Star 80 | Iowa life

Truth is stranger than fiction. I saw Manhattan when it came out in 1979. Woody Allen hadn’t gone stale yet. I think the main attraction was Mariel Hemingway. We’re 2 years apart in age. If you’re a guy, you noticed Mariel Hemingway when you were 20. A few years later she portrayed murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratton in Star 80. Not really a member of the Hollywood fan club, all I know about her life after that period is from IMDB and Wikipedia.

Mariel caught someone’s eye as a teenager, she starred in 1976’s Lipstick with her older sister Margaux (both sisters were models, Mariel coming in at a statuesque 5′ 11″). Margaux evidently had a troubled life and took her own in 1996. I should go back and see Manhattan again. Knowing Woody, its not surprising Mariel said later he wanted a physical relationship with her after filming of Manhattan, which she rebuffed. In the film she was his high school lover.

She’s evidently big into yoga and TM (I wonder if she’s ever been to Fairfield, IA?). She also did a documentary assessing her families struggles with alcoholism, suicide and mental illness. It sounds like her growing up in Ketchum, ID wasn’t all peaches and cream. Wikipedia makes allusions to her career “cooling off” at various times, but she has a screen credit in nearly every year for the past 40 years.

Its hard to have this make sense to a younger person, but its interesting to see which women from 40 – 45 (or more) years ago, kept their pizazz. How many women from that era, meet today’s standard of beauty. Its hard to convey just how big that generation of Hemingway’s were at the time. Joan and Margaux really paved the way for Mariel. The Hemingway mystique was alive and well in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. Its also interesting how ‘standards of beauty’ shift over the decades. I’m not sure where Mariel fits in.

There is a clickbait ad going around now supposedly showing beautiful women during a particular decade. As an example, in the 70s there were 2 women that were just hugely popular, Suzanne Somers and Farrah Fawcett. With Farrah you look back and say, “Yeah, that makes sense.” With Suzanne you’re going, “What were we thinking?” I think I’ll post a picture of Joan at the bottom (the only images of Joan I can find have ‘Getty Images’ across them).