There are probabilities and there are inevitabilities. It was an inevitablility that we’d eventually post this stunner of a shot made in 1975 featuring U.S. actress/singer/dancer Joey Heatherton, a member of our Mount Rushmore of sixties/seventies sex symbols. A true honor, with the small caveat that our Mount Rushmore of sixties/seventies sex symbols has like twelve to fifteen heads on it. But Heatherton’s is one of them.
It’s amazing that she became so famous, considering she made fewer than ten films, but she cannily exploited the smaller medium of television, appearing on variety series such as The Jerry Lewis Show and The Jackie Gleason Show, as well as a couple of the most popular series of the time, I Spy and Love American Style. In addition she starred onstage in Las Vegas, made commercials, and, obviously, occasionally posed nude.
Heatherton also had a private life that was more interesting than usual. In 1971 her husband was arrested for indecent exposure to a ten-year-old girl, which led to the revelation that it was an ongoing problem. Heatherton divorced him, but later had a few newsworthy incidents of her own, including when she stabbed her manager in the hand with a steak knife during an argument. Not an ideal way to handle anger, perhaps, but take another look and ask yourself: What’s one stabbing more or less?
