportedly struggled with issues on the set at the time, ultimately leading to her firing from the movie.

Garland was a fragile star, and like the fictional Helen Lawson, she was showbiz royalty. Plagued by a history of substance abuse, She had a reputation for being unreliable, popping pills, and showing up drunk on the set. There was a strong parallel to the character in Valley of the Dolls. But, by 1967, Garland was desperate to make a comeback. The pressures and the mistreatment by Director Robson were a very bad combination.

Barbara talks with Ted Casablanca on why Judy Garland left the film:
“Because she got paranoid, she freaked out that she may never work again, and her life somewhat paralleled the character… The pulling off of the wig showed the white hair, and everyone seemed to think that freaked her out. She panicked, began losing her lines, and locked herself in her dressing room…”
… They gave her a week, and she walked off and took some of Trevilla’s gowns with her. “

Judy Garland said in an interview, “There are 20 others ready to step into your place.’’

“It has a lot to say about how women are objectified and sidelined in theatre, film, and TV,” says playwright and novelist Samantha Ellis, And about the pressure to look a certain way. Susann is also good at exposing the nasty reality of how women in theatre and film are treated—especially when the older star begins to fade. The character of Neely can also be seen as Garland’s doppelgänger, grappling with fame and addiction, mental crisis and decaying relationships, and the business that chewed her up and spit her out.

Barbara: “She would have made this movie. I’ve said to people that she would have won an Academy Award for this performance… ”

Patty Duke partially blamed Robson’s behavior for Garland’s exit. During an event at the Castro Theatre, Patty Duke spoke candidly about what she thought happened to cause Judy Garland’s infamous exit from the film, “The director, who was the meanest son of a bitch I ever met in my life … the director, he kept this icon, this sparrow, waiting and waiting. She had to come in at 6:30 in the morning, and he wouldn’t even plan to get to her until four in the afternoon. She was very down to earth, so she didn’t mind waiting.” (From Duke’s autobiography In the Presence of Greatness)

Susan Hayward would take over for Judy Garland after she was let go from the film. Hayward’s character Helen Lawson is referred to by journalist Ted Casablanca as “the she-devil in orange.” Helen Lawson is the solemn oracle calling forth the dangers of growing old in Hollywood.

Barbara Parkins and Susan Hayward 1967 Valley of the Dolls photo by Silver Screen Collection via Getty Images

In the film, Helen Lawson is the highly acclaimed Broadway diva. A ‘barracuda’ suspected of being an indictment of Ethel Merman, known to be an audacious and showy diva whose friendship with Susann became highly volatile. The character is a ‘spite-filled’ diva‘ who is a ‘font of rueful showbiz wisdom.’ (Glenn Kenny)

One of the things Barbara Parkins thought about her leading man, Paul Burke, who plays Lyon, was how much older he was than her. Worried that it might be a problem for her to visualize falling in love with him, she kept a picture of iconic singer/songwriter Cat Stevens in her dressing room. While living in London, she had gone out with the artist. She would look at Stevens for inspiration before she went out and did the romantic scenes with Burke.

Jennifer, with eyes on a love that hints at happily ever after, finds herself drawn to Tony Polar (Tony Scotti), who is passed off as another Dean Martin. Yet, fate, being the cruel mistress that she is, strikes Tony down with Huntington’s disease, leaving Jennifer, who travels to Europe, to star in those ‘nudies’ masquerading as French ‘art films.’

The tragic Jennifer, some felt, was based on Marilyn Monroe or, more likely, Carole Landis, who also committed suicide. Landis was also valued more for her bust size than her acting. When Jennifer faces her only avenue to work, appearing in ‘nudies’ as she tells Anne, “Anne, face it, all I know how to do is take off my clothes,” after losing the only asset she has, her beautiful body, she overdoses on dolls. The telephone is cast as Jennifer’s mother who taunts her throughout the picture. Every time she calls, it’s another nail in the coffin – “Mother, I know I don’t have any talent, and I know all I have is a body.”

Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate became friends while filming Valley of the Dolls. “She was just so sweet. She was like a little kitten, a dream.”

Barbara tells Ted Casablanca that Polanski had a Rasputin quality and was a great storyteller. She also told Casablanca that, in the end, if Sharon had lived, she might not have survived the industry.

Barbara Parkins on Patty Duke: “She did a great job with this role, and people gave her a hard time with it. Because you know, she was doing what JACKIE SUSANN wrote, which is this over-the-top character, and people blamed her for it.”
Ideally, the audience should feel empathy for the characters – “My God, these girls are losing it’’ as Barbara has described it. Though, according to her, Duke performing her scenes on the soundstage “Seemed so ‘amazing’ that ‘none of us found it over the top at the time,’’ She added, ‘’But the way the director directed it probably was over-the-top.”
Barbara also remarked on her dealings with Patty Duke, “It was a working relationship. We didn’t become friends, you know, but I knew also that I was in the presence of an actress who won an Oscar and a seasoned actress, and this was my first film, you know. I was looking up to her. “

Patty Duke, whose character Neely is the ‘most’ over-the-top, learned to embrace the film and appreciate its camp factor and undeniable legacy with fans. In a 2003 interview, she was quoted: “ I used to be embarrassed by it and say very unkind things about it, but over the years, so many people have come to me or written to me who love it so much that I figured they all can’t be wrong. I can have fun with that.”

About Mark Robson -his problematic directing style, belligerence, and passive-aggressive personality:

Left to right: Patty Duke, Mark Robson (director), Lee Grant, David Weisbart (producer), Jacqueline Susann, and Barbara Parkins on the set of Valley of the Dolls in 1967. (20th Century Fox)

Lee Grant- No one had a good experience with that man. He was just a terrible director.’’ (From Lee’s autobiography I Said Yes to Everything)

In addition to Barbara Parkins suggesting that Valley of the Dolls would have been a different picture in the hands of Roman Polanski or Martin Scorsese – in the article ‘Parkin’s Place’ from the May 1976 interview in Playboy -, she tells Bruce Williamson that she would have liked to work with François Truffaut who was a wonderful woman’s director.

On paper, because he directed the first feature film adaptation of Peyton Place in 1957, it made sense for the studio to hire him for Valley of the Dolls. Fox Studio’s goal was to class up a déclassé novel for the masses, and because of the popularity of the 1957 melodrama, he already proved that he could do it.

Ironically, Mark Robson directed the shadowy and highly atmospheric The Seventh Victim 1943, obviously channeling Val Lewton’s vision, a historically classical supernatural/psychological film that is sheer poetry. Here, Robson exchanges the low-lit sinister corners of that masterpiece for the back lot razzle-dazzle of showbiz in 1945 -1965. In Valley of the Dolls, several of the cast noted that he was essentially armed with his stopwatch, putting more attention on gathering up the scenes in a clinical fashion rather than focusing on the actual emotionality of the characters.

Robson also had a reputation amongst the cast to be quite insensitive, frequently treating Sharon Tate like ‘an imbecile’ and provoking Judy Garland’s self-sabotaging tendencies to force her off the picture.

Mark Robson, with his trusty stopwatch, didn’t seem to want to compromise on the highly stylized vision vs. a deeper exploration of the three characters’ addiction. He traded off mining for a more visceral performance; instead, he relied on the superficial look in each scene and direction based on timekeeping. He used his stopwatch to stay on schedule rather than focusing on the nuances of his cast’s performances.

Barbara Parkins is taken with how beautifully cinematographer William Daniels lit all the actress’s close-ups, but it seemed like Mark Robson had tunnel vision. The whole experience with him lacked giving the actors’ characters their motivation; he was too technical a director… “Look over here… move over here.”

She has noted that Robson’s ideas were not necessarily right for the material and appeared to lavish more care and concern on how cinematographer William Daniels photographed loving close-ups of the bottles of pills rather than on exploring the characters’ emotional depth. “Got to get that cap off and get those pills down’’ calling his approach strictly ‘surface level,’’ There could have been more of an explanation for why the girls were taking those pills.

“Well, our director didn’t talk about any of that. We never sat down at a table and had a read-through. He never discussed things like, ‘When you take these pills, this is the effect that’s going to happen. This is how I want you to feel in your body, in your head.’ I found him very clinical and technical. Mark Robson shows the bottle, the pills falling onto the tray. Valley of the Dolls actress taking pills,’ and that’s it!’’
In the 2006 documentary, Gotta Get Off This Merry Go Round: Sex, Dolls & Showtunes, Barbara once again criticized director Robson for making the treatment of pill addiction entirely superficial, “The director never took us aside and said, look, this is the effect,” She said. “We didn’t go into depth about it. Now, if you would’ve had Martin Scorsese come in and direct this film, he would’ve sat you down; he would put you through the whole emotional, physical, and mental feeling of what that drug was doing to you. This wouldn’t been a whole different film. He took us to one, maybe two levels of what it’s like to take pills. The whole thing was to show the bottle” and to show the jelly beans, kind of going back. That was the important thing for him, not the emotional part.”

Barbara, photographed like a beautiful sculpture in Valley of the Dolls, could have had more opportunities to use her experience with dance and showcase her exquisite body language throughout her scenes as the Gillian girl. An extra montage was planned, which would have given her the chance to do that, yet Robson scrapped the scene because of his incessant obsession with time constraints.

All this still doesn’t overshadow Barbara Parkins’s elegant, effective ambivalence, Patty Duke’s delirious performance, and Tate’s quiet, dignified pain, which cannot be diminished by Robson’s style or missed opportunity to dig deeper.

The Pageantry of ‘Camp’:

In 2000, Lee Grant said, “Here we are. The film, which was a box-office hit, is an embarrassment of enduring riches: It’s the best, funniest, worst movie ever made.”

To Patty Duke, the film was mostly an embarrassment. “[I was] very ungrateful,” the Oscar-winning actress confessed in an appearance on The View alongside Parkins and Grant in 2000. “When it came out . . . my career was finished. . . . But I was converted about 10 years ago to stop insulting people who told me they loved the movie.”

Valley of the Dolls throws a glittering gauntlet of camp at the audience, and Neely’s wig-snatching showdown with Helen Lawson in the ladies’ room is its most sequined, outrageous proposition. After Neely flushes the wig in the toilet, Lawson takes back her power and decides, “I’ll go out the same way I came in,” covering her hair with her green silk kerchief. It’s a scene so delightfully bonkers, so dripping in melodramatic excess, that it’s no surprise the queer community and drag queens have adopted the film as their own glittering gospel. Instead of an outdated relic, this technicolor pageantry of beautiful absurdity feels like a long-lost, slightly tipsy aunt doling out outrageous stories and questionable advice, all while swathed in enough rhinestones to blind a disco ball. We, her devoted (and slightly bewildered) nieces and nephews, wouldn’t have it any other way.

When asked why Valley of the Dolls remains a cult classic, Barbara Parkins answered, “Maybe because it is so … bad.”

As if to say that Jacqueline Susann viewed her story through a ‘pink’ lens, like Anne Welle’s lipstick ‘barely pink,’ Barbara Parkins attributes the film’s enduring legacy and longevity to its – camp factor- classifying it as ‘pink.’

Despite persistent criticism for its perceived lack of artistic merit, Valley of the Dolls has refused to relent and has retained a surprising level of cultural relevance for generations of readers and moviegoers. The film’s adaptation, with its scandalous portrayal of Hollywood’s underbelly, tapped into a voyeuristic fascination within mainstream audiences.

We, as viewers, possess a peculiar attraction to peering into the abyss of a morally ambiguous industry. The narrative focuses on the greedy ways the business destroys lives, the rise of beautiful people, and their fall from grace, initially worshipped and then condemned, providing a perverse pleasure in witnessing the destructive nature of fame.

Though relegated to “camp” or “low art,” Valley of the Dolls continues to occupy a space in popular culture, defying expectations. Its longevity speaks to a deeper resonance it holds for its fans, perhaps reflecting a timeless human desire for cautionary tales or a glimpse into the dark side of celebrity.

Roman Polanski & Sharon Tate Wed Polish Film director Roman Polanski with his wife actress Sharon Tate. Following their wedding in Chelsea London, 1960 (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

Barbara Parkins became friends with the ill-fated Sharon Tate and even met her in London to be her bridesmaid when she married director Roman Polanski on June 20, 1968.

Amidst the tragedy of Sharon Tate’s death, Jacqueline Susann seemed to tap into the essence of celebrity culture and a foresight that proved prophetic. There is an uncanny similarity between the actresses and their characters in the film. Even Garland’s dismissal from the film played itself out as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Barbara Parkins has said this about the eerie similarities between fact and fiction:
“Our lives paralleled the roles that we played. Sharon’s playing Jennifer – Sharon’s Jennifer – she dies. Well, Sharon, horribly, was murdered by the Manson family. Patty, who you know had issues, fell apart, and you know her character; that’s exactly what happens. And then my character goes home. And in the way that I’ve gone home, is that I shut the door on acting and going home to a place that I love and now do my Photography. So those three parallels are very bizarre; it was frightening at the time because I did think that the Manson family was after Sharon, myself, and Patty. So I hired a bodyguard. I had police protection for two weeks, and I just said I can’t do this, and I went to London, which was a safe place for me to be. That Manson tragedy changed Hollywood for good.”

Chance spared author Jacqueline Susann from the horrific events that unfolded at Sharon Tate’s residence on that fateful night. As Vanity Fair reported, Susann had been invited by Sharon Tate’s home for a dinner party. However, on that very evening, a visit from friend Rex Reed at Susann’s hotel in Beverly Hills led them to forgo attending the gathering. The news of the Manson Family murders the following day left Susann understandably shaken.

Barbara turned down leading roles in the movies Goodbye, Columbus (1969), Love Story (1970) and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) due to scheduling conflicts for Peyton Place. When asked why, she replied, “I must have had my head in the sand.” (IMDb trivia)

Hollywood, June 9, 2006: Barbara Parkins displays her appearance in Playboy at an all-star reading of Valley of the Dolls to celebrate the DVD release to benefit GLASS at the Renberg Theater in Hollywood. Photo by David Livingston, Getty Images.

Barbara Parkins created gorgeous, evocative photo pictorials for Playboy magazine in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They only shot one layout, but Playboy took some of the pages from it, and they wound up in three separate issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first issue was in May 1967, followed by February 1970 and May 1976. Barbara’s boyfriend at the time was actor/photographer John Richardson. He was the classically handsome actor who appeared in British films such as Mario Bava’s Black Sunday 1960 starring Barbara Steele, SHE (1965) starring Ursula Anders, and One Million Years B.C. (1966) starring Raquel Welch. The more Playboy asked for it to be sexier, the more Richardson would make the shots more beautiful. Eventually, Playboy conceded, and the results are stunning.

Playboy photo shoot February 1970 – photograph by Angelo Frontoni

‘’I had done 40,000 closeups in Peyton Place as Betty Anderson… I wanted to make people aware I had a body.’’
“My reason for doing it is that in Peyton Place is that in TV, you’re photographed pretty much with headshots, and you’re always clothed, and if you’re doing a bedroom scene, always in lovely lingerie, and you know, I thought, you know I have this beautiful body, I’m a dancer and then I was living with why boyfriend John Richardson who was a photographer and so I went to my press people and said look I want to do Playboy. ‘What are you out of your mind you’re crazy?’ I said this is what I want to do. I want six pages of photographs done by my boyfriend John Richardson, and I want an interviewer who is really smart, his name is Bruce Williamson, and he’s in New York. I want him to do my interview. And we will give them what we want. We will not give them what Heff wants – We will give them what we want. They are beautiful photographs, and my interview at the time was really interesting.”

After Sharon Tate’s brutal death in 1969, Barbara Parkins left Hollywood behind. She moved to London, where she appeared in several BBC and international productions, including The Kremlin Letter (1970), The Mephisto Waltz (1971), The Deadly Trap (1971), Puppet on a Chain (1971), Asylum (1972), the psychological thriller Christina (1974), and the action/thriller Shout at the Devil (1976).

In 1971, Paul Wendkos directed The Mephisto Waltz, adapted to the screen from the novel by Fred Mustard Stewart. With its bewildering rhythm and heady, disorienting atmospheric style, the film is erotically charged, has wonderful visual flourishes, and forges a link between sex and darkness.

The Mephisto Waltz emerged during cinema’s preoccupation with devil worship that crept into an urban setting and amid a seemingly clean-cut American lifestyle of bourgeois suburbia.

This film possesses a very artful, lingering mean streak. Not to mention that slick 70s style, Moss Mabry’s fashion design, and Jerry Goldsmith’s potent score, which incorporates composer Franz Liszt’s forceful and infernal opus, The Mephisto Waltz.

For anyone who doesn’t know the film, in Wendkos and Mustard’s macabre story, 4 players are at the center of a satanic conspiracy. A brilliant concert pianist, Curd Jurgens, as Duncan Ely, covets his maestro legacy and needs to master soul transference by possessing the body of his young protégé Myles Clarkeson (a very intense Alan Alda).

Myles, a music journalist and frustrated pianist, becomes the target of the devil-worshiping father and daughter. The pair plan to transfer the dying Duncan Ely’s soul into Myles so he can continue to live as a younger, healthier pianist with good hands, not to mention continue his incestuous relationship with his daughter Roxanne. The nefarious plot is brewed with the help of his arrestingly beautiful daughter, the sylph-like Barbara Parkins, whose exquisite beauty makes one woozy just to look at her.

In The Mephisto Waltz, Barbara, mesmerizing, dangerous, and dark, is absolute perfection as the she-devil who carries on hallucinatory satanic rituals and aids in her father’s diabolical plan. She will possess Myles’s wife Paula’s (Jacqueline Bisset) body so she can continue to be with her father.

Bradford Dillman plays Barbara Parkins’s ex-husband Bill, who is aware of Roxanne’s predilection toward devil worship and warns Paula of how dangerous Roxanne and her father are and how they practice devil worship to do anything they want and get what they want.

Much to Dillman’s mistake for meddling, he winds up with the fatal blue oily dot on his forehead. But Bisset will do anything to retain her marriage to Alda or at least hold onto his body.

As the bewitching Roxanne, Parkins is far from the wayward ingénue she played in Valley of the Dolls, who must find her way back home again.

The Kremlin Letter Patrick O’Neal, Barbara Parkins, Nigel Green, Richard Boone, Dean Jagger and George Sanders 1969 Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto via Getty

The Kremlin Letter 1970 was filmed in Finland, Italy, Mexico, New York City, and Helsinki. This was where Barbara met her director, John Huston, for the first time. They hit it off after he heard her relate an incident where she kicked a brat of a little boy back after he kicked her. “That’s my girl! That’s a great story. I love it.” The Kremlin Letter is the story of a Naval Intelligence officer endowed with a powerful photographic memory who is transferred to the CIA during the Cold War to participate in a covert operation in Moscow.

Barbara Parkins plays Agent B.A. She was an asset to the team, a very agile spy, referred to as a human fly who could climb buildings, and a fearless secret agent. In the February 1970 issue of Playboy, the article refers to her character in The Kremlin Letter as the “hashish smoking harlot whose line of work leads her to disaster.” like all three thrillers, The Kremlin Letter, Puppet on a Chain, and The Deadly Trap, Barbara Parkins meets with a violent end.

I have wondered what kind of early action heroine Barbara Parkins might have played in her own feature television show or movie franchise. She has all the qualities to have been an Emma Peel in The Avengers or Honey West.

The taut, moody thriller The Deadly Trap 1971, or La Maison Sous Les Arbres (The House under the Trees), directed by René Clément, was filmed in Paris. Barbara did not have a good working relationship with the director and begged her agent to get her out of the film, which, to her delight, wasn’t successful at the box office.

Nothing is as it seems as Faye Dunaway’s genius husband, Frank Langella, suddenly quits his job, and then her children disappear in an apparent kidnapping. Barbara Parkins plays her friend Cynthia, who tries to help her solve the mystery, but is she an ally or adversary?

In Puppet on a Chain 1971, Sven-Bertil Taube plays Paul Sherman, a U.S. Agent sent to Amsterdam to investigate a heroin smuggling ring and corruption in the police force. With the help of Barbara Parkins, who plays Maggie, his incognito agent girlfriend, the two uncover the dangerous drug cartel. Maggie meets an utterly harrowing death!

In Amicus’s Asylum 1971, director Roy Ward Baker’s anthology horror jewel box – showcases macabre stories by master storyteller Robert Bloch, about a psychiatrist who goes to interview for a job at a mental hospital.

Barbara stars in the standout segment called Frozen Fear, which features her character Bonnie having an affair with Richard Todd, who murders his wife. Still, there’s horrible retribution waiting, wrapped in butcher’s paper, in the end, for both adulterers.

The first patient psychiatrist Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) sees in the asylum is Barbara’s character Bonnie. He listens as she tells of her adulterous relationship with a man married to a woman versed in African voodoo and superstition. Bonnie recalls how her lover, Walter, chopped up his wife with a hatchet and stuffed her body parts in a basem*nt freezer. Bonnie arrives at the scene of the crime sometime later and is confronted by the murderous limbs of Walter’s murdered wife.

The highlight is the chopped-up body trying to wriggle out of a basem*nt deep freeze. First, a hand reaches out of the freezer and throttles Barbara’s lover, Walter, played by Richard Todd. The horror is simultaneously ridiculous, funny, and unsettling in a jolting moment. Later, the body parts wrapped in brown paper terrorize Barbara’s character, Bonnie, who winds up with claw marks on her face when using an axe to get the disembodied hand to let go of her beautiful face. Dr Martin concludes that the scarred Bonnie is actually a paranoid psychotic. Or is she?

Amicus’s campy portmanteau Asylum in 1971 is another Barbara Parkins film – with a different cult following. It’s campy in an alternative way to Valley of the Dolls. The horror genre reimagines melodramatic theatrics with its own system of exaggerated reality—dark, humorous, and unconventional. Her contribution, Frozen Fear, is the best of the four tales for its cheeky, dark humor. Amicus was always happy to be known for not only its various jolts and shocks but also the amusing dark comedy of terror.

Roy Ward Baker looked back on Asylum with affection. He called it a ‘box of tricks,’ in particular the great moment when Todd, having dismembered his wife, wrapping her up in brown butcher paper and stuffing her in the deep freezer, goes to check on his bloody handiwork and finds little moving packages of revenge.

At the height of ABC’s Movie of the Week releases, Barbara Parkins appeared in A Taste of Evil, an old-fashioned psychological thriller set in San Francisco. This television chiller drips with atmosphere owing to the fabulous Gothic house, the moody grounds, Roddy McDowall’s presence, and John Llewelyn Moxey’s direction.

The movie co-stars Barbara Stanwyck as an ice queen of a mother and Roddy McDowall as a compassionate psychiatrist. It features some good ’n creepy script work by the prolific Jimmy Sangster.

In an interview with Anthony Petkovich for Shock Cinema magazine, Barbara joked about the time she had lunch with Roddy McDowall and Barbara Stanwyck and wanted to grab Stanwyck’s Emmy (which she felt she should have won), remove her name, and put her name on it. They all had a good laugh about it.

In it, Barbara is fantastic as the beleaguered Susan Wilcox, who returns home from a Swiss sanitarium seven years after a violent assault in her playhouse, reunited with her unemotional mother, Stanwyck, who gaslights and terrorizes Susan in a plot to drive her mad to grab her inheritance. Barbara proves a worthy co-star to Stanwyck as she painstakingly tries to maintain her facade of strength as a Hammer-esque heroine in flowing white gowns. But Susan is no match for her mother’s cunning malevolent scheme, as the horror from her past resurfaces and she begins seeing dead people and experiences flashbacks from the day of her trauma.

In 1972, having taken on several horror-themed roles, Barbara Parkins appeared in a Ghost Story/Circle of Fear episode created by the ballyhoo master of horror – William Castle. The series features supernaturally themed stories. The New House, directed by Moxey and written by the master, Richard Matheson, and Elizabeth M. Walter, features Barbara as Eileen Travis, who moves into a Gothic haunted house cursed by a young girl hanged on the property and refuses to leave. The episode also features veteran character actors Jeanette Nolan and Sam Jaffe.

Along with the slew of made-for-TV thrillers came this ensemble piece with a great cast: Snatched 1973 is another taut ABC Movie of the Week. Barbara Parkins plays Barbara Maxvill, one of three wives of three wealthy men who are kidnapped and held for a $3 million ransom. She is being held captive alongside Tisha Sterling and Sheree North, but one of the husbands refuses to pay up. In this movie, Barbara plays a duplicitous femme fatale who sets up the kidnapping, but when the plan goes awry, with all the plot twists and turns, it becomes a deadly game that puts her girlfriends in danger.

Barbara then appeared in the Canadian-made psychological thriller Christina (1974), co-starring Peter Haskell, which continued to showcase her sensuous intensity to good effect, and, according to Barbara, she had been photographed the most beautifully.

Filmed in South Africa, Shout at the Devil (1976) is a picture that Barbara Parkins adores; it stars Lee Marvin and Roger Moore, a British aristocrat, an American entrepreneur, and Barbara, who plays Marvin’s sweet, strong-willed, and courageous daughter, Rosa, who is always trying to get her drunken father to be a good man. Barbara tells a story of how, during the filming, she was wearing one of her Victorian skirts and a white Victorian blouse when Lee Marvin came stumbling out of the bar and stomped on the dirt road after it had rained and splashed mud all over her. Intimidating and larger than life as he was known to be, the two would become very dear friends.

They set out to destroy a German battlecruiser awaiting repairs in an inlet just off Zanzibar during World War I. When Moore comes down with malaria, Rosa nurses him back to health, and the two fall in love and marry.

The film is humorous at times and turns tragic when a Nazi, played by Rene Kolldehoff, kills their newborn baby; in the last half of the film, Barbara sets out on a quest to hunt down and kill that man who murdered her child. Barbara loved working with Lee Marvin, who became like a father figure to her, and she considered him a fascinating actor to work with. There is a particular scene in which she reminisces about Lee Marvin on the ship gazing up at the sky, and the camera just locks on him and catches his masterful pauses, which are ‘mesmerizing.’

Barbara Parkins is astonishing as the courageous Rosa in this adventure directed by Peter Hunt (Editor of There Was a Crooked Man 1960, Dr. No 1962, From Russia With Love 1963, Goldfinger 1964, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service 1969.)

Slowly, Barbara Parkins found that acting was fading into the background. She got married in the late 1970s and lived in France for a time. After her marriage ended, Barbara returned to the States and began acting again. Appearing in popular television shows and mini-series, and made for TV movies.

Barbara Parkins as Leonie Randolph and Lee Remick in Jennie Lady Randolph Churchill 1974 Photo by Terry Fincher.

Shown above: Parkins plays Leonie Jerome, Aunt of Winston Churchill, in the British series “Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (shown in the USA on PBS in 1975), appeared as Martinique in the acclaimed NBC miniseries “Captains and Kings” (1976). She appeared in the TV movie Law of the Land (1976), a period piece set in the Wild West, where she plays a madame whose girls are being stalked by a Jack the Ripper-style killer.

Barbara Parkins gave a truly fine performance singing and dancing as Anna Held in the NBC biography “Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women” (1978) a role she is keeping fond of.

Peter Strauss, Barbara Parkins in ‘Young Joe, The Forgotten Kennedy’ Seattle WA 1977 ABC tv movie (Photo by Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty.

She also appeared in Testimony of Two Men (1977) and Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy (1977). She then appeared in The Critical List (1978). And the major motion picture Bear Island in 1979, which she wanted to do because of Donald Sutherland.

Donald Sutherland, Barbara Parkins, and Lloyd Bridges in Bear Island 1979.

Barbara was also signed to star in the 1980 mini-series Scruples (1980) but backed out before filming started. Barbara Parkins was considered for the title role in the James Bond film Octopuss* (1983), which went to Maud Adams.

In the early eighties, Barbara Parkins appeared on television shows like Vegas (1980), Fantasy Island (1980), Hotel 1983), and The Love Boat (1984).

Love Boat 1984 Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Barbara Parkins and John Bennet Perry.

Barbara Parkins and Robert Urich – VEGA$- ‘Aloha, You’re Dead’ Airdate Nov 5, 1980 (Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

Robert Culp, Barbara Parkins in Calendar Girl Murders Los Angeles CA 1984 ABC TV movie Photo by Chic Donchin/American Broadcasting Companies via Getty Images.

She also appeared in Calendar Girl Murders (1984) and in many epic mini-series like The Manions of America (1981), Breakfast in Paris (1982), and Uncommon Valor (1983).

The Manions of America TV mini-series airdates Sep 30/Oct 1&2, 1981 Photo by ABC Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty.

She portrayed the duch*ess of Windsor in the HBO movie To Catch a King (1984). She reprised her signature role of Betty, joining the original cast members for the Peyton Place reunion TV movie on NBC, “Peyton Place: The Next Generation” (1985). You can see her in Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun, Jake and the Fatman (1988), and a guest appearance on Murder She Wrote (1989).

After the 1980s, Barbara Parkins appeared less frequently. In 1986, Barbara put her career on hold when her daughter, Christina Madison, became a beautiful addition to her life.

After her daughter Christina was born, she only returned to do a brief stint as part of the reenactment ensemble of Scene of the Crime in 1991, filmed in Vancouver, Parkins’s birthplace. She also made a guest appearance on Picket Fences (1996). Empire Magazine chose Barbara Parkins as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#81) (1995).

In 1997, Barbara Parkins attended a 30th-anniversary screening of Valley of the Dolls in San Francisco, where she was the guest of honor (held on June 13, 2006). During a Q&A session with columnist Ted Casablanca, Parkins announced her retirement to a sold-out audience. However, her resolve wavered, and the following year, she made her last appearance – as Annie Laurie Williams in the television film Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998). The film explored the life of controversial author Jacqueline Susann.

Barbara has a wonderful scene as Annie Laurie, who, while on the set of Valley of the Dolls, is asked where Barbara Parkins is, and Sharon Tate says, “She’s not in this scene,” Barbara replies, “She should be.” It’s a wonderful moment when Barbara Parkins’s tribute to Valley of the Dolls comes full circle through this made-for-television biopic.

Today, Barbara spends her days involved in environmental causes such as the World WildlifeOrganization, The Dian Fossey Organization (the Gorilla Fund as a Supporter), and the Woodlands TrustOrganization U.K.

Though she’s retired from the spotlight], Barbara Parkins is still a force of nature! Her passion for environmental causes burns bright, and she’s a tireless advocate for our planet.

She shows her appreciation for her fans by sharing updates on her official Facebook page. She has given her blessing to Andy Zambella, who manages her fan site and keeps that special connection alive.

Barbara Parkins attends an all-star reading of Valley of the Dolls in celebration of the DVD release of the original film to benefit Gay & Lesbian Adolescent Social Services at the Renberg Theater on June 9, 2006, Hollywood Photo by David Livingston.

https://barbaraparkins.weebly.com/

Before your career in the dramatic arts, your aspiration was to pursue a career in dance. You wanted to work with the esteemed Martha Graham Dance Company. It’s obvious you are a natural in both disciplines. Is your dance background the source of your elegant instinct, reminiscent of Martha Graham, evident in the fluidity of your on-screen body language? For instance, you float throughout Valley of the Dolls like an ethereal New England ingénue delivered into the chaos of New York City. How did you segue from dance to acting?

BP: You talked about dance throughout my life and into my acting …which I was able to do as Anna Held, the notorious yet charming French Victorian songbird of the Paris stage in the TV special “Ziegfeld” The Man and His Women.
…….. now … a little background of my early years with dance. In Vancouver, Canada, my mother played the piano for my auntie’s dance school from the time I could walk … I was dancing and started ballet lessons at the age of five….. at the age of sixteen, I was one of ten chosen ballerinas to dance on point with the (then) Vancouver symphony orchestra to Gershwin’s RHAPSODY IN BLUE. It was the highlight of my teen years! Dance was my life, and I had an opportunity to go to NY to study at the Martha Graham School …but …as life changes direction .. my mother asked my auntie for a raise $. She said “no,” ..so my mother, through my uncle in LA,told her THE FALCON DANCE SCHOOL” in Hollywood needed a pianist for their dance school and paid a lot more …… we were HOLLYWOOD bound ……. not my choice Jo, as you stated!… it was my mothers. … and …of course, I continued my ballet training there with the dream of going to NY .. another life-changing direction … the Falcon Dance School had drama classes … I thought ok, why not take drama lessons?

They put on plays monthly. I don’t recall the actual play … but the weekend of my seventeenth birthday, the play was put on. Two agents, Fred Roos and Ronnie Leaf from MCA – the biggest talent agency in Hollywood- came along looking for talent. They approached my mother, saying they saw a quality and beauty in her daughter and suggested she arrange a meeting to bring me to the agency with the possibility of representing me. I was signed with MCA. This was the start of my acting career.

A LOOK Magazine profile of the leads in Valley of the Dolls quoted you as saying, “I’d very much like to be Ava Gardner. She IS Sex,” and you’ve been described as “ A volcano in a tight dress.” With your otherworldly sultry beauty and soul-stirring voice that remains fixed in our minds, you possess that indescribable sensuality like Gardner. I’d wager she would have seen you as her contemporary. For example, I can envision you in an adaptation akin to Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana. Is there a particular film role of Ava Gardner or, for that matter, Elizabeth Taylor – that you might see yourself in?

BP: Jo… you say I was quoted saying… “I wanted to be like Ava Gardner.” NO, NO! I admired Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor as great beauties of the screen ..’’ screen goddesses! …. well ..we all had dark brown hair !… there are no actresses of their beauty and style even to this day …” true movie stars.” when I chose to live in London, I had a flat in Ennismore Gardens. I found out through the grapevine Ava Gardner had a flat in Ennismore Gardens.in November, on bonfire night, people gathered in their communal garden square to watch… and there she was .. available, standing and watching! I couldn’t resist … I went over to her, and we started chatting…..she told me she watched Peyton Place and complimented me on my work. It was an over-the-moon experience.

Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman were true individual unique beauties… true movie stars of the “golden era” of Hollywood. Could I ever see myself amongst those beauties? That’s for you and film fans to say!

I never saw Betty Anderson as the ‘bad girl’ but rather a misunderstood, working-class young woman from a troubled home life, driven by profound love and resilience. Emblematic of painting you with the Scarlet A, there’s a key moment in episode 3 where you stare wearily at the stocks, and the VoiceOver says: “On a sunny morning almost 300 years ago, a young woman was drummed across this square to do public penance in the pillory. Afterward, they shaved her head and sent her out of town forever.’’ How do you feel about Betty Anderson? Do you think she is the archetypal ‘bad girl?’ Why was Betty the girl fans loved to first hiss at and ultimately cheer for? Were you pleased with her trajectory?

BP: Joey …. good, bad, nasty, tear down. how can one breathe!……. Peyton Place was filmed in a more gentle, respectful era… no swearing – no explicit sex and nudity …..” bad girl Betty” and “good girl Allison” were just labels … just…ways of publishing and exciting the TV viewers, and for all who read the Grace Metalious Peyton Place book she’s written… She explores within families and townspeople, the social inequities – gossip -class privilege – those who live on the other side of the track -abortion -adultery, and murder …… I do recall scenes of laughter and joy! Before Peyton Place, there were happy family series….. Lassie, Leave It To Beaver. Then Peyton Place opened the door to what really went on in life. The TV audience couldn’t get enough. We were the number one nighttime drama for our six years.

Yes!…. Betty Anderson was a colorful, flirtatious girl … and got pregnant .. a poignant scene that was played out between Betty and her mother, portrayed gently by Casey Rogers … she was also vulnerable and eventually married into the upper class. I am so fortunate to have had so many fans love my acting as bad girl Betty Anderson and it was exciting each day working with an amazing cast and crew and our two directors. it was always exciting driving up to the gates of 20th Century Fox, knowing I was going to the makeup and hair department – being dressed and walking onto stage 9. It was to be that I was becoming part of its filming history!

I loved portraying Betty Anderson’s life as it unfolded throughout the six years Peyton Place ruled nighttime TV.

While you were at the center of the hottest pop cultural phenomenon of Peyton Place, you became more vocal about your ambitions in order to differentiate yourself from Betty Anderson. Jacqueline Susann describes her success as having “guts and never taking no for an answer.” Was that your credo? How was being gutsy necessary for you in a male-centric business?

BP: YES! …. all the early years leading up to the ’60s were called the golden era of Hollywood. Studios were run by men, Warner Bros, MGM., and 20th Century Fox …Yes! Men presided over these studios. Dick Zanuck and his father before him were passionate about the films and, eventually, the TV shows they put on the screen. Dick Zanuck was always respectful to the actors and actresses that were working at Fox.

I knew Dick Zanuck was my boss, but it was always a mutual respect!
You quote Jackie Susann as saying …. ‘Success was always guts and never taking no for an answer.’ NO! … that was not my “credo.”

I became a young actress (thanks to the Falcon Dance Studio) with the great fortune of being signed by MCA and eventually getting the role of Betty Anderson in Peyton Place…… but ..starting out .. at interviews … I was told. I had no film experience – was a tad overweight- lovely photos “but” ….. so I answered an ad in Variety – the Hollywood magazine. Wanted: dancers for the Donald O’Conner Show at Harrahs in Lake Tahoe. I went with my mother …did the dance audition, and got to be one of the dancers …

Again-as it goes … I was chosen to dance and sing with Donald O’Conner to the music “ Me and My Shadow.” My thoughts now were that I would choose to go to NY … NOPE! .. after three weeks, my agents called me …. to come back for an important meeting at 20th Fox. I was to read for and possibly test for the role of Betty Anderson in a series called Peyton Place. I got the role and a six-year contract with one film. Little did I know this was the beginning of my successful acting career. So… I was a young actress starting out learning the business, continuing learning my craft, doing interviews, and working out each scene with a director and fellow actors…so much goes into that one scene – a full shot – an over-the-shoulder shot headshot…. for both in the scene and making sure your body and hand gestures matched the crews ongoing behind the scene’s work with a lighting rehearsal, a directors rehearsal the actors’ input !… So much goes into acting that the public definitely doesn’t know about! Of course, it was navigating my career to a higher level of success. YES, I made some wrong choices along the way …YES! I should have asked Mark Robson for a sit-down read of Valley of the Dolls .. especially to talk about the effects those” DOLLS” had on each of Sharon, Patty, and myself… how we would act those moments out! I do regret that I didn’t ask .. but it was my first movie, and I didn’t want it to go around Hollywood that I was that demanding actress!

Paul Burke, Barbara Parkins, and Jacqueline Susann’s cameo in Valley of the Dolls.

Valley of the Dolls, Susann’s 1966 ‘dirty book,’ is the story of the glamour set on a pill kick, with swinging lifestyles, sex, ambition, high-fashion, and self-destruction wrapped in a glitzy package and stuffed with exaggerated melodrama. Susann’s book afforded ordinary women an escape from their dreary middle-class existence, allowing those with screaming kids, lusterless lives, and Volkswagens to feel lucky about themselves. Do you think Susann was right about the vision of her novel? Do you believe the film achieved that with female audiences?

How did you come to read for the Valley of the Dolls? Did Richard Zanuck approach for a screen test because of your phenomenal success with Peyton Place and your refined sophistication? Or did you pursue the role with your well-known confidence and determination? Tell me about the screen test?

BP: Valley of the Dolls, YES! I thought you’d never ask! It was the most talked about movie in Hollywood. Who would get those three roles?

People go to the movies for escapism …and… Valley of the Dolls, for its time, was truly that! drug-taking, mental illness, cancer, and X-rated films were not talked about!
…but….. Valley of the Dolls opened those ugly doors …” sort of” …… Jackie’s written way of softening these subjects on screen!

Drugs became softened ..as DOLLS DOLLS DOLLS – mental illness was softened with Patty singing to her man in the mental institute and tearing a hole in the canvas while being confined in a bathtub – X-rated films .. with Sharon ..showing her near nudie with guys. Anne … Well, she just flops into the ocean and eventually goes back home to New England.

About me getting the role of Anne. It wasn’t given to me! I read the book, and 20th Fox got the film rights. I wanted the Neely O’Hara role. My agents seemed quite happy collecting their monies weekly from Peyton Place. So I choose to go after it myself. With the success of Peyton Place and an Emmy nomination looming …I felt comfortable calling Dick Zanuck’s secretary … an appointment was made. We talked about the success of the series. I then told him that I wanted to be tested for the role of Neeley.

“Why Neely?” he asked. Well, Mr. Zanuck … She is the most complex and interesting character and … I do sing and dance…. which later in my career, I had the wonderful opportunity to sing and dance as French Victorian songbird in the TV special “Ziegfeld” The Man and His Women.

Back to my screen test …. a week later, the Neely scene was delivered to me on the Peyton Place set. YES, I went after the role and then was given the role as Anne Welles. .. I was having lunch at the commissary with Ryan and said I was somewhat upset about not getting the Neely role, and he told me ..” Well, look at it this way – you’re playing bad girl Betty – so shine as good girl Anne in Valley of the Dolls don’t forget she does the narration.”

My test scene went well. I felt … despite the fact that I had to be highly emotional -very neurotic – dolls influenced Neely. Playing the scene with the camera solely on me …. with Mark Robson’s secretary blandly giving me Anne’s words off-camera… that was difficult. Andy Zambella, who has been the president of the Barbara Parkins Fan Club from the start of Peyton Place still to this day, recently sent me my test scene. This being the first time I had seen it. I can say it was quite extraordinary and moving…. more than I had imagined. I should have portrayed the Neely role … so ..there you have it!

On JUDY GARLAND:

The studio had signed the legendary Judy Garland to play Helen Lawson! It was announced! both dick Zanuck and director Mark Robson had meetings with Judy…along with Jackie……. Judy had been absent from the big screen for six years …… and Valley of the Dolls would be her big return. Everyone involved with the movie was buzzing with excitement! She did a screen test singing “I’ll Plant My Own Tree” in her costume designed by Travilla… As filming was being scheduled …. I found out that my first scene would be with Judy Garland. OMG, panic set in! I was overcome with insecurity. I was to be in the presence and act with this great legend! … So .. I called Jackie and told her. In Jackie’s straightforward no, nonsense way …. she said, “Babe …. just get on that set and enjoy your time with that dame! I took those words to heart. On that first day of filming …, on our meeting .. Judy wrapped her arms around me and said “let’s do this honey” we’re going to make this crazy movie memorable. Our day was going well.

We broke for lunch. Judy was late to the set. She and the director had words. The following day, Judy seemed preoccupied … we filmed, and we broke for lunch …. Judy never returned to the set. Upon being told, she left the studio and took her Travilla-designed outfits with her. I was sad and frustrated, and a bit angry. Why! Why did she just walk away? She was finally replaced by Susan Hayward …. who couldn’t sing! … didn’t have that Judy Garland magic or moves while singing. Judy would have put this movie into another stratosphere …. well … I guess a larger, more loved “camp” stratosphere. ! If only Judy knew that her words..” “We’re going to make this crazy movie memorable” ..had truly happened…… the memorable camp film that it became and continues throughout these years.

My personal thoughts as to why Judy never returned….. her character was an “over the hill actress” … having to give way to the young beautiful stars … Judy didn’t want to be seen this way .. or maybe even accept it… coming back to the big screen … and while filming …she panicked! Not wanting to be confronted by our director or David Zanuck ….. she just disappeared into the night …so to speak. Eventually, she returned to the stage for her concerts. She was the singing Judy Garland goddess, and everyone loved her.

Mark Robson referred to you as having a velvet quality when you did your screen test for the part of Neely. What was it about Neely that had initially drawn your interest in the role? What do you think Robson meant by ‘velvet’?

How would you have interpreted Neely differently? What is the ‘word’ you would use to describe your vision of Anne Welles? Your exquisite transcendence as Anne cannot be diminished by Robson’s technical lunacy. Can you tell me about your experience working with Mark Robson?

BP: You say Mark Robson referred to me as having a velvet quality in my test … hmm! Well, that’s nice. He just said, “Thank you and well done, Barbara,” and went on to test other actresses. I was now working on creating Anne Welles, making her my Anne with that” velvety style.” When I would read the script, I liked music in the background to give me a mood of the story. I listened to Dionne Warwick’s “Look Through Any Window.” It was so moving. I thought she should sing the theme song for the movie. I had sent Mark Robson the song and a note asking him what he thought. The studio did sign her to sing the theme song. It is hauntingly beautiful! I didn’t receive a thanks for the idea or some flowers for giving the film such a beautiful voice.
A vital important meeting “never” happened! Our director never had a read-through of the script with Patty, Sharon, and myself to discuss how we would act out our ‘’DOLLS” scenes. How would it affect each of our characters emotionally- physically. How would we play out these most valuable moments?

‘Camp’ has been defined as a ‘serious’ point of view which can be seen as either lousy art or kitsch. But it can also be viewed as having the redeeming quality of possessing virtues that beg us to indulge ourselves in the ‘spirit of extravagance’ and ‘awkward intensities of character’ (Susan Sontag). ‘Camp’ should not be judged but should be savored because of its unselfconscious honesty. Have you learned to embrace Valley of the Doll’s historic cultural significance as spectacle and a cinematic objet d’art? Do you think Valley of the Dolls qualifies as a ‘camp classic’? Because of Valley of the Dolls, do you consider yourself cult/cultural royalty?

BP: A “CAMP” film …..WELL… We didn’t intend to make Valley of the Dolls a camp film!

We three actresses worked truthfully and with our own passion, portraying three girls coming into the Hollywood film world … being caught up in addiction and stardom. How did it become this classic CAMP film?I feel that now, looking back, Jackie wrote about addiction, mental illness, and X-rated films on a one-dimensional level, sort of through pink-tinted glasses.

Mark Robson directed the film on the same one-dimensional level…. through the same pink-tinted glasses …. Allowing some scenes to now appear comical. Words and phrases to appear funny. I saw a play of Valley of the Dolls in Hollywood years ago, showing the movie in its “camp” style. In my scene, where after taking dolls stumbling down to the beach and falling into the water… the actress in the play came to the back center …stumbled forward, and fell to the floor. An actor came out with a pail of water and threw the water overhead. Many moments and words played out through those pink-tinted glasses. Valley of the Dolls became the classic “CAMP” film, still being enjoyed today.

In director Paul Wendkos’s macabre story, The Mephisto Waltz, you were not merely the “bad girl” but the dark-hearted wraith. As Roxanne, you move through the story like an ancient temptress holding sway over the men. I felt a jolt when, during a decadent party, you, captivating as ever, walked onto the screen holding a large black dog on a leash. The massive beast was wearing a human face as a mask. The film is erotically charged with wonderful visual flourishes that forge a link between sex and darkness. How were you approached for the role of Roxanne, who diverged from other Hollywood glitzy heroines? Once cast, how did you manifest her palpable malevolence as a bewitching succubus? Did you revel in a role that embraces an alliance between sensuality and darkness?

BP: The Mephisto Waltz and my role as Roxanne. I think you have given a very good in-depth description.

About the dog: there was one scene where I was coming down the stairs, and I sit down, and he’s supposed to lick my neck- and he wouldn’t. So the trainer said, “Do you mind if we put peanut butter on Barbara’s neck?” And I thought, “Peanut butter?! Well, that dog had me on the floor to the point where I was just laughing hysterically. And I said to the director, “Please, please say “Cut!” It was so funny.”

One very descriptive vision of Roxanne, you write, that she has the darkness of a “wraith!“ You asked ..once cast, how did you manifest her palpable malevolence as a bewildering succubus. Really! I had to look up the description of the word succubus . ‘a female evil spirit who is believed to have sex with men while they are sleeping.’ I have nothing else to say!… except that it was my one film I did to release me from my contract!

You also appeared in several compelling moody thrillers, such as The Deadly Trap (1971), directed by René Clément, where you were a secret operative for The Organization. In one scene, you have to put some slick martial arts moves to subdue a hysterical Faye Dunaway, who is about to brain you with a child’s sculpture of a chicken. In Puppet on a Chain (1971), you are a CIA operative who courageously meets a gruesome death. In The Kremlin Letter (1970), directed by John Huston, you fiddle with the safe using your toes! I had already pictured you as a Bond girl before I read that you auditioned for the title role in the James Bond film Octopuss* in 1983. I could see you in a role much like Emma Peel in The Avengers. Would you have wanted your own brand of action heroine exclusively developed for you?

BP 10. The Deadly Trap was filmed in Paris, where I met my great love, Gerrard. He saved me from the madness of this film. Rene Clement, our director, was a tyrant! Faye Dunaway was a cold, self-involved person, and the film failed!

The Kremlin Letter… I was excited to work with the legendary director John Huston… and, yes, Joey! I did open the safe with my toes …..it was not in the script…. here is how that scene came to be. During rehearsing, we broke for lunch. I chose to stay on set and have a quiet hour. I lay down to rest, do some yoga breathing and exercises … so ….. I then, for fun … try to open the safe with my toes .. again and again. I then heard Huston’s booming voice, “That’s it! I want you to open the safe in the scene!”

I begged to differ, stating that the toe actions had nothing to do with the scene. Huston being the powerful legendary director ……. well ….. as you can see .. my toes acted for a brief “odd” moment.

You’ve mentioned in other interviews that two of your favorite projects were playing Rosa in the 1976 film Shout at the Devil and Anna Held in director Buzz Kulik’s 1978 TV movie Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women. Can you tell me a little about your work in these two films and why they occupy a particular place in your memories?

BP: Of all the roles I had the opportunity to play …. yes! I do have a favorite … the role of Anna Held in Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women.

Anna Heldwas the star of the Paris stage in the early 1900s with her (then) flirtatious way of flashing her mirror in men’s eyes in the audience, singing, “Won’t You Come and Play With Me, and “I Can’t Make My Eyes Behave.” She was classified as “naughty” but irresistible!

I love period pieces, and the script was wonderful. I was excited to portray this fascinating creature. I flew from Paris, where I was living, and in my meeting with Buzz Kulik… I sang with a French accent and even did a bit of dancing. This was my opportunity to put all my years of dancing on the screen and to sing three songs in Anna Held’s delightful, flirtatious way. It was my dream role! I even was featured in the “people” section of TIME MAGAZINE in my Anna Held corset.
ah! Such is life!

Shout at the Devil with Lee Marvin … was an action-adventure film, and I loved the character of Rosa. I should have played Rosa … a more wild young woman … living out in the mountains .. my hair long and free … always barefoot and stronger than my father (Lee Marvin). This is seeing the movie now. It was never discussed with our director…. every actor makes right and wrong choices … That’s show biz darling!

I was looking forward to working with the outrageous, somewhat notorious Lee Marvin. And his outrageousways were played out on and off-screen. We were to film in South Africa in the mountains of Durbin…. isolated ..but there was a pub …. where Lee Marvin could be found.

The day before my first day of filming. I went for a stroll. Lee, somewhat affected by drinking, came stumbling to me “nose to nose “ and in a deep masculine, slightly drunk voice, said, “Are you ready for your first day, darlin’! Which I answered nervously, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” And he said, ‘Well, you had better because I know how to eat up every inch of that screen.’

… so ..filled with fear, my day of filming with that Mr. Marvin …. I couldn’t deliver my lines and was crying ….. Lee came over to me and apologized profusely for his day’s earlier banter… giving me big fatherly hugs, assuring me let’s go do this scene. He was a larger-than-life person and actor. When not acting with him, I would go and watch him …..his style fascinated me. Working with Roger was a delight. A true English gentleman. This film was a wonderful action adventure film … but sadly, it was overtaken by the start of the new action-style films that overload our big screens today!

We did have a ROYAL COMMAND PERFORMANCE EVENING with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. It was a glorious moment!

{Royal Film Performance Anne of a Thousand Days Odeon Leicester Square London Queen Elizabeth II Michael Crawford Barbara Parkins and Hywell Bennett Photo by PA Images via Getty.}

Barbara Parkins was the subject of desire and our gaze for decades. Now, you have flipped the lens and made the world the subject from your point of view. What led you to embrace the art of photography? I saw several of your pieces and absolutely love them. In particular, Brutalist Stairway evoked a sense of mid-century expressionist paintings in me. What are some of the photography projects that moved you or changed your worldview?

12: You say,” Barbara Parkins was the subject of desire and our gaze for decades.” Thank you, Joey, for such lovely words! I did enjoy a wonderful acting career being a part of and at the end of, “Hollywood’s Golden Era, “…. But in my late 30’s, I chose to quit. My passion now is photography! With our changing world, the fragile future of wildlife, the natural land being developed for farming, and the fragile future of tribal tribes and semi-nomadic people are all being slowly lost or invaded by our ways of the Western world.

I was filming an episode of Born Free in Kenya. A once “ hunter of any of the big five.” Andrew Holmberg put down his guns and chose to help save these extraordinary animals. He found a nomadic tribe called the Turkana… for us to film amongst for our episode. Two moments moved me. In a scene in which I was speaking to some tribal children, I watched a girl break off a twig from a bush, peel back the bark, and begin brushing her teeth. I started to laugh, which stopped our filming for me to explain to our director. During the days, the young warriors would start their jump dancing, and one named Rojo pulled me in to dance with him. In their world – he had chosen me for his next wife. Andrew had to explain to the chief I was already taken. There are photos out there and on my website, CEST MA VIE, of me dancing with Rojo and then sitting with some tribal girls, showing them photos I had taken. They didn’t understand but were amused. My interest was heightened by this experience.

At one Christmas spent at the ice hotel in Sweden, one could spend an afternoon with a Sami reindeer herder to sit in his lava tent, hearing about the life of reindeer herding.

I was fascinated by his stories and asked him if I could spend time with and photograph a herder. I have been traveling to northern Norway for a few years in the Arctic Circle. Their winter stay in Finmark is 15 degrees – the spring migration lasting two to three weeks. On the back of a snowmobile and stopping only to allow the reindeer to rest and feed on lichen and for our tent to be put up for sleeping and eating. The short summer on the island of Saroya and the earmarking before returning back to Finmark. I will spend the next easter days in Kautokeino, a small town in which Sami families celebrate their traditions and wear their brightly colored traditional outfits….. ongoing!

For my photography website, I needed a photograph of myself to go with my biography. I didn’t just want a photo – too pedestrian… I saw on TV a documentary of the renowned portrait photographer Albert Watson photographing the extraordinary ballet dancer Sergei Polunin in such a beautiful, dramatic way. that was my answer …”Dramatic”….. I actually photographed myself, as one can see on my website …. true drama, darling!
so …. my photography is of whatever moves me – dance – flowers at the end of their blossom – some portraits – ice flows in the antarctic – hands ( one which I cherish), my mother’s hand near the end of her life ..wrapped around my daughter’s tiny foot at their first introduction….. orphaned elephants at the David Sheldrick compound in Nairobi …..…. there is so much to capture on this fragile planet!
My photographs are sold through the “print space “and “100 prints “ in England. My joy of photographing continues!

Thank you, Joey, for your in-depth questions.
– BARBARA PARKINS

Barbara Parkins poses for a portrait in Los Angeles in October 1976 (Photo by Fairchild Archive/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images

Elton John Carnival at Universal Studios Oct 1974 Barbara attends Los Angeles CA Photo by Fairchild Archive/WWD/Penske Media via Getty

Barbara Parkins’ Photography website

Selected photography:

Kenya

Other photographs

Brutalist Stairway – London

Calla Lili in Mandarin Rose

SOURCES:

A very special thank you to Andy Zambella for making this interview happen!

*Barbara Parkins official Fan Page – Andy Zambella curator/manager
*Glenn Kenny essay: Getting off this Merry Go-Round*Barbara Parkins Commentary with Ted Casablanca on Criterion Collections special edition Bluray Valley of the Dolls
*Interview by James Rosin in 2010
*Lee Grant’s autobiography I Said Yes to Everything
*Patty Duke’s autobiography In the Presence of Greatness
*The Baltimore Sun 1999 article THE WOMEN OF ‘PEYTON PLACE’ by Laurie Kaplan
*Mental Floss article in 2017 by Garin Pirnia
*BBC Culture article The ‘Camp trash’ that became a classic by Lindsay Baker 2016
*Author Paul Burston
*Playwright and author Samantha Ellis’s novel -How to be a Heroine: Or What I’ve Learned from Reading Too Much
*2006 documentary, Gotta Get Off This Merry Go Round: Sex, Dolls & Showtunes
*Interview with Anthony Petkovich- Shock Cinema Magazine
*Niagra Falls Gazette March 1965 by Dick Kleiner

Feature & Interview with Iconic Actress, Dancer, and Photographer, Barbara Parkins - The Last Drive In (2024)

The Raven-haired sylph who: “walks in beauty like the night… Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright; Meet in her aspect and her eyes…” — Lord Byron

Peyton Place 1966 Full Cast Promo – ABC tv series Los Angeles CA 1965 photo ABC/Getty Images.