Author: UncleScoopy

A couple weeks ago we took a look at an American actress, Carroll Baker, who sought better roles in Europe. She was not the only Hollywood expat to follow that path. The most famous was Clint Eastwood, of course, but he’s not the kind of entertainment figure we want to discuss here. We’re interested in the actresses who went to Europe to remove their blouses in sketchy giallo films and eventually to pose for Playboy pictorials. Today’s subject in that category is Pamela Tiffin, who just passed away a few months ago.

If you like musicals, or if you used to watch corny old movies with your parents as I did, you may remember Pamela from the 1962 re-re-make of State Fair, in which a bunch of rurals from East Bumfuck, Texas, the tonier part of Bumfuck (you don’t want to have your car break down in West Bumfuck), mosey off to the fair in Dallas to enter dad’s prize hog and mom’s delightful something or another. I think it was her secret family recipe for mincemeat, whatever the hell that is. Do state fairs actually have mincemeat-cooking contests?

Anyway, the naive hicks have a grown son and daughter, played by Pat Boone and Pamela Tiffin. I don’t remember why the younger generation went along to the fair, but once there, the wide-eyed bumpkins forgot about their wholesome bucolic bullshit and decided they were much more interested in fucking Ann-Margret and Bobby Darin. Of course, since this was 1962, they never really got down to any serious rumpy-pumpy, but I think they sang a lot of songs about it. Or something. Who can remember? It was about 60 years ago when I watched this piece of fluff, and I thought it was dumb even then, when I was in eighth grade, so I think you can assume the plot details don’t carry the weight of any of the key problems of human existence.

Below is a clip from that film in which we see Pamela (dubbed) singing, presumably about how much she hates singing in front of her fuckin’ cows and will fuck Bobby Darin as soon as she gets a chance.

I do remember that Tom Ewell, as the dad in the movie, sang a song to his hog, and that all things considered, that was probably the highlight of the film.

That was a long digression on my way to pointing out that when Pamela got to Italy, she gave up calico dresses and wish-fucking Bobby Darin and all other Americans with similar names. (She also made some insipid films opposite James Darren.) Instead she concentrated of taking off her clothing and fucking sleazy Italian sybarites with sporty roadsters, as she did here in a 1971 film called The Fifth Cord in English-language distribution. (Italian: Giornata nera per l’ariete, which does not mean The Fifth Cord or anything similar.)