1950's Hollywood Starlet Mamie Van Doren Releases Country Music Album

1950s "sex kitten" Mamie Van Doren could act, but has always been known for being a pin-up girl first. She made her professional bow as a band singer, acting in stock companies before signing a contract with Universal Pictures in 1953. There would be a few A pictures in her future, notably the Clark Gable-Doris Day comedy Teacher's Pet (1958), but Van Doren's career was mainly devoted to tawdry exploitation programmers and drive-in quickies.

She became the resident Marilyn Monroe-type for fast-buck producer Albert Zugsmith in the late 1950s and early 1960s, starring in such films as The Beat Generation (1958), The Big Operator (1959), The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960), and her signature film, Sex Kittens Go To College (1960). She also showed up in Born Reckless (singing five songs) and as a neurotic striptease artist in director Tommy Noonan's tickle-and-tease farce Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964).

Now nearly 80, she's released a country disc Still a Troublemaker, which is available for downloading on iTunes and at Amazon.com. The physical CD will come out in the spring. There are five original songs and covers of such well-known tunes as “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” She has a website, http://www.mamiecountry.com/, to publicize the disc, complete with a music video of “Troublemaker” featuring mostly cheesecake photos of her during her bombshell heyday.

Lynn Anderson and Linda Davis guest-star on the album.


You can check out a preview of the album in the video below: