Ramblin' with Roger

Some blogger – I won’t say who, but he appears on my blogroll – was expressing embarrassment about crushes he had on various famous people people when he was younger. I, apparently, have no such hangup. These are mine. Who were the people you had a crush on when you were 18 or younger, people who were at least semi-famous; i.e., not your teacher or your best friend’s parent?
The first big crush, one which was de rigeur for boys of my generation and slightly older (I was watching repeats of the Mickey Mouse Club, I later learned) was Annette Funicello. Don’t know why she became so iconic, exactly. If I ever saw her in her later movies with Frankie Avalon, it was quite by accident, but at the time, I would rush home from school to see her, quite probably on the one and only station we got at the time. There were two, but one was VHF (good reception) and one was UHF (not so hot. Isn’t it strange how I can still remember Tuesday was guest star day on that show?

Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie on The Dick van Dyke Show (CBS, 1961-1966). Must have been the dancing, and the perkiness. And the capri pants.

Inger Stevens was on a 1963-1966 ABC show called “The Farmer’s Daughter”. She had a Swedish accent, which I’ve only recently learned that she had to fake, because she had worked hard to lose it. The character Katy Holstrum was a governess to Congressman Glen Morley (William Windom), who was widowed with two sons. She also appeared in several movies, including Hang ‘Em High with Clint Eastwood (1968). Inger Stevens died, a suicide by pills and booze, in 1970. I found that particularly depressing.

I knew Angela Cartwright from Make Room for Daddy/The Danny Thomas Show (first of two Danny Thomas connections); she started in 1957. Also from The Sound of Music (1965). But for some reason, it was during her run on Lost in Space c. 1965, that I developed a crush on her. She was my youngest crush, being only six months older than I.

Marlo Thomas, daughter of Danny. I watched That Girl pretty much religiously, and really liked it for much of its run on ABC (1966-1971), though it sagged at the end, when it added dopey lyrics to the theme song. (Thanks to GayProf for that information.) Marlo is probably of a physical type, like the MTM/Laura Petrie, and likely a personality model for shows with “independent women”, such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

In the early days of the Supremes, the group shared lead vocals more often than in later times, when Diana Ross dominated. One of my favorite songs on Meet the Supremes was Buttered Popcorn, with the lead vocal by Florence Ballard. But I really got a crush from the cover of The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland, with Flo looking particularly zaftig, in a good way. Of course, she died, broke, in 1976, which was wrong on so many levels, and was partially the inspiration for Dreamgirls.

I have no idea how I first became aware of Sophia Loren. I certainly never saw any of her movies until much later. But I thought she was the epitome of a beautiful woman when I was 16, and I’ll stick with that.

ROG