Today's film for Hippie Hotties is a tender flick with a free-spirited chick who was an It Girl at the time. Let's take a look at this 1969 adaptation of a Philip Roth novel, Goodbye, Columbus.
The film is based on a novella that was released ten years prior and focuses on Jewish Americans in a post-war America. The novella tells five different character-driven stories and the movie essentially focuses on two characters: Neil Klugman and Ben Patimkin.
Jack Klugman plays Ben Patimkin, a working-class war veteran who is trying to find his footing in life. His world is turned upside down when he meets a rich girl who doesn't have a care in the world. He falls in love with her, but she's a free spirit. She's bohemian. Settling down is difficult for the beautiful Brenda.
That being said, she's a New Money rich girl. She remembers when her parents did not have money, so the two are able to connect because of a common background. Class and money is a huge theme in this film - as is sex! The two have a sexual relationship that they keep secret from her parents who want their baby girl to go back to college. Ali MacGraw plays Brenda Patimkin, so you know that she truly is stunning.
She was so gorgeous that her co-star, Richard Benjamin, said: "The camera looks into your soul, and it looked into Ali's. Men loved her, women loved her. She was a real movie star."
Ali McGraw was very famous in the 1970s for her charming role in the 1970 romantic film Love Story where she played the love interest of Ryan O'Neil. That film is very bohemian feeling because she plays a feminist college student who starts the film by telling the jock, Ryan, off and then they fall in love. There is no nudity in that film, sadly, but everyone had just seen her nude a year prior so we could imagine.
She went to Wellesley College and became a model. She married Steve McQueen and her marriage gave her a later start into the world of acting than she would have liked. It's okay because she eventually got into it in 1968 when she played Melody in A Lovely Way to Die.
Later audiences remember her as Lady Ashley in Dynasty, but it was her early work that was truly hot. She partied hard throughout the 80s and there is even a BIG nip slip in the movie Smash His Camera in which Ali's thick and hard nip is seen. Wow, what a nipple!
We do see her nipples in this movie, especially from the side in a scene where she slips her bathing suit off. When she skinny-dips, it is sexy as sin:
Sex is a big part of this film. She is having a secret relationship and her new boyfriend gets her on birth control. Her mom finds her diaphragm, so her parents learn that their daughter is having sex. The very mention of a diaphragm in the film was revolutionary. It was birth control! For women! There was Brenda, a young hot lady, using it.
This movie was also Jaclyn Smith's debut and Susan Lucci is even an extra in the wedding scene. The Charle's Angel and the Day Time Soap Star both paid their dues alongside Ali. What a trio those three are, actually. That would have been a hot Charlie's Angels!
This romance is often cut from lists of "Best ofs", but it gets honorable mentions often. It's melodrama, like Love Story, so if you're into that tone and storytelling then you will enjoy this film. The novella that this is based on it a little more of a satire of the nouveau riche than the film turns out to be, but it's still a very relatable film when it comes to young people making decisions based on sex.
Critic Dennis Schwartz even said, "Somehow it slipped under the radar and as far as I'm concerned is both funnier and more perceptive than even The Graduate, an earlier drama about young adults." If that's your bag and you want to fall in love with Ali like it's 1969, then this is the film for you.
