R.I.P. Pamela Tiffin

[mlrg]

When I say I can't even picture Tiffin, I mean she had technically-beautiful but basically unmemorable looks.

This is exactly how I feel about Jennifer Lawrence

[Mister Tee]

Yeah, Raquel's appeal was 100% "get a load of those boobs". She wasn't taken remotely seriously as anything but teenage boy poster material -- until years later, when she unexpectedly turned out to be a competent performer in musicals.

It's pretty reductive to view Fonda only through the lens of 1962-66. Even by the time of Barefoot in the Park, she made a bigger actor's impression on me than Pamela Tiffin had in anything, And, very shortly after, she blazed to stardom by displaying previously unrevealed depths as a dramatic performer -- she was arguably the best American screen actress of the 1969/79 decade. Tiffin's biographer wrote his book in 2015, so he was well aware of all this; it just seems silly to gripe about Tiffin's inability to go higher based on such a misleading comparison.

When I say I can't even picture Tiffin, I mean she had technically-beautiful but basically unmemorable looks. As some Hollywood cynic once said, toss sticks in Malibu and you'll hit ten of such. Short careers for these actresses are par for the course.

[Big Magilla]

I'm sure she was a nice person, but she was a minor talent hired for her looks. Prettier than Raquel Welch, yes, but it wasn't Welch's face they were looking at.

It's hard to tell whether she was vapid herself, but she sure played vapid in her films, delightfully so in One, Two, Three but not so amusedly in other films. Was she funnier than Jane Fonda in the early 1960s? Yes, but it's unlikely that Fonda would have become the enduring star she did if all she did were the things she did from Tall Story through Cat Ballou.

I would argue, though, that Tiffin was not more appealing than Ann-Margret who knocked it out of the park in State Fair while Tiffin did a wan interpretation of the role previously played much more memorably by Janet Gaynor and Jeanne Crain in previous versions of the film meant to showcase both Tiffin and Ann-Margret. Neither Annie nor any of the other actors in the film except Tiffin had to be dubbed.

[Reza]

I know writers are partial to their subjects, but her biographer seems to have inflated her beyond recognition. And what's with "funnier than Jane Fonda"? Of all qualities you'd ascribe to Jane Fonda at her peak, "funny" is way down the list.

Tiffin started her career around the same time as Fonda, Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret. I think he is referring to Fonda when she was appearing in comedy films like "Sunday in New York", "Cat Ballou" and "Period of Adjustment".

[Mister Tee]

I honestly can't conjure up a clear picture of her in my head, though I know her name was instantly familiar to me from those early-to-mid-60s years. I saw her in State Fair and, of course, One Two Three, but, too me, she blends in with a dozen other model-pretty young women who played undemanding parts in mediocre romances or comedies of the era.

I know writers are partial to their subjects, but her biographer seems to have inflated her beyond recognition. And what's with "funnier than Jane Fonda"? Of all qualities you'd ascribe to Jane Fonda at her peak, "funny" is way down the list.

[Big Magilla]

Pamela Tiffin had an odd career. She seemed to be everywhere in the early to mid-60s, then had to go to Italy to make films before retiring to marry for a second time in 1974 and retiring to raise a family.

She made the cover of the Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure Section of 9/25/1966 in a blonde wig in the role Jean Harlow played in the film role of the Broadway revival of Dinner of Eight which opened two days later, but her performance was panned by Walter Kerr in Wednesday's paper. He said "she tries most earnestly to persuade us that she is the toughest Kewpie doll ever to escape a pitch-booth at Coney Island, but the real curbstone of the gutter is not there; the vocal tone is true marshmallow."

Kerr had kind words for Walter Pidgeon, June Havoc, Jeffrey Lynn, Blanche Yurka, and Phil Leeds in the roles played by Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke, Edmund Lowe, May Robson, and Lee Tracy respectively in the film, but hated everyone else including Arlene Francis and Darren McGavin in the Marie Dressler and John Barrymore roles.

[Reza]

Pamela Tiffin, Actress in 'The Pleasure Seekers,' 'State Fair' and 'Come Fly With Me,' Dies at 78
by Mike Barnes (Hollywood Reporter) 12/4/2020

Discovered by Hal Wallis in the Paramount commissary, she also starred in 'One, Two, Three,' 'For Those Who Think Young' and many Italian films.

Pamela Tiffin, the 1960s starlet who was discovered in the Paramount commissary on the way to memorable turns in such films as State Fair, The Pleasure Seekers, Come Fly With Me and Harper, has died. She was 78.

Tiffin died Wednesday of natural causes in a hospital in New York, her daughter Echo, an actress, video director and music supervisor, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Tiffin received Golden Globe nominations for her first two features, both released in 1961: as most promising newcomer — female for Summer and Smoke and as best supporting actress for her comedic performance in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961).

In 1964, Tiffin played coeds opposite James Darren in The Lively Set and For Those Who Think Young and starred alongside Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley in the Madrid-set romantic comedy The Pleasure Seekers. A year later, she appeared with Burt Lancaster and Lee Remick in John Sturges' The Hallelujah Trail.

In only her third film, Tiffin starred alongside Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret in the big-budget musical State Fair (1962), portraying Margy Frake in the remake of films released in 1933 and 1945 that had Janet Gaynor and Jeanne Crain, respectively, in that role.

She also played a novice flight attendant in Come Fly With Me (1963) and the seductive stepdaughter of Lauren Bacall's character in Harper (1966), starring Paul Newman.

Pamela Tiffin Wonso was born in Oklahoma City on Oct. 13, 1942, and raised in a suburb of Chicago, where she began modeling. She moved to New York with her mom to continue that career path and appeared several times on the cover of Vogue, in commercials and in a 1960 short film, Music of Williamsburg.

While on vacation, she was having lunch with a friend in the Paramount commissary when she was spotted by Hal Wallis, who was producing a film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. Wallis right there and then asked her to audition for the role of the flirty Nellie, and after extending her vacation, she took a screen test and was hired for the Geraldine Page-Laurence Harvey drama directed by Peter Glenville.

Tiffin then portrayed the socialite daughter of a Coca-Cola executive in One, Two, Three, starring James Cagney. To do that, she had to give up the lead in A Pocketful of Miracles, a role that eventually went to Ann-Margaret.

After making Harper, Tiffin appeared on Broadway in a 1966 revival of Dinner at Eight.

She finished off her career working mostly in Italian films, including The Almost Perfect Crime (1966), The Protagonists (1968), Torture Me But Kill Me With Kisses (1968), The Archangel (1969) with Vittorio Gassman, The Fifth Cord (1971) with Franco Nero, Kill Me, My Love! (1973) and Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1973).

She quit acting in 1974, when she married her second husband, Edmondo Danon, son of La Cage aux Folles producer Marcello Danon. He survives her, as does their children, Echo and Aurora.

Tiffin was married to New York magazine co-founder Clay Felker from 1962 until their 1969 divorce.

In his 2015 book Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, 1961-1974, Tom Lisanti wrote that Tiffin is "one of the most beautiful and talented actresses of her time, and she left an indelible impression on movie fans. For my money, she is prettier than Raquel Welch, funnier than Jane Fonda and more appealing than Ann-Margret. Yet they all became superstars, and Tiffin did not."