If you were a youth in the '70s, you
surely knew of Valerie Leon. No? You
should've done, as this lady took 2nd place
to no other woman when it came to beauty.
So praise her to the skies in the comments
section (when your missus isn't looking
over your shoulder, remember).
Which Bond film? I mainly remember her in 'Carry On Girls' and 'Blood From The Mummy's Tomb'.
ReplyDeleteAnd those aftershave ads of course - but I can't recall the name of the aftershave.
Which Bond was she in?
ReplyDeleteShe was in Never Say Never Again, CJ & PS. And the aftershave ads she appeared in were for Hai Karate. She even appeared in a spoof of the ads in The Goodies.
ReplyDeleteShe looks great in Carry On Up the Jungle; too bad the film wasn't built around her, uh, built.
ReplyDeleteI guess Mummy's Tomb, a troubled production, was the closest shot she had at a breakout role. And for some reason that makes me wonder out loud, what female British actors were a consistent draw in GB back in that time period? Were there female stars that large audiences would turn out for, regardless of who the star was cast with?
I've never heard of her Kid but I do remember the Hai Karare adverts but had no idea at time who the lady was.
ReplyDeleteShe also appeared briefly in The spy that loved me.
ReplyDeleteAnd she was in The Spy Who Loved Me.
ReplyDeleteWell, GP, Valerie, Caroline Munro, Ingrid Pitt, Victoria Vetri, Barbara Shelley, Hazel Court, Veronica Carlson, Jacqueline Pearce, etc., all had their followers I suppose, but I'm not sure how many bums they put on seats as their roles were pretty much interchangeable. Any Crivvies help?
ReplyDeleteYes, McS & JM, she was in The Spy Who Loved Me, but the spy didn't love her. He DID love her (or something close to it) in Never Say Never Again though. Just think - Valerie has appeared with the two best Bonds.
I remember her from Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, one of Hammer's last and most unfortunate productions. Her heaving bosom is the best special effect in that flicker!
ReplyDeleteI'd say her heaving bosom is the best thing in just about anywhere, RJ.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, regarding your blog's difficulty with comments at the moment, have you tried adjusting your background and font colours? I suspect the font might somehow have got changed to black.
Valerie Leon also appeared in an episode of Space:1999 as a member of a community that never ages or something - Brian Blessed played the leader of the community. I remember watching the episode on YouTube a few years ago but Val only makes a brief appearance and doesn't even speak which seemed a waste of talent considering her roles in Carry On Girls and Mummy's Tomb only a couple of years earlier.
ReplyDeleteA woman who doesn't speak? Now why does that scenario appeal to me so much, CJ? No speaky-weeky, no naggy-waggy.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice on the font colors. I checked that out before and did so again, but the same control handles all the fonts for the whole site so it all should be blacked out. I'm at a loss to explain it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've been hacked and sabotaged, RJ? My avatar picture has taken on a round shape instead of its usual square when I try to leave a comment on your blog. Might be worth contacting Blogger for advice.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think of it, it does seem to me like Ingrid Pitt comes closest to being a horror actress that Hammer tried to build into a "star," even if only for two movies. If they'd come up with something a little better than COUNTESS DRACULA, maybe she would have enjoyed a little more starring status. (Certainly she had more of a shot than Yutte Stensgaard.)
ReplyDeleteI think the women were there mostly for decoration and titillation in the Hammer films, GP, as actors like Lee and Cushing were the main stars. That's just the way it was back in those days I suppose. It might be different nowadays, but I don't go to the movies often enough (nor do I watch a lot of TV) so I wouldn't know for sure.
ReplyDeleteWell, it is a 'Valerie' in the Seventies, so it can't be bad, as far as I'm concerned!
ReplyDeleteYou've still got to go some to beat the sexiest Seventies 'Valerie' of the lot, Valérie Čižmárová, though! I'm sure the British Pop industry would have loved to have been able to have put something like this of the actual recording artist, as opposed to the anonymous 'cheesecake' one got on 'Top Of The Pops'-like albums on an album sleeve. The lucky old Czechoslovak Pop industry did, on the other hand. Vladivoj Burjanek's camera must have been smoking!
It's interesting that Yutte Stensgaard has had a mention in this thread, since it's always a good game to do similar image searches on Valérie Čižmárová and she sometimes comes up, which is quite fitting since she has a sexy dimple in her chin just like Valérie. (I was just checking on using the present or past tense, if Yutte was still alive and I see she was born just a couple of days before another singer from the Slovak part of the former
Czechoslovakia whom I rate quite highly, Eva Sepešiová, who not only shares the appearance and initials, but also the birth year of that 'girlfriend' of my older brother's, Elisabeth Sladen, who has been known to come up searching on similar images to Eva Sepešiová.)
As well as Yutte her fellow 'Golden Shot Girl', Anne Aston occasionally pops up as a similar image, but I know that very well already thanks to this wonderfully symmetrical side-by-side with Anne Aston on the left and Valérie Čižmárová on the right...or is it the other way around? ;-)
The very similar-looking (to both Anne Aston and Valérie Čižmárová) Linda Hayden also pops up occasionally, talking of more 'Hammer Glamour'.