There’s got to be a morning after… Goodbye Carol Lynley Sept. 3, 2019

American actress Carol Lynley, who stars in the film The Cardinal, pictured wearing a winter coat and leather gloves in a London park on 17th December 1963. (Photo by Blackman/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

We’ve lost Carol Lynley, actress of 60s & 70s film and television. Carol was born Carol Anne Jones on Feb. 13, 1942 in New York City. Lynley worked as a model and in television from her teen years and performed on numerous early live dramatic television shows.

She suffered a heart attack on September 3rd at the age of 77. Perhaps she is best known for her role in the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (1972) playing Nonnie, the bright-eyed nymph on the doomed ocean liner turned upside down after a giant tidal wave hits the ship on New Year’s Eve. The Poseidon Adventure launched her into the public consciousness after Lynley lip synced over Maureen McGovern’s singing onscreen, as the ill-fated ship's lead singer of the band, her brother flaunting his bad 70s hair and mutton chops at the piano. The songÂ "The Morning After," went on to win the 1973 Oscar for Best Song.

I’ve always been taken with Carol Lynley for many other roles along her diverse career. A child model who made it to the cover of Life magazine at age 15. After appearing in the 1958 Broadway play, she delivered a moving performance in the controversial screen version of Blue Denim in 1959, co-starring cutie Brandon De Wilde. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer! She then co-starred with Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman in Holiday For Lovers (1959).

Afterward she appeared in a variety of popular films, Return to Peyton Place (1961), and Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) with Jack Lemmon. Carol Lynley appeared in the Otto Preminger film The Cardinal (1963). She was also in The Stripper (1963), and Shock Treatment (1964) where she plays a very disturbed young girl with hyper-sexual tendencies. In the same year she played Maggie Williams in The Pleasure Seekers. Lynley also took the role of Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow (1965).

Carol Lynley in The Stripper (1963)

Carol Lynley and Gene Tierney in The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

Carol Lynley as Harlow

As Ann Lake she is superb playing a mother who claims her little girl vanishes after a day at school. Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), is one of my favorite psychological thrillers partly due in part to Lynley’s ability to show her growing paranoia. She also appeared in the very dark and twisted The Shuttered Room (1965) co-starring Oliver Reed and Gig Young based on a story by horror writer August Derleth.

She was in Once You Kiss a Stranger… (1969)

In the pilot episode that launched the iconic television series The Night Stalker (1972), the cult chiller directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, I adore Lynely as the character of Gail Foster, who was portrayed as the girlfriend of Darren McGavin’s journalist of the bizarre and the occult. As the stalwart reporter investigating the uncanny and supernatural, Carl Kolchak, often puts Gail through the wringer. This groundbreaking classic television series developed by Dan Curtis went on to inspire popular shows like “The X Files”.

Carol Lynley appeared in various television shows, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, It Takes a Thief, Night Gallery, The Invaders, Kojak, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Journey to the Unknown, The Sixth Sense, The Magician, The Evil Touch, Quincy M.E. and Police Woman, just to mention my favorites.

Vince Edwards and Carol Lynley in Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) episode The Young One

Christopher Walken and Carol Lynley in Kojak 1973

Carol Lynley possessed a certain kind of rare beauty and inner light, a subtle essence of fairy in her smile and soft glimmer in her eyes.

**Mandatory Credit: Photo by Barry Peake/Shutterstock (605004b)**
Carol Lynley-Mar 1967

This is your EverLovin Joey saying goodbye Carol Lynley, gone but not forgotten. There will always be a morning after and my eternal love for you, beautiful girl.

Halloween Spotlight: ABC NBC & CBS Movies of the Week–the year is 1973 – 13 Fearful Tele-Frights!!

From TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen by Lorna Jowett & Stacey Abbott

1-The Cat Creature 1973

Aired December 11, 1973, as an ABC Movie of the Week.

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“Beware the seal of Kah-ub-set, for he who dares to remove it will open the gates of Hell.”

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The Cat Creature was directed by horror film icon Curtis Harrington— Night Tide (1961), Queen of Blood (1966), Games (1967), How Awful About Allan (1970) tv movie, What’s the Matter with Helen (1971), Whoever Slew Auntie Roo (1972), The Killing Kind (1973), Killer Bees (1974) tv movie, The Dead Don’t Die (1975) tv movie also directed by Curtis Harrington, Ruby (1977), Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978) tv movie.

The Cat Creature was scripted by Robert Bloch based on a story by producers Douglas S. Cramer, Wilfred Lloyd Baumes, and writer Bloch himself.Â

From Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood written by Curtis Harrington -talks about how different television executives’ mindsets for telefilms are than major motion picture executives.

Director/writerÂ Curtis Harrington master at ‘horror of personality’

“I found out just how different on a television movie called The Cat Creature. The scriptÂ was written by Robert Bloch, based on an old story he’d published in Weird Tales. In fact, he was one of the horror writers I had discovered in the pages of Weird Tales during my teen years in Beaumont. It was a nice pulpy story about a girl who is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian cat goddess. In casting the actress to play the modern incarnation of this beautiful goddess, I got my first nasty taste ofÂ TV executive thinking. I discovered that this new set of black suits was always very involved in the casting of leading roles in the network TV drama. Unlike movie executives whose primary interest was ‘box office appeal’ they were concerned with something they called TVQ” This meant the ratings the stars other television appearances had received. The connection between a star’s suitability for a role meant absolutely nothing, and this was the case of The Cat Creature… […] I recalled that Egyptian women supposedly used henna to dye their black hair red, so we put a dark red wig on Meredith Baxter, and she agreed to darken her eyes with green contact lenses… […] Bloch had written an important supporting role, the proprietor ofÂ a magic shop, for a man. I suggested that he rewrite the role for a woman and that we try to get Gale Sondergaard for the part. Sondergaard was an actress I remembered vividly from my childhood. She had been memorable as the sinister Oriental [sic] woman in The Letter and in the title role of The Spider Woman, a Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes adventure in 1937…

“I had wanted the proprietress of the occult shop to be played as a lesbian to lend a bit of spice to the show. But Standards and Practices , the office of the network devoted to removing any element to a script that might offend Mrs. Grundy, sent a memo after that there must be ‘NO SUGGESTION WHATSOEVER THAT THIS CHARACTER IS A LESBIAN.’ However, my natural propensity toward subversion was given its due when Douglas Cramer allowed me to add a dwarf hooker to a scene in a cheap hotel where Stuart Whitman as the detective interview John Carradine, who plays the hotel clerk. The dwarf lady of the evening is shown seated on the counter in the hotel lobby. Swinging her short legs and batting her eyelashes, she says to Stuart, “How’s tricks, baby!” This was left in, and Cramer was very pleased when the incident was singled out for comment in a New York Times review of the show. It wasn’t the sort of thing they were used to seeing in the bland medium of television.”