March 1st, 2008

Sarah Quigley is so cool.  She’d often come to my home for dinner and a movie, and when I sent her to choose something to watch from my collection of DVDs she’d always pick out the grooviest stuff to watch.  While I always expected her to pull out some of the few newer DVDs that are sprinkled through my collection, she’d always astound me by picking out things like Faster Pussycat Kill….Kill and Orgy of the Dead.  It was on one of these nights that Sarah pulled the classic sci-fi sex adventure Barbarella:  Queen of the Galaxy off the shelf.  Now it had been years and years since I had actually watched this film.  First discovering it on VHS in high school, like most film buffs my age did, I deemed it one of my all time favorite films when I was first cutting my teeth on the cult film industry.  However, when rewatching the film with Sarah, who possibly enjoyed the movie more then anybody I have ever seen it with before, I marveled at just how impressive the cast of this film was!  I mean, we all know Jane Fonda in her famous role as the sexy space heroine, but in the years since I had last seen Barbarella, my interest in foreign film has increased and I was recognizing each actor for their own amazing careers, and for the first time it had occurred to me what a powerhouse of talented players that appeared in this film!  Barbarella never gets the credit as being one of the greatest ensemble casts of the 1960’s.  Instead, all the recognition falls on Jane Fonda’s shoulders.  Thus, I decided that it was time for a new kind of Barbarella article!  For weeks I've toiled over the bios and film credits of the actors that portrayed such memorable roles as Pygar the angel, the Black Queen, Dildano and the other characters that Barbarella faced along the way.  Now, come and join us as we celebrate the eclectic ensemble of actors, comedians, models, sex symbols and mimes that made up one of the 1960’s most beloved films as

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

ECLECTIC BARBARELLA

BECAUSE BARBARELLA WAS MORE THAN JUST JANE FONDA

But before we get to the actors, let’s take a quick look at the history of Barbarella, which is nearly ignored as much as the cast itself.  Long before the movie came the comic!  Barbarella made her debut in 1962 as a regular comic feature in the French quarterly V Magazine.  Created by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella, who was modeled after Bridget Bardot, was pretty much exactly like she appeared on screen.  A sexy space adventurer, who was a bit naive, and had trouble keeping her costume on as she journeys through the cosmos. The story that appeared in V Magazine was pretty much the same story that was used for the film.  Sent on a mission by the president of Earth, Barbarella travels to the planet of Lythion in search for a missing scientist named Durand Durand.  While there she meets many odd and interesting characters, such as Pygar the Angel and the Black Queen.  If you've seen the movie, well you know the story.  Anyhow, the explicive sex and nudity in the comic caused French authorities to attempt to ban the strip, which, naturally, only increased its popularity.  Thus, when the strip was collected in a hard covered volume in 1964, Barbarella became an immediate best seller.  It was just a matter of time before Barbarella caught the attention of movie producer Dino DeLaurentiis who realized that Barbarella had the ingredients to be a huge success on the screen!  As a result of the TV version of Batman, starring Adam West, comic book camp was pretty hip at the time.  Add a boatload of psychedelics and sex and DeLaurentiis was sure Barbarella would be a sure fire hit!  Selling the pitch to Paramount Pictures, DeLaurentiis brought in popular French director Roger Vadim and screen writer Terry Southern, who had penned such hits as Dr. Strangelove and The Collector. Wisely, DeLaurentiis also brought Jean-Claude Forest himself as the fourth man on the team to assist in writing the screenplay as well as acting as the artistic director to the film so that his original vision of Barbarella would be transferred from the comic to the screen.  Furthermore, composer Charles Fox, who would go on to write many of the 1970’s great television theme songs, with the help of the Bob Crewe Orchestra, was brought in to write the poppy soundtrack to the film.  Now all that was left was to assemble the perfect players to bring Barbarella and her colorful friends and foes to life.  The cast of Barbarella would be made up of some of the most talented and interesting personalities that the 1960’s had to offer, and in the summer of1966 this impressive international cast was assembled at DeLaurentiis’ studio in Rome for the ultimate space/sex fantasy of all time!

Jane Fonda as Barbarella – It may be hard to imagine anybody else playing the role of Barbarella, but Jane Fonda was not the first choice to play the character!  Originally, Italian actress Virna Lisi was slated to play the space sex kitten.  However, when given a copy of the book to read, Lisi immediately terminated her contract with the studio and returned to Italy!  Obviously this was the biggest mistake of Lisi’s career because photos of Jane Fonda as Barbarella have become one of the most iconic images in 1960’s film and, well, who the hell has ever even heard of Virna Lisi?  Now to find a replacement for Lisi was pretty easy.  Roger Valdim didn’t have to look any further then across his breakfast table.  You see, Roger Valdim was actually married to Jane Fonda!  Yup.  It looks like there may have been just a tad bit of nepotism going on there.  However, in this case the nepotism worked beautifully.  Jane Fonda was the perfect choice for the role as Barbarella because, like her space aged alter ego, Fonda was just as sexy, courageous and controversial.

Daughter of Hollywood leading man Henry Fonda and New York socialite Frances Ford Seymore, Jane and her brother Peter were used to being in front of the cameras their entire life.  It’s not surprising that in the 1960’s both Jane and Peter would go on to become two of the decade’s most iconic stars.  Jane began her career in the spotlight in the 1950’s when she worked as a fashion model.  However, she desired to go into the family business of acting, so through the help of her father, Jane entered the New York’s Actors Studio where she studied under Lee Strasberg, who had trained such Hollywood legends as James Dean, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and Paul Newman.  As a result of both her acting ability and her sex appeal, Jane quickly graduated from theatre to film and won a Golden Globe in 1962 for “most promising newcomer” for playing a prostitute in A Walk on the Wild Side.  Her breakout film would be 1965’s Cat Baliou with Lee Marvin, which was nominated for five Oscars, and was one of the biggest box offices smash hits of the year.  Later that year Jane Fonda married Roger Vadirn and Barbarella began not to long afterwards.  Barbarella would become one of Jane Fonda’s most memorable roles, although, in later years, not one of her favorites.  You see, as the colorful sexual romp was being filmed, the world seemed to be falling apart and Fonda’s heart was not into sexual space romps with angels as much as it was on the injustice that seemed to be taking place in her own reality, and on the planet Earth.  Throughout the end of the 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s Jane Fonda became one of Hollywood’s most outspoken political activists, often creating controversy wherever she went.  Just as Barbarella fought tyranny and injustice in SoGo, Jane Fonda was attempting to do the same in America.  Offering support to controversial groups such as the Black Panthers, and an outspoken member of the early 1970’s feminist movement, Jane gained notoriety over her opposition to the Viet Nam War and as a critic against Richard Nixon’s foreign policy.  A year after winning her first Oscar for the film Klute, Jane Fonda was one of a small number of Americans who visited Hanoi as a guest of the North Vietnamese.  During her visit in Hanoi, Jane met with American POW’s and took messages back to their family.  However, Jane returned to America branded a traitor by many critics, where she received the moniker “Hanoi Jane.” Her dedication to her activism would create a number of stumbles and changes in her life.  As her marriage to Roger Vadim fell apart, Jane began a relationship with famed protestor and politician Tom Hayden.  However, the biggest blow was that as a result of her activism Jane’s career dwindled to a peep throughout the 1970’s.  Yet it was only temporary because in 1977 Jane Fonda was back on top with another Oscar nomination for the film Julia, and followed up with more mega-box office hits by the beginning of the 1980’s with Nine to Five, and alongside her father in his final film, On Golden Pond.  On Golden Pond would earn Henry Fonda his first Academy Award, which Jane would accept on his behalf.  Henry Fonda died five months later.  Although she continued to make films throughout the 1980’s, Jane’s most remembered projects of the decade were not on the big screen, but were in a series of exercise videos and albums capitalizing on the 1980’s aerobics craze.  Instead of fighting Leather Guards, Jane Fonda was now fighting the bulge.  Between 1982 and 1995 the image of Jane Fonda in spandex and leg warmers was just as immediately identifiable as the space guns and go go boots of her Barbarella days.  Ending her marriage with Tom Hayden in 1990, Fonda married entertainment mogul Ted Turner in 1991.  Consequently, the same year Jane Fonda announced her retirement from acting the same year.   Her marriage to Ted Turner would end in 2001, and in 2005 Jane Fonda came out of retirement after a fourteen year absence from films in Monster in Law.  Most recently Jane was back in the Lindsey Lohan vehicle Georgia Rule, playing the grandmother to the troubled teenage star.  Jane is also still a political crusader, becoming an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and a Great Tyrant scarier then Anita Pallenberg – US president George W. Bush.  After five decades in the spotlight, Jane Fonda is still one of the sexiest, controversial and heroic women in Hollywood.  She’ll be remembered for far more then just Barbarella.

John Phillip Law as Pygar the Angel – “An Angel doesn’t make love.  An Angel is love.”  And so was the best sexual put down ever uttered on screen when Pygar the Angel rejects the advances of the villainous Black Queen.  Mind you, Pygar is coping a feel while he does it, but only a stud like John Phillip Law could handle both Jane Fonda AND Anita Pallenberg at the same time.  John Phillip Law’s character Pygar, the blind and gentle, if not a tad bit emotionally damaged, angel is probably the most iconic character from Barbarella after the title character herself.  Tall and handsome and wearing only a loin cloth, a pair of wings and the blank haunting expression on his face, Pygar is Barbarella’s companion on her journey to SoGo and the search for the missing Durand Durand.  It is no surprise that Law was cast as a result of his portrayal of another European comic character, Diabloik is Dino DeLaurentiis’ film Danger: Diabolik which was made a year prior to Barbarella.  Big on sex appeal and charisma, but low on star quality, John Phillip Law is not immediately recognizable by many North American movie fans, but he found a unique niche in cult films and character roles throughout Italian cinema in the 1960’s.  Born the son of a minor actress and a deputy sheriff, John Phillip Law grew up in the Hollywood hills amongst the bright lights of tinsel town.  However, instead of attempting to immediately get into pictures, Law wisely went to New York City to study acting at the Neighborhood Theatre, which led him to a number of Broadway roles.  Soon, Law was taking bit roles in films, but made his first real impact on the screen when he played an unnamed submariner in 1965’s The Russian’s are Coming.  His next big role would be in Danger: Diabolik.  Based on a popular Italian comic strip about a gentleman thief who robs the government with the use of high tech weaponry, for nothing but his own game, Danger: Diabolik was moderately successful, but sealed Law’s place as a cult actor, and paved the road to the part of Pygar.  Law would also make a hit on the cult movie radar when he played the title character in 1974’s The Golden Voyages of Sinbad, which remains famous for its special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen.  Fluent in five languages, Law has had far more success in Europe then in North America, and was a regular cast member in two Italian television programs, Little Women of Today and Europa Mission.  However, American soap opera fans may remember him in a short stint on Young and the Restless in the 1980’s playing Jim Granger, the father of Christine “Cricket” Blair.  Today John Phillip Law is a favorite at sci-fi and film conventions; however he no longer wears the loin cloth of the wings during personal appearances.

Anita Pallenberg as the Black Queen – If there was one woman in Barbarella that could give Jane Fonda a run for her money in the category of sexiness it was Anita Pallenberg as the Black Queen, the Great Tyrant of the city of SoGo.  Murderous, sex crazed and deadly, not to mention a fetish for angels and possibly some lesbian tendencies, Pallenberg’s cooing taunts of “pretty pretty” brought danger and fear to the screen.  Choosing between Barbarella and the Black Queen is like choosing between the Betty and Veronica.  It comes down to if you like the bad girl or the good girl.  If you want a confession from me, I always preferred the bad girl just a little more and when it came to being bad, Anita Pallenberg fit the bill.  Although she originally hit the public eye as a German fashion model who became part of Andy Warhol’s Factory, she will probably always be best remembered as one of the most influential women in the history of one of pop culture’s greatest rock bands – the Rolling Stones.  Pallenberg first became part of the Rolling Stones entourage when she hooked up with Brian Jones in 1965, but by 1967 she was deeply involved with guitarist Keith Richards, whom she would not only stay with until 1980, but also have three children with.  It has also been commonly believed that Pallenberg had an affair with Mick Jagger during the filming of Performance, but this is a misconception due to the fact that the two were lovers on the screen, which Richard’s, apparently, had pretty big issues with.  However, Anita Pallenberg was far more then just a bed warmer for the band.  She has been credited as being the most influential woman in the Rolling Stones circle.  Pallenberg’s influence over the Stones’ career can be seen throughout the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  Wild Horses was written about her, she sang back up on Sympathy For the Devil, and the title of the Rolling Stones 1967 album On Her Satanic Majesties Requests was a tip of the hat towards her.  You see, throughout the 1970’s Pallenberg became fascinated with witchcraft and black magic and not only carried a shaker of holy water and stings of garlic with her everywhere she went, but would often perform secret rituals and ceremonies in private.  However, just like the Black Queen from Barbarella, it seemed that where Pallenberg appeared, trouble would not be far behind.  In fact, when Keith Richards was busted in Toronto for smuggling heroine into Canada in 1977, the RCMP actually came looking for Anita, suspecting that she had smuggled in drugs, but accidentally stumbled on Keith’s stash instead!  She later pleaded guilty for possession of marijuana, but Keith faced the threat of seven years in prison!  Keith went to drug rehab in the US, and escaped charges.  However, trouble would plague the Richards household again in 1979.  While Keith was in Paris with the Stones recording Some Girls; Pallenberg was arrested under the suspicion of the murder of her and Keith’s teenage groundskeeper whom she was having an affair with!  The boy was found lying dead on the couples bed from a gunshot to the head that was fired from a gun owned by Keith.  It was rumored that Pallenberg and the boy were playing a game of Russian roulette, but in 1980 Pallenberg was cleared of all charges when she was able to prove that she was not at the house at the time.  Due to Keith cleaning up from drugs, not to mention their mutual lawyers advising them to split up before more trouble occurred, Keith and Anita ended their relationship in 1980, but still remain close friends.  In the years that followed her break up with  Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg has remained in the public sphere, taking occasional film and television roles, but has made a career as a fashion designer after going back to college in the 1990’s, graduating a four year program at London’s St. Martins School of Art and Design.  However, probably the strangest foray into entertainment Anita Pallenberg, now a 64 year old grandmother, has made is the sporadic second career as a club dj!  What can I say?  The woman never ceases to surprise!  However, wherever life takes her, Anita Pallenberg will always be remembered as one of the sexiest and most reckless beauty queens of the 1960’s.

Milo O’Shea as Durand Durand – He was a rouge scientist who developed the most powerful weapon in the universe!  He was the head advisor of the Black Queen!  He was a wannabe tyrant!  He tried to give Barbarella a deadly orgasm in a giant organ!  He leant his name to one of the 1980’s biggest rock bands (although they dropped the final “d”)!  He is Durand Durand – the reason for Barbarella’s quest to the planet SoGo and he was brilliantly performed by Irish character actor Milo O’Shea.  Milo O’Shea started his acting career as a young boy when he appeared in a Dublin production of Anthony and Cleopatra in the role of Ptomely and as the lead role in a production of Oliver Twist  However, he was unable to officially join Dublin’s Abbey Players until the age of 19, which he would do in 1945 and he stayed with the company until 1965 after more and more acting opportunities began sprouting up for him in London.  It would be in London where O’Shea, now in his early forties, found his first great success when he was cast as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film version of James Joyce’s Ulysses which gained him favorable critical response  The following year would be the busiest, yet most important, year of his career.  In 1968 Milo O’Shea not only played Durand Durand in Barbarella, but the same year would play Father Lawrence in Franco Zefferelli’s Oscar winning production of Romeo and Juliet!  How about that for diverse!  Furthermore, the same year Milo O’Shea was also cast in the starring role of the BBC sitcom Me Mammy in which O’Shea played Bunjy Kenefick, an Irish business man living in London whose overbearing mother puts a wrench into his bachelor lifestyle.  Me Mammy would run until 1971, but as a result of the brilliant minds at the BBC archive, only a single episode of Me Mammy still exists due to the rest being whipped out in the 1970’s along with so many other gems of the era.  But despite sealing his place in the pop culture journey with these achievements, Milo O’Shea’s greatest dramatic role would also be performed in 1968 when he was cast as Charles Dyer in the Broadway production of Staircase.  Director by The Fugitive’s Barry Morse, and co-staring The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’s Eli Wallich, Staircase was a two man play about an aging gay couple; one a barber and the other a retired actor, who discuss their lives together on the eve of the actor’s trial for propositioning a police officer.  The play was the first of its kind that treated homosexuality in a serious manner, and Milo O’Shea was nominated for a Tony Award for his role.  Other important film roles included Inspector Boot in Vincent Price’s Theatre of Blood and Father Donnelly in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s much of Milo O’Shea’s career was spent in Hollywood as a character actor doing guest spots on various TV series, normally type cast as doctors, judges or clergy men.  His last regular roles before retiring from acting in 2004 at age 78 was Dr. Frederick Garvey in the HBO series Oz, and Chief Justice Roy Ashland on The West Wing.  Yet despite all of these peaks in his career, nothing was more bizarre, and sadly overlooked then the reprisal of his role as the evil Durand Durand in the 1985 concert film Arena, featuring the music of none other then Duran Duran!  As a favor to the band for immortalizing his Barbarella character in the annals of music history,  Milo O’Shea would recreate the role of Durand Durand in an improbable plot which sees Durand Durand crash landing on earth after escaping the destruction of SoGo from the Magmous and stumbling across a stadium of kids chanting his name, only to find that they are really chanting for Simon LeBon, Roger Taylor and the rest of the lads from Duran Duran.  Now, while the viewer watches Duran Duran sing their greatest hits, Durand Durand lurks in the basement of the stadium attempting to put an end to the rockers’ that stole his name.  The video was a fun nod to O’Shea’s original role, and it’s good to see that he has a sense of humor.  Today Milo O’Shea has retired to the US where he lives with his wife, actress Kitty Sullivan.

David Hemmings as Dildano – Who would have thought that Barbarella's worst sexual encounter would be at the hands of one of Britain’s biggest sex symbols of the swinging sixties!  Screen heartthrob David Hemmings played the small, yet memorable, role of Dildano, the leader of the Lythion resistance who resides in a hidden base below the city of SoGo.  Placed in the film as comic relief, David Hemming’s over the top performance releases some of the tensions of Barbarella when the film begins to get to dark, and displays Jean-Claude Forest’s vision of futuristic sex.  Yet, don’t be fooled.  Despite his bumbling actions, crazy hair, out of date mustache and Barbarella’s boredom during sex, outside of the Barbarella set David Hemmings was every British girl’s poster boy with his natural good looks and bedroom eyes.  Hemmings started his career as a boy soprano when he was discovered by controversial British composer Benjamin Britten.  Appearing in many of Britten’s opera, Hemmings was forced to leave singing once his voice changed during puberty.  Thus, at the age of ten, Hemmings moved from music to acting.  He immediately began to find work as a child actor in many television and film productions, but made little leeway during this period of his career.  However, stardom was to come in 1966 when Hemmings was cast in what is still considered his most important role. Gaining the attention of director Michangelo Antonioni the still relatively unknown David Hemmings beat out Terrance Stamp as the star of the critically acclaimed film Blowup.  Playing a fashion photographer who photographs a murder, David Hemmings was suddenly not only catapulted to fame, but became an icon of the Canterbury mod movement which was the ying to the hippies yang in 1960’s culture.  A year later Hemmings would team up again with his Blowup leading lady Vanessa Redgraves, along with thespian Richard Harris in the 1967 production of Camelot in the role of the villainous Mordred.  Camelot would go onto win three Oscars.  Now solidly secure as a pop culture icon, Hemmings would go on to make another four films in 1968, including both Barbarella and The Charge of the Light Brigade.  This explains why Hemming’s role in Barbarella was so small.  They were lucky to have him!  Hemmings was also on the short list for the role of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, but the role was awarded to Malcolm McDowell.  Hemmings even returned to music briefly by putting out a pop album called David Hemmings Happens in 1967, but it had little success for the exception of being a novelty album. Throughout the 1970’s and into the 1980’s Hemmings kept busy in both television and film, but as he grew older the once handsome actor did not age gracefully.  As his looks faded he found himself cast in more and more villain roles.  Hemmings also attempted his hand at directing but with little success.  His first film, Just a Gigolo, starring the unlikely pair of David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich was a disaster.  Yet despite this failure, during the 1980’s Hemmings turned his attentions to directing American television series with far more success in such action series as Magnum PI, The A-Team and Airwolf, in which he would also portray Airwolf’s creator Doctor Moffet.  But you can’t keep a good actor down, and by 2000 Hemmings was back on top in the role as Cassius in the Oscar winning film Gladiator.  He would continue to appear in the critically acclaimed film Last Orders with Michael Cain and cult sci-fi film Equilibrium.  Sadly, in 2002 David Hemmings would suffer a heart attack on the set of his final film, an unsuccessful horror vehicle for Kate Hudson called Blessed, which killed him at age 62.  Yet two years later, in 2004, his memoirs, titled Blow Up….and Other Exaggerating was published.  Sure, perhaps Barbarella didn’t find her time with Dildano that memorable, but David Hemmings will forever be remembered as one of the great icons of 1960’s British cinema!

Marcel Marceau as Professor Ping – Now you probably didn’t recognize him without the white face, the striped shirt and, well, the fact that he actually speaks in the film, but the role of the friendly Professor Ping was played by none other then the world’s most famous mime, Marcel Marceau!  Probably one of the most famous entertainers of the 20^th Century, Barbarella was certainly an odd production for Marceau to appear in, and I’m constantly scratching my head trying to figure out how he got involved in this production.  However, when it came to fighting tyranny, just as Professor Ping does as a member of the resistance of the planet Lythion, Marcel Marceau some real life experience of his own.  You see, we may remember Marcel Marceau as being a mime, but he saw so much more action then fighting a fake wind during his life.  I mean, when it came to fighting tyranny, Professor Ping had nothing on Marcel Marceau.  The son of a Jewish butcher from Strasbourg France, Marcel was born Marcel Mangel.  However, after they lost their parents to the ovens of Auschwitz in 1944, 19 year old Marcel and his brother Alan changed their last name to Marceau after a French Revolution general in an attempt to hide their Jewish heritage and survive Nazi occupied France. Joining the French Resistance, Marcel and his brother succeeded in saving children from concentration camps and Marcel even became a liaison officer for General Patton due to his excellent English.  After the war ended, inspired by his idols Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Marcel enrolled in a Parisian theatre school where he mastered the art of pantomime.  Now not everybody likes mimes.  I mean, I certainly don’t like them, but watching Marcel Marceau is a whole other story.  The control he has over his body and incredible movements and timing is surreal.  Anyhow, It was during his time in Paris that Marcel created his famous character Pip the Mime, and developed such now famous miming standards as “man in box,” “walking in the wind,” and “the mask maker.”  Yes.  Those cluiqued miming routines didn’t even exist until they were created by Marcel Marceau.  It’s all his fault.  Soon Marceau was putting on critically acclaimed one man mime shows, which took him out of Paris and to stages all around the world.  He finally made his way to the New York stage in 1955 where he became an instant sensation in the kind of way that the Blue Men became famous decades later.  For the next three decades we just couldn’t get rid of him. He soon found himself as a regular guest on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas.  In 1978 Marceau opened his own miming school in Paris, and decades later, in 1996, he established the Marceau Foundation in the US in order to promote the future of miming in North America.  Marceau also branched out in visual arts and wrote a number of children books, as well as appearing in a number of films.  Besides the role of Professor Ping in Barbarella, Marceau spoke the only line in Mel Brook’s comedy Silent Movie.  Get it?  The famous mime speaks the only line?  Anyhow, Marcel Marceau died peacefully at home in 2007 at age 84.  However, he left behind a legacy of mimes annoying people in parks and on street corners, for all of eternity.  Remember next time you want to punch out a mime that this is the legacy that Marcel Marceau left behind.

Ugo Tognazzi as Mark Hand – Although Barbarella fans will remember him as the studly Mark Hand, the catchman of the icy planes of Wier who teaches Barbarella all about lovin’, Ugo Tognazzi is best known as one of Italy’s most beloved entertainers.  Tognazzi began acting while in the Italian army during the Second World War, and enrolled in a theatre school in Milan shortly after the end of the war.  Primarily a stage actor, Tognazzi made his first film in a comedy titled Cadetti di Guascogna in 1950.  It was during this time that Tognazzi formed a controversial comedy duo with Raimondo Vianello which gained some success on television, mainly due to their continuous battle with television sensors.  Yet it was his staring role as Primo Arcavazzi in the controversial 1960 comedy The Fascist that made Ugo Tognazzi one of the most sought after actors in Italy, and one of the masters of Commedia all'italiana.  Although Tograzzi was often praised for his dramatic roles, he was more often typecast as highly sexual and often vulgar ladies men.  Thus, it is no surprise that he would make his first splash in American cinema as Mark Hand in Barbarella.  Wearing what looks to be a headless yeti costume from the classic Doctor Who series, Togazzi proves himself hairier without the costume on when he talks Barbarella in repaying him for saving her life from the sadistic children of Weir by sleeping with him.  Tograzzi would remain dedicated to the Italian film industry throughout the rest of his career  but international recogniztion found Togazzi again when he took  a daring new role on by playing gay drag club owner Renalto Baldi in the critically acclaimed 1978 comedy La Cage Aux Folies.  The film would be nominated for three Oscars, and win numeours awards throughout the world.  The film would also spawn not only two sequels, but be the inspiration for the 1996 Robin Williams/Gene Hackman comedy The Birdcage.  A year later, in 1981, Togazzi received the best actor award at the Cannes film festivle for the starring role in La Tragedia Di En Eomo Ridicolo.  Tognazzi would continue to work in Italian cinema until his death from a brain hemorrhage at age 68 in 1990.  While he remains to be virtually unknown and overlooked by North American film fans, Tognazzi left behind an amazing career as one of the legends of Italian comedy.

Now despite this eclectic and talented cast of actors, Barbarella was released in October 1968 to bad reviews and was a box office failure.  Described by one reviewer as being “a mix of poor special effects and the Marquis de Sade,” audiences weren’t sure if they were to take the film seriously, or if the whole thing was a put on.  As a result, nobody could have ever imagined what sort of an influence the film would go on to having in the years to come!  Barbarella may have been a campy and confusing drug trip of a film, but it’s influence on sex, fashion and style would go on to play an important role in the development of the pop culture journey, especially in the 1980’s once the film was saved from the dust pile and released on VHS for a whole new generation of viewers to discover.  Of course, the fact that British pop band Duran Duran took their name from the Barbarella character didn’t hurt the increasing awareness and popularity of the film.  As the late 1980’s began to embrace the retro styling of the 1960’s Barbarella was finally recognized as one of the iconic films of the 1960s and gained one of the biggest cult followings of any film from the era.  Barbarella’s influence is still seen today in fashion, especially in that of the fetish market.  Barbarella even found it's way to the musical stage when in 2004 Dave Stewart, one half of the popular 1980’s band The Eurhythmics, prouduced a musical version of Barbarella in Vienna, Austria.  Although it had a fairly good run and was mildly successful, the play has not been redone since it closed on January 2005.

Most recently, rumors of a new Barbarella film has surfaced.  Being written by Neal Purves and Robert Wade, the team that successfully revived the ailing James Bond franchise with Casino Royal, the new Barbarella film was to be directed by Sin City and Planet Terror’s Robert Rodriguez.  Original reports said that the role of Barbarella was to be played by Smallville’s Erica Durance, but quickly was changed to Sienna Miller.  However, Rodriguez announced that he was going to once again work with his Planet Terror leading lady Rose McGowan as the new version of spaces premier sex kitten.  Unfortunately, as a result of the critical and financial failure of Grindhouse, Universal was unwilling to give Rodriguez the $100 million for a film that was to star McGowan in the role, having lost faith in her as a marketable leading lady.  Thus, as a result, Rodriguez is still shopping the new Barbarella film around.

But is a new version of Barbarella a good idea?  Personally, if done right, I feel that the time for a new Barbarella film is now.  However, if Robert Rodriguez is to do this one right my suggestion is to stick with the original source material, but don’t do a remake of the story that was presented in the first Barbarella film.  Forest wrote four adventures featuring Barbarella.  The original film was based on the first book, but three more books followed: The Wrath of the Minute Eater, The False Moon and The Storm Mirror.  My advice to the folks involved in the revival of the Barbarella franchise is instead of remaking what has come before, create the new Barbarella as a continuation or as a sequel to the original.  That way audiences will not be comparing the two versions because you know that true fans will always return to Jane Fonda in the role again and again and again.  You just can’t remake a classic, and the mirth and the magic of the original Barbarella can never be remade.  The film was truly a product of it’s time, which is why it remains in the hearts of film buffs world wide.  You just can’t mess with that.  So, yes, perhaps you can revive the Barbarella franchise, but it’d only be foolish to remake this landmark film.  However, whether Rodriguez succeeds in the revival of Barbarella or not, film fans will always be able to thrill at Jane Fonda in the role, as she battles evil on the planet of Lythona.  She and her colorful friends and foes will always have its unique place in the hearts of film lovers everywhere.

All content copyright Sam Tweedle 2006.