Brainscan, who is our resident expert on grindhouse films and other old-time exploitation fare, created an interesting piece today about two actresses who made surprising contributions after their grindhouse days were over.
Brenda Denault went on to raise a large brood of Arquettes, including Fun House favorites Rosanna and Patricia. As Brainscan noted, “She looks so much like Rosanna in so many ways you cannot help but be impressed.” He is being subtle. The reality is that Rosanna’s mom was so busty that her youthful images almost make Rosanna look like Twiggy in comparison.
Alice Denham has an amazing resume. On the surface, she’s a former Playmate who ended up in no-budget B&W exploitation films, so you’d think she was probably a total bimbo.
Boy, would you think wrong!
She was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina (BA in journalism, 1949). That’s a storied program, whose graduates included none other than Thomas Wolfe, arguably the greatest wordsmith America has ever produced. Just a year after receiving her BA, she earned her masters in English Lit from the University of Rochester with a thesis on the plays of T.S. Eliot.
Playboy reprinted her short story, “The Deal,” in her centerfold issue, making her the first Playmate to have authored a fiction piece that appeared in her same issue. (July, 1956).
When she finished her career in exploitation crap, she wrote a tell-all book which was received quite well. Titled “Sleeping With Bad Boys,” it was her account of sexy shenanigans with James Dean, Philip Roth, Hugh Hefner and others. She counted as friends such literary luminaries as Norman Mailer and the famous writers of the 1950’s beat generation.
“Manhattan was a river of men flowing past my door, and when I was thirsty, I drank.”
Alice Denham
She went on to write several more books, and was an adjunct professor of English in the City University of New York. She was known so well in New York literary circles that the N.Y. Times honored her with a lengthy obituary.