If you want nudity and retro sex appeal then you can do no wrong with actress Carroll Baker. She has a legacy of nude scenes that she mainly shot in the 60s and 70s, and yet so few people know who she is anymore. She should be a household name, so let's shine a spotlight on her. #TBT to Carroll Baker!
Carroll was born in the 30s in Pennsylvania where she was raised by a single mother. She was poor for most of her life. While in college in Florida, she started working as a magician's assistant which gave her a taste of show business. From there it was dancing, modeling, and competing in beauty pageants before she moved to New York City in 1951 where she allegedly rented out a basement apartment in Queens that literally had a dirt floor. Don't worry - she wouldn't stay poor for long!
Almost as soon as she arrived in The Big Apple she started taking acting classes and booking roles in TV commercials. She also became good friends with James Dean who even suggested her for the lead role in Rebel Without a Cause. She obviously didn't book that gig - Natalie Wood did - but James tried against in 1956's Giant which launched her career.
You might remember her better as the leading lady in the jaw-dropping Elia Kazan flick Baby Doll that same year. In that code-breaking movie, she plays a young woman who is so infantilized that the movie literally opens on her sleeping in a crib, sucking her thumb.
The movie, written by Tennessee Williams, goes that she was married off by her father when she was a teen with the agreement that she stays a virgin until her 18th birthday. Well, that fateful day is here, but Baby Doll has absolutely zero interest in her lug of a husband. Instead, she throws her affections onto another man, but everything backfires in this sizzling hot movie that still feels taboo today. If that's how I feel watching it now, imagine how audiences felt in the 50s! Turned on and taboo!
Fun fact, actually, the lead role in Baby Doll was originally written for Marilyn Monroe, but Williams saw Carroll act out one of his scenes during a workshop at Actors Studio and ended up wanting her for the role. Since the show was using the image of Carroll sucking her thumb in the crib as marketing, the movie caused a viral backlash from decency police that Hollywood was so wrapped up with at the time. Marilyn even showed her support of the movie and its leading lady by working as an usher during the film's premiere. What a stunt!
She was being hailed as the next Marilyn Monroe after her role in 1964's The Carpetbaggers, but her sharp acting skills and penchant for choosing very complicated roles ended up making her a little too wild for the mainstream. Imagine that: she was essentially TOO HOT to be the next Marilyn. She couldn't help it! Much like Marilyn, she oozed sensuality.
She was cast as Jean Harlow, the original blonde bombshell who literally gave us the term "bombshell", in the 1965 biopic Harlow, but the movie was a failure. All of this as well as a divorce prompted her to move to Italy in the late 60s where she found success. She worked in European cinema for twenty years and churned out sexplicit nude scenes.
She did a lot of nudity and she actually loved it. She described this period of her life as "marvelous" and said acting in these Italian films "brought me back to life, and it gave me a whole new outlook." Her wildest film during this time might be 1975's Private Lesson which shows off her privates and so much more!
In the 80s, she found herself back in Hollywood and returning to movies - including the 1983 film Star 80 where she played the mother of Dorothy Stratten. I think it's interesting how much of Carroll Baker's life was wrapped up in the legacies of other bombshells who all might be better known today than Carroll. Jean, Marilyn, Dorothy (even brunette Natalie) - all of those women have lives that were mixed up in legend.
They were all larger-than-life sex symbols. They all also died tragically which might be the real reason why they are better known than Carroll, but I also think the fact that Carroll worked for 20 years in Europe has a lot to do with that as well. She went from being the next big thing to deciding to pack it all in and start fresh across the ocean. It definitely made her happy, but it's hard not to wonder what could have happened had she stayed here and blossomed along with Hollywood's many changes in the late 60s and 70s. What could have been? We'll never know. Instead, we were given the gift of her numerous nude scenes.
She managed to work in supporting roles in a series of TV shows and films (including Kindergarten Cop which is just a fun fact) before she retired from acting in 2003, but she has left us with so many skintastic scenes:
