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"Lovely Rita meter maid/Nothing can come between us/When it gets dark I tow your heart away"

-- The Beatles, 1967

“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” the old saying goes…yet even though ravishing RITA GAM (looking like Liz Taylor, above right) was a bridesmaid just once, and a bride twice, the fame of the first superseded the second for the rest of her life.

Thus, even when she died last week at 88, her lengthy New York Times obituary (above) noted her having been an attendant as much as an actress!

Rita always had “an oral fixation”—more about that later—and hardly posed without a cigarette between her lips {the height of hotness back then—a real ‘piece of ash’ below left}. It was even front page news in January 1958 when “her husband has presented the actress with a pipe to help her cut down on cigarette consumption.”

Being smoking hot takes its toll, however…so it was scarcely a surprise when the New York Times reported late last month that: “Rita Gam, who made her eye-catching Hollywood debut without saying a word {she only exhaled erotically in 1952’s The Thief, above right} and played a real-life bridesmaid at the fairy-tale wedding of her former roommate Grace Kelly, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. The cause was respiratory failure.” At least it got her the gig as spokeswoman for Lucky Strike cigarettes in 1955 (signed, below right).

She replaced the so-called ‘Most Beautiful Woman in Film,’ Hedy Lamarr, whose ads for Luckies weren’t just blowing smoke: “A good cigarette is like a good man—always enjoyable,” was her tagline. “Let your own taste and throat be the judge.” Ironically, gossip guru Louella Parsons had announced the Pittsburgh native’s arrival in Hollywood in June 1952 by reporting: “Rita Gam, who has been described as the Hedy Lamarr of Television, comes here for the lead opposite Ray Milland in The Thief. Producer Clarence Greene waved such a lucrative contract at her, Miss Gam couldn’t refuse.” And few could refuse to recognize the resemblance…

She received a Golden Globe nomination for her debut in The Thief—despite having no dialogue: “It’s the first film for lovely Rita Gam,” wrote one reviewer. “She doesn’t have much screen time nor is she very relevant to the plot, but boy does she ever make an impression!” So much so that her hiked-up skirt publicity still (below right) was banned from movie theaters: “A picture of Rita Gam (the baddie in The Thief) was ordered out of the Roxy lobby,” wrote legendary New York columnist Earl Wilson in Oct. 1952. “Too sexy….”

No words were needed to describe Rita’s lovely lower limbs…but one traces its origins back to 1781 and coincides with her surname: “Gam refers to the shapeliness of a woman’s leg,” according to Yahoo! Answers, and derives from the Italian word gamba, meaning leg. Rita came by it honest: born Rita Eleanore Mackay in 1927, she took the name of her stepfather—Russian immigrant dress maker Benjamin Gam—when her mother remarried in 1932. And soon learned to show off her gorgeous gams in daddy’s dresses (below left), which later landed her the first-ever endorsement deal for lady’s electric shavers (below right)!

“Pictures of me are very leggy,” she said in 1955, and Rita also emphasized her lower half to distract audience attention from her modest 32B bust. Always self-conscious of her slim shape, the studio starlet heeded advice from “up top” to pad her bra for film roles…

…and use push-up cups and dark makeup to create cleavage for publicity pics.

But more about ‘them’ later two…

Rita couldn’t wear a bra with her filmy costume when elected Queen of the Art Student League’s Gala Dream Ball in NYC in May 1953…and suffered a right nip slip that her King consort tried to cover up!

And she was so popular with the fellas that two months later our troops stationed in Korea—7 months before Marilyn Monroe’s famous visit—publicly requested a 15-foot pinup photo of Gam’s gams to hang in their Marine barracks.

But soon she would be surpassed…which would forever last…by her best friend and roommate. “I’ve got another five minutes of talking about Grace in me and that’s it,” Rita remarked during a 2011 interview. “She was playing some villainess or other {on a TV show titled Danger directed by Gam’s husband Sidney Lumet}. She was very cute. We were introduced by Sidney. He said, ‘Oh Rita, this is Grace. Grace Kelly, this is Rita.’”

When Gam moved to Hollywood a year later without her husband, MGM put her up at the ritzy Beverly Hills Hotel: “I was very uncomfortable there,” Rita recalled. “I was a woman alone and if I sat in the lobby I would get hit on, and I was so lonely. I called Grace and she said, ‘Oh come for tea today,’ which I did.” Days later, “I moved into her flat and it was rather fun. It was like we were sorority girls.” With initiation rites: “Hollywood was a party town and pretty wide open,” Gam says suggestively. “We would get hit on by industry wolves.”

That’s Life…but it was Rita who landed the prestigious cover of the magazine that signaled stardom in September 1952—only to have her flat mate{Grace was even less endowed than Gam} follow suit 19 months later!

Just a year and a half after Grace’s debut on the Life cover…she was about to become the most famous woman in the world! “She called me, and she said, ‘Come up for drinks on Thursday, I want you to meet my prince,’” Rita remembered after returning to Manhattan. “I thought she meant her newest boyfriend {Kelly had quickly conquered co-stars Bing Crosby, William Holden, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra}, and indeed it was her prince!”

Monaco’s monarch didn’t initially impress Gam: “When I first met Prince Rainier, I wasn’t blown over—you know, he wasn’t Clark Gable {who’d ‘gotten’ Grace in 1953 on the set of Mogambo}. He wasn’t handsome, he was short and dumpy. And rich. So I mean, what’s not to like?” The lady liked money…and just 27 days before her roomie tied the knot in Monaco, Rita remarried…to Thomas Guinzburg, son of the wealthy owner of Viking Press. With grinning Grace at their side…

Kelly’s coronation in April 1956 was called “one of the biggest social occasions of the decade” and, according to royal biographer Robert Lacey, “The first modern event to generate media overkill.” Guests included King Farouk of Egypt, the Aga Khan (sultan of India), hotel mogul Conrad Hilton (great-grandad of Paris) and Ava Gardner. Rita Gam had been “touted by MGM as a second Ava Gardner,” according to Hedda Hopper…yet it was she who got the honor of being a bridesmaid (back row, 2nd from right—the only one looking at Grace).

“After the honeymoon,” reveals Rita, “Grace and Rainier slept for two days”—perhaps a reflection of Gary Cooper’s comment: “Looked like she was a cold dish with a man until you got her pants down, then she’d explode!” Her bridesmaid bemoaned: “It was exhausting, and it took them a long time to recover from it.”

Rita never did…and though her crowning achievement was to one-up Princess Grace by playing a Queen (Nefertiti, above—leading to slew of ‘titty jokes’), her career seemed royally ruined. Within weeks of the wedding, in early May 1956 Gam “is reported under a doctor’s care in New York for ‘complete nervous and physical exhaustion’ resulting from the ‘trying’ festivities of the Grace Kelly-Prince Rainier nuptials. Her father says she has been under medical care in a clinic since April 30” {10 days after returning from Monaco}.

The tabloids—even more vicious then than now—had already pounced…with infamous Confidential magazine musing: “Rita Gam, the super-colossal find of ’53 is well on her way to becoming the all-time fizzle of ’55. In fact, the last time Gam figured prominently in the press was when she wrote an article about her ex-roommate {the first of ‘hundreds of interviews’ about Kelly she’d give in her lifetime}. It must have been a bitter pill for Rita to swallow—that the most currently interesting thing about her was her past association with Grace.”

It’s a wonder she didn’t swallow pills…since another article at the time revealed: “Her friends say that privately Rita’s very depressed about her career. Hollywood’s indifference is getting her down—and ex-husband Sidney Lumet’s fling with Gloria Vanderbilt isn’t helping her morale.” Then an ‘up and coming director’ (who’d later helm Dog Day Afternoon and Network), nerdy-looking Lumet must have been ‘up and coming’ often—since he ran around on Rita with vivacious Vanderbilt throughout 1955—before marrying the eligible heiress {and future mom of Anderson Cooper!} just four months following the Monaco festivities.

In retaliation his ex-wife “hooked up with handsome actor Tyrone Power in December 1955”—while in the midst of a “hot romance” with Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio (on the rebound from his marriage to Marilyn Monroe) for 3 months from Nov. 1955 to Feb. 1956. “Romance?” Rita remarked concerning the rampant rumors about Joe D. “I wish someone would introduce us.”

Someone did introduce her … to a dear friend of the Sleuth for decades {who shared details of the experience after learning of her death last week, and whose word is as good as gold}. “I was lifeguarding at Silver Point Beach Club, the largest and most exclusive club in Nassau, New York,” Sleuth’s pal explains in an exclusive interview. “Actually it was her mother who came on to me first, telling me for weeks and weeks that her actress daughter would be coming to the beach…while inviting me for drinks. Her mother was a pain in the ass, but still attractive and with an accent {born Belle Fately in Romania}. She and Gam, the stepfather, owned a cabana on the property. We had a few drinks, but after I didn’t take her up on her offer, she introduced me to her daughter.”

“Rita first arrived at the beach club in the summer of 1954,” confides the then 21-year-old lifeguard. “She was a sexy lady and when her parents weren’t around, she invited me back to their cabana for drinks. It was set on stilts away from the water (below left) and big inside, with a living area and changing rooms. Rita gave me a look and said, ‘Let’s have some sex’…so I ran back to the lifeguard stand to get a condom.”

“She enjoyed it, and I enjoyed her,” the lucky lothario continues {adding to the tale he’d first told Sleuth in the Seventies}. She had a really nice figure—great legs—and the way she wore her hair was very reminiscent of Hedy Lamarr when she lay back on the bed.”

“Rita and I had sex several times in the cabana that summer. I remember that she always wore a kerchief to protect her fair skin from the sun {which would explain the ‘tushy tanlines’ above} and a big pair of sunglasses.”

When Sleuth noted that she didn’t have ‘a big pair,’ his friend filled in the frame: “No, she didn’t have big tits, but they were nice”…

“Small and firm.”

“It was the era of big boobs—with Monroe, Mansfield, Anita Ekberg—and she certainly didn’t have those. But she was not flat chested, and lots of fun to be with.”

“Why do women wear clothes?” starlet Gam grinned in an interview at the time.

So, taking it from the top, Rita’s summer lover concludes: “She certainly had adequate breasts. Nice and firm and pretty.” Let’s zoom in for a closer inspection…

“She went back to Hollywood” after a few weeks, the former lifeguard relates. “She said, ‘Don’t mention this to my mother’” about their beach banging.

He didn’t…so when Rita returned in the summer of ’55 they resumed their romance: “I’d say we had sex maybe eight times” over the course of the two summers,” he figures. “She was not particularly wild in bed—she didn’t moan or scratch my back. She wasn’t unrestrained, but she was warm and she liked sex.”

And did she smoke afterwards? “I don’t recall her smoking after we had intercourse,” the medically-trained researcher replies. “I only saw her smoking a few times.” Set to film the movie Mohawk the next month (for release in early ‘’56) in which she inexplicably played an Indian maiden, Sleuth had to inquire if she also "smoked the piece pipe”?

“I didn’t get a blowjob the first time with Rita,” our confidante confesses. “I did the second time—she was quite willing and offered to.”

And she wasn’t just blowing off steam: “Yeah, she wanted to do that, she liked doing that, and she was good at it!”

While this was going on, it’s worth noting, Rita’s name was on everyone’s lips…and numerous covers—the two below span the period of their amorous affair.

“I didn’t think ‘I’m screwing a movie star,’” says the guy who was doing just that. “I have fond memories of her. She was a nice person and treated me with respect.”

Sleuth’s friend touched on other things with her: “We talked about Grace Kelly quite a bit. She knew about the wedding with Prince Rainier before it was in the papers and was looking forward to going.”

Alas, their fling had no future: “I went off to graduate school and stopped lifeguarding after she left for Hollywood that summer…and never saw her again.”

Neither did the public—as one writer put it: “Perhaps better known as one of Princess Grace’s bridesmaids than for any of her film roles, glamorous and gorgeous Rita Gam somehow never quite made it as a movie star, despite her formidable cheekbones and exotic beauty. Perhaps her divorce from rising director Sidney Lumet and a falling out with Cecil B. DeMille over his offered role as Moses’ wife in The Ten Commandments had something to do with her career doldrums.” Especially when that blockbuster became “the seventh most successful film of all time” (adjusted for inflation), with future Mama Munster Yvonne DeCarlo in Rita’s role! While Gam further found disfavor five years later in the biblical bomb King of Kings.

“I looked into the black pit at age 40,” Rita reminisced, “and wondered, what do I do for an encore?” About all she was offered was a role as the father’s fiancée on Family Affair in 1966…

…and a part on the short-lived 1968 soap opera Hidden Faces—a title that foreshadowed her future role as a recluse on whom Hollywood had turned its back.

“However, Ms. Gam survived grace•fully,” concluded a writer celebrating Rita’s final birthday in 2015, “becoming a documentary filmmaker and penning two books on acting. Her only daughter Kate Guinzburg is Michelle Pfeiffer’s producing partner, and mom is still elegant and lovely. Happy Birthday, Rita Gam! Living well and looking fabulous is, as always, the best revenge.”

So is outshining the Oscar that eluded you, in 2005 … and sharing champagne with your awesome offspring a decade later. R.I.P., RG.