Mamie van Doren

1950s "sex bomb" Mamie Van Doren could act, but reviewers seldom got any farther than commenting on her torpedo bras and skin-tight capri pants. She made her professional bow as a band singer, acting in stock companies before signing a contract with Universal Pictures in 1953. There would be a few A pictures in her future, notably the Clark Gable-Doris Day comedy Teacher's Pet (1958), but Van Doren's career was mainly devoted to tawdry exploitation programmers and drive-in quickies. She became the resident Marilyn Monroe-type for fast-buck producer Albert Zugsmith in the late 1950s and early 1960s, starring in such films as The Beat Generation (1958), The Big Operator (1959), The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960), and her signature film, Sex Kittens Go To College (1960). She also showed up in the "musical j.d." epic Born Reckless (singing five songs) and as a neurotic striptease artist in director Tommy Noonan's tickle-and-tease farce Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964). Disappearing from films in the 1970s, Van Doren continued popping up at important Hollywood social functions and awards presentations, as zaftig and exhibitionist as ever, much to the delight of her ever-growing fan club. In 1987 Mamie Van Doren wrote her memoirs, Playing the Field, in which she claims she slept with practically every male star in the entertainment industry.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide