Joey Heatherton in Bluebeard (1972)
I’ve told the story many times, but for those of you who haven’t heard it, she once hit on me. I was in the piano bar at The Sign of the Dove, in a toney area of uptown Manhattan on 3rd Avenue, which was my favorite hang-out when I was in NYC. (It is no longer there. It was razed around the turn of the century when its block was cleared for a high-rise.)
The idea that Joey Heatherton hit on me sounds ridiculous until you realize that she did not look like the Joey Heatherton in the film clip linked above. THAT Joey Heatherton would have been hanging out with Sinatra and his pals and she probably would have had her entourage throw me in a puddle so she could use me to step over it. MY Joey looked sick – terribly thin. Some of the people in the bar told me she had some substance abuse problems, but I don’t know that for a fact. I do know that she looked more like the version of Joey in this picture, and that she was whacked out of her tree that night, either drunk or stoned. Hell, she must have been out of her mind to hit on me.
She became livid when I declined, so enraged that the bartender called security and had her ejected. I felt kinda flattered by the attention – until the barkeep told me that it was a recurring scene there, and that she always reacted like that when rejected, which happened frequently.
Did she want to bear your children? (I still have a crush on Catherine O’Hara).
She became a punchline for Dave Thomas of SCTV when he did his Bob Hope impersonation. In sketches in which he was planning a movie, he’d say, “We need a big star in this thing; let’s get Joey Heatherton”, which was usually met by looks of disbelief. I guess the joke was, even back in the 80’s, that Bob was out of touch with who was popular.
Speaking of stories, the one from you that I like the best is the one about meeting Bo Derek. It completely changed the way I pictured her.
Me too. She turned out to quite thoughtful, and fairly easy to talk to. (Perhaps she would have been even more so if I hadn’t been too intimidated by her to say more than a few stumbling sentences.) The kindness she performed for me was totally unexpected and totally unnecessary. It was a mitzvah.