Cavegirl: Julie Ege 2

Julie Ege in Creatures the World Forgot

Further to my earlier piece on Norway's finest cavegirl, Julie Ege, I have been searching high and low for the pictures she posed for in Penthouse which helped launch her film career in the UK.

Julie Ege on the cover of Penthouse

These don't seem to be available on the web but thankfully eBay came to the rescue and so we now present the girl they called Julie Edge who was presented as The Nudest Miss Norway even though it had been nearly five years since she took that crown.

" Will stripping for a magazine get me more film work?"

The magazine said that the then 22 year old Julie was already being sought out by film producers and that year she made her first (uncredited) appearance in the British film Robbery (1967) loosely based on the Great Train Robbery.

The film had a great cast of British character actors: Stanley Baker (Zulu), James Booth (Zulu - he was also in Twin Peaks!), Bary Foster (Van de Valk and I particularly remember him playing the Kaiser in Fall of Eagles), Frank Finlay (The Three Musketeers and also played Van der Valk in a French film), George Sewell (UFO and just about every British TV series from the 60s to the 90s), Glyn Edwards (The Ipcress File, Minder and just about every British TV series from the 60s to the 80s) and Joanna Pettet (the original Casino Royale and then dozens of 70s and 80s American TV shows).

Sultry in the Sixties

The really important thing about the film was not, however, Julie's appearance but the fact that the director Peter Yates did such a good car chase that Steve McQueen personally requested that he direct Bullitt (1968).

Julie's Centrefold: Volume 2 Number 7 May 1967

The photographer of her pictorial was Penthouse's Art Director, Philip O Stearns who went on to become a famous fashion photographer (like several other Penthouse photographers).

However, amazingly, he also has a strong wargames link. He was born in Detroit Michigan and served with the OSS during the Second World War and was always interested in military history and militaria.

So apart from photographing naked babes for Penthouse he also took the pictures for the book that really got me into wargaming: The War Game, edited by Brigadier Peter Young which I got for Christmas in 1972 and still treasure. His evocative photographs of Peter Gilder's massed recreations of Waterloo and Gettysburg still inspire me today. He also wrote a book called How to Make Model Soldiers (as well as contributing to one called Six Nymphets!). Stearns was also a Captain in the Sealed Knot, which was presumably where he met Young.

So in one entry we have manged to link a cavegirl in a fur bikini to Zulu to the English Civil War and Penthouse photography to Wargames. A definitive entry for me, really!

Cavegirl: Linda Harrison

Not really a cavegirl, but so gorgeous who cares?

Thanks to Nathaniel from San Francisco (I really must try and get over there at some point; maybe when I go to California in December) for pointing me in the direction of the gorgeous Linda Harrison who featured in both Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).

Although I have seen both films it must be twenty years since I have watched either so had completely forgotten about the character of Nova, played by Ms Harrison. Although she is not a cavegirl (properly she is a post-apocalyptic barbarian) she does have a very fetching cavegirl-type outfit.

Linda displays an awesome hip/waist ratio

Very sixties bikini!

Linda was born in Berlin, Maryland ( I very much enjoyed a brief thing with a young lady from Maryland when I was at college) and did some beauty contests (she was Miss Berlin in 1963, Miss Del-Mar-Va in 1964, Miss Ocean City and Miss Maryland in 1965) before doing some modelling in New York.

Trim, very trim!

Good outfit!

Although she had the credit "And introducing Linda Harrison as Nova" in Planet of the Apes she had actually appeared in small parts in several films before this as she had won a seven year contract with 20th Century Fox following a screen test in 1965. She had been talent spotted by a young agent called Mike Medavoy, now a top producer, of course, but then just starting his career with General Artist Corporation.

Cleverly, she married studio head Richard Zanuck and he offered her the part in Planet of the Apes. She returned for the sequel and then worked intermittently appearing in films such as Airport 1975 (1974) and Cocoon (1985). She also had a cameo in the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes (2001).

Rubbery!

As to her cavegirl outfit, it was actually rubber with bark attached, so not a fur bikini at all. Nevertheless, we think Ms Harrison looks quite splendid in it and have to give her a cavegirl rating of: 8/10

Just lovely!

An objectionable blog?

We are family. I've got all my sisters with me.

Well, when I logged on this evening I got a little message from Google saying some people had reported this blog as objectionable and warning people about this. I am amazed! I can only think that these people A: don't get out much or B: are the worse sort of feminists. (This will probably result in more complaints). For the record, I was bought up in an all female household in a family full of strong, gender barrier breaking women, think women are far superior to men but do think they are different (in that they look far better in fur bikinis!).

Cavegirl Art 9: Early cavegirl in fur bikini

This rather splendid cavegirl dates from 1941 and, as such, is probaby one of the earliest paintings of a cavegirl in a fur "bikini" (although the term itself was not coined until 1946 by Louis Réard).

This cavegirl picture (whilst rather curiously setting a cavegirl in the Bronze Age) shows off the artist Earl Moran's characteristic light and shade work. She is very timeless (appropriately) and doesn't look "forties" in any way.

The picture is by top pin-up artist Earl Moran (1893-1984). Moran was a master of pastels and did pin-up work from 1932 until the late 1950s when he decided to concentrate on fine art work until his eyesight failed in the early eighties.

He was most famous for hiring, in 1946, a young model called Norma Jean Dougherty at $10 an hour and she worked for him for three years before becoming more famous as Marilyn Monroe.

A classic picture of Norma Jean by Moran.

Norma Jean in Moran's studio

Moran paints Norma Jean

Norma Jean by Moran

Beauty Parade was an early girlie magazine run by Robert Harrison but Moran was a partner in the magazine and often contributed the covers. In fact, this one from October 1941 was the first issue of the magazine.

I really like this picture and so am quite happy to give it: 10/10

Spanish cavegirls ate tortoises

A smashing snack for a cavegirl

Palaeontologists from the University of Tarragona have found the remains of 526 tortoises at the Bolomor caves in Spain. The unlucky reptiles appear to have been roasted and eaten by the hungry cave people 2.5 million years ago. Although there are remains of cows, pigs, deer, goats, rabbits, birds, four dwarf elephants, a monkey, horses, hippos and two salmon as well. A hungry lot, Spanish cavemen!

A pet to us, a sort of prehistoric Pot Noodle snack to cavegirls.

The tortoises, which are the Hermanns variety popular today as pets (for some reason), showed signs of having their shells cracked and had human toothmarks on them.

Compared with all that tedious hunting and trapping involved in catching deer and dwarf elephants (although they must have had little legs and probably didn't run that fast) getting a tortoise must have been pretty easy. Given how macho Spanish men are, no doubt they went off hunting the exciting stuff and left our proto-Penelope Cruz cavegirls to crack open the odd tortoise for the stone age paella.