When the young British actress was “found hanging from the ceiling of her mansion block apartment near the River Seine” in Paris two days before her 29th birthday last Wednesday, most of the post-mortems echoed Wikipedia in saying “she starred as the reporter Jennifer Dugan in the 2007 film Spider-Man 3.” In truth, she was in the film for a grand total of 13 seconds—reporting breathlessly outside the scene of the Arachnid Avenger’s latest sting operation when he was strangled and left for dead.

Frenzied news crews would gather outside her French flat exactly two years later: “It was a horrific scene,” gasped one grizzled gendarme. “The young woman has taken her own life in terrible circumstances. We are not seeking anyone else. It was a clear case of suicide.” But despite Lucy leaving two personal notes, her live-in lover—bespectacled, bearded cinematographer Jérôme Alméras—was questioned for two days by French police! The forty-something father of four became famous for his brilliant camera work last year on I’ve Loved You So Long … which recounts an inexplicable murder … but had only loved Lucy for a matter of months when she moved from Manhattan to Paris to be with him.

“It must have been very impulsive,” recalls her New York neighbor Amitabh Gordon {no relation} of the actress’s abrupt flight from her East Village apartment to join her new lover. “I asked Lucy how old Alméras’s kids were and she said there was quite an age spread. One maybe close to college age and one quite little.” Added another New York girlfriend:  “She packed up all her things and moved to Paris a few months ago. She trusted everyone. She was very sweet and kind. When she told me she had a new boyfriend, I thought, ‘What’s the real situation?’ She said he was in his 40s and had four children. I wondered, ‘Is he still with the mother of his children, is he divorced?’ Lucy didn’t say. She was just very excited.”

“She told me she was in love with her boyfriend,” confirms photographer Michel Haddi, who photographed Gordon just before her death for an Italian layout in which the guy was left hanging. “I told her she must like older men,” recalls the 42-year-old lensman. “She looked like a girl with a plan. She had everything to live for. But she was hiding that turmoil inside {though being choked by a pearl necklace in the Rome shoot was quite a harbinger}. It’s devastating. All of us have a tendency to want to kill ourselves {let’s not get carried away!}, but it’s different to just think about it.”

“Call the police, my girlfriend has hung herself,” Lucy’s lover screamed as he ran into the street after cutting her body down, insisting he “was asleep” when she hanged herself. “Why? Why?” Alméras wailed … though neighbors “reported that the couple had been heard arguing” late that night “and Lucy was audibly crying” through the apartment wall “before being found dead the next morning.” A judicial source stated: “We will try to establish a motive for her sudden suicide {Almeras alleged that she “had been deeply affected by the recent suicide of a friend in Britain,” so Sleuth offers her Facebook page as possible evidence}. She was flourishing in her professional life {glowing at the Spider-Man 3 premiere in New York}, so emotional problems related to her personal and love life would be a principal line of inquiry.” Despite reports of the loud “lovers’ tiff,” a French police spokesman stated: “The autopsy is a routine procedure which follows an apparent suicide. Hanging appears to be the obvious cause of death, considering the horrific circumstances in which the young woman was found.”

So let’s concentrate on what was lost: Born May 22, 1980 in Oxford, England, Lucy was attending her  $20,000-a-year hometown Oxford High School—whose most famous pupil is Dame Maggie Smith {Sleuth unearthed this topless outtake of mid-40s Maggie deleted from 1978’s California Suite}— when she was “spotted” by a modeling talent scout as she and her  mother visited a local clothing exhibition. Signed at 16, Lucy quickly became the face of prestigious Cover Girl cosmetics in 1997…while continuing her studies in history, biology and French. “I’m terrified about taking my A-levels {Advanced Placement Exams},” the Sweet Sixteen (with garotte like scarf) said at the time, “but equally terrified about not having any option apart from modeling in the future” {her last major ad}. Though hardly in Dior straits, Lucy listed “a number of things that keep me at school. I could get bored with being a model. I could even get fat {hardly—with her then 32B bust}. I don’t want to be stuck for choice at 25 {she didn’t make it to 29}. If I’ve passed my exams, then I will still be able to do a lot with my life.” Instead, in one of the more bizarre international headlines in Internet history, she was reportedly “baffled and devastated” by her own death! As another Cover Girl ad of hers noted, “Life is complicated.”

And ironic: Lucy’s first acting role was alongside hearththrob Heath Ledger in The Four Feathers {at its 2002 premiere}. Just 16 months before Gordon’s demise, “The Joker” was found dead of a mysterious drug overdose—meeting his end in an apartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen!

“Being a model,” Lucy lamented, “doesn’t make you immune to your insecurities, either {evaluating her ass-ets in the mirror}. One thing you get used to is rejection.” It’s been speculated that perhaps her “distraught” fortyish Frenchman wasn’t…but there’s no doubt that gamine Gordon’s career was headed straight to the top: She had just won raves for her portrayal of model-turned-actress Jane Birkin in the upcoming biopic of legendary lover Serge Gainsbourg, Vie Héroique, which was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival on the eve of her death! In fact, Lucy “had been due to appear in a live interview at Cannes” within hours of when she was found hanged. “We are devastated,” gasped the festival’s official spokesman. “All those attending had been hugely impressed by Lucy’s work. Lucy was a star in the making.” Read ‘em and weep…

“The film owes a lot to the generosity, gentleness of spirit and immense talent of Lucy Gordon,” the producers of Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life said in a statement. Not to mention her uncanny resemblance to the bohemian beauty of the Swinging Sixties. So much so, that she beat out Birkin’s own daughter by Serge, lookalike Charlotte Gainsbourg for the part! And in a final macabre twist to the harrowing hanging, Charlotte won the Best Actress prize at Cannes within days of Lucy’s death. How’s this ad from Gordon’s early modeling days for foreshadowing the grim Gainsbourg connection?

Yet Sleuth can’t help noting that the still-striking 62-year-old Birkin’s other lookalike daughter, mad hatter Lou Doillon is now represented by the same modeling agency, IMG as fronted for the late Lucy.  And speaking of fronts, they also shared identical 32.5 inch bust measurements! As did mom Jane…so it’s transparently clear that little Lucy was born to play her. And that daughter Charlotte’s web couldn’t quite measure up to the Spider-Man starlet. Why even Gordon’s boyish pose mirrored Jane sans clothes! Speaking of which, I’ve managed to uncover Lucy’s one and only nude image … which stands as a fitting leg-acy. “Her career had just been taking off,” sighed her forlorn father Richard, “and it’s a tragedy that it has been cut short so soon. Her death has come completely out of the blue. Everything about how she died is just speculation at the moment, and we want to concentrate on paying tribute to our daughter. We are obviously devastated.”

Her only famous film, Spider-Man 3, became “the most successful new release in history” two years before she “ended her own days,” as Gordon’s agent put it—taking in $148 million in its opening weekend. “There were many factors that contributed to it,” the studio’s chief executive explained, “and there’s a part that you just put down to ‘We’ll never know.’” Perhaps the most fitting epitaph to lovely Lucy in the sky…

Share on Facebook

Suicide Brunette: Spider-Man’s Lucy Gordon is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Great Caesar’s Ghost! Do you think I’ve got superhuman powers?! Well, maybe in certain areas. And I believe it’s transparently clear where you probably saw them in the 70s! {the original vintage cover}. Feel free to towel off with the other Margobilia you mentioned {originally published when I was working here}. At the time Kidder was one of the most recognizable People in the world, but continued to wear “see thru blouses” in her private life as well! And you didn’t need X-ray vision to see through to What Lies Beneath! Ain’t she Super?

As to the original aspect of your question, Margot must be considered the “hottest Lois Lane” by virtue of being the one who introduced S-E-X to the uptight girl reporter always trying to get her “Ten Cents in” since her debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938 {her very first frame of the strip}. “Margot Kidder was and remains the quintessential Lois Lane,” opined a sci-fi fan just last year. And Playboy concurred back in the days of Superman II: “Christopher Reeve continues to impress, but it’s Margot Kidder who dominates the movie s pert Lois Lane…in a skillfully pointed performance. Kidder becomes the kind of girl that any man, Super or not, would want to take off with” {a favorite still from my private stash}. Added Time magazine: “Margot Kidder gives Lois Lane the sex appeal that schoolboys always knew she had.”

Especially if they’d seen the model she was literally drawn from: Joanne Carter, a self-described “skinny little kid” who placed an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in late 1937 looking for work. It caught the attention of two struggling young pals {Canadians like Kidder}, artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel…and, chaperoned by her mother, Joanne agreed to pose for Shuster in his apartment, wearing her sister’s “two big” bathing suit. “He said, ‘Never mind, I’ll put a bit more here and a bit more there,’” she recalls…and the voluptuous result led to Lois!

Sleuthian insights: Basing the character’s personality on Torchy Blane–a feisty female reporter in a series of 1930s films–Siegel took her moniker from the star of the latest Torchy film, luscious Lola Lane. And her heartthrob from the German Übermensch —”the goal for humanity to set for itself”—in the classic 1883 treatise Thus Spoke Zaruthustra by mad-genius Friedrich Nietzsche. It literally means “Over man,” but the first translation into English in 1909 rendered the term as “Superman.” This concept—designed to create a “master race’—was often blamed for spawning the Nazi desire for “Aryan supremacy”…and indeed the first short story Siegel wrote with the name was of “a powerful villain bent on dominating the entire world.” Shuster later realized that the only way this Superman would be a successful comic book character was as the “wholesome, morally upright figure of modern times” we know today…so they added his “mild mannered” alter ego Clark Kent—borrowed from the first names of lookalike leading men of the time, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor. Yet unlike the “one-man woman” she inspired, original model Joanne Carter dated artist Shuster before marrying his partner Siegel! Now that’s just plain evil…

Enough background, now let’s move to the front! “Generally, I find that if my body is in good shape I love working nude,” mused Margot Kidder. “Love it. I just feel sexy and wonderful. There’s something very sexy about being photographed without your clothes and knowing you’re beautiful.” Except the nude scene she “hated” in 1975’s The Reincarnation of Peter Proud–even though the actress thought her body “looked fine.” Playing a 52-year-old woman {exactly twice her age}  having an emotional breakdown {foreshadowing?} while bathing, Margot claims the director “assured me the bathtub scene would be shot from the shoulders up. Then when I saw it,” she hisses, “he had shot it from all sorts of angles {an original frame from Sleuth’s private collection}. My hand was floating around in the water while I was crying, which made it look as if I were masturbating. That made me furious {and masturbate furiously}, because I’d been lied to and tricked.”

Often by men: “Actors only get uptight about their own bodies,” Kidder critiques. “They have this thing about their cocks. They go crazy when they’re asked to work nude. They’re afraid of getting erections, or that someone will think that they’re too small, or something. If women felt about their breasts the way men feel about their cocks, we’d spend our whole lives running around in muumuus.” As did her ravishing roommate: “My best friend, Jennifer Salt {daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt}, for one, is uptight about nudity,” Margot mulled. “But you don’t have to do it, you know. You can say no and still get work.” Or you can say yes, as Jennifer finally did for dad’s Midnight Cowboy, and get even more work!

After three marriages that lasted less than a year—to novelist Thomas McGuane {in hot tub as his son watches}, actor John Heard {for a month!} and famed French filmmaker Philippe de Broca {they met making a miniseries in 1983 and divorced before it aired!}—Kidder sighs: “I was never good at male/female relationships, though God knows I try.” So did she ever try a same-sex session? “Honey,” she smiles, “I think most people are bisexual. If a woman wants to sleep with a woman, she should go ahead and do it.” So have you done it? “Yes, I’ve slept with a woman, and I don’t think I’m an outlaw or a bad person for doing it. It was something that didn’t particularly appeal to me and didn’t work, but I did try it.” Reportedly with Rosie Shuster, head writer on the original Saturday Night Live: “We got Rosie dressed up in a tuxedo and bowler hat” to attend the 1981 Oscars as Kidder’s date, she recalls, “and my agent got 10 phone calls asking, ‘Is Margot Kidder a lesbian?’” Actually, she muses: “Life might have been easier for me if I had been a lesbian, but I’m not {damn!–”Olivia Hussey was a bit of an odd one,” she says of filming Black Christmas in 1974}. It’s just very natural for me to have a man.”

Even a Superman! “The thing everyone wants to know,” Kidder kidded before Superman II, “is whether there’s a love scene in the sequel. I can say right now, you’ll have to wait till 1980 for that,” she teased. “Will it be nude, I’m asked. Wait and see, I say.” Unlikely in the PG franchise, but she did bed the hero: “We make love, and after that he gives up his super powers, so I guess Lois is a good lay {Reeve seems lost in reverie}.” So did Chris get to experience bliss in real life? “No. We know each other too well. We can kiss onscreen, but in general I think it would be easier to close my eyes and have someone have sex with me than to be kissing him. We have too much in common.”

One tragic thing they had in common: Everyone recalls Christopher Reeve’s 1995 horse-jumping incident {shown just moments before it}, which rendered Superman flightless, wheelchair bound and led to his death in 2004, but his “Lois” was similarly paralyzed five years before him in a car accident on the set of the USA cable series Nancy Drew on 10/15/90. She was fired a few days later…and unable to work for two years—filing for bankruptcy {with debts of over $800K} in August 1992. Ironically it was the only time that the words “Margot Kidder” and “flat” have ever appeared in the same sentence {no, that’s not a wheelchair she’s sitting in}! “I’m shattered,” the actress sobbed. “I can’t walk, and have no use of my left hand {that sucks}. I can’t even fly on a plane” {couldn’t Chris rescue her?}. Yet after Reeve’s fall, Margot bravely flew from the Czech Republic to be at his bedside.

“Lois Lane!” Kidder commented after the first film. “God, it’s almost like playing the Virgin Mary.” Yet though the self-described “whore” insists she was never intimate with her Superman {looking cozy before his marriage}, she proved Lois “was a good lay” with nearly everyone else! “I was never hard to get if I wanted to be gotten,” Margot maintained. “If I didn’t want to be gotten, there was no way I could be. Though at one point in my life,” she admitted, “making love was no more than shaking hands. I used to feel guilty if I didn’t sleep with somebody…”. And once she “went black”—four flings with Richard Pryor {”I fell in love with him in two seconds flat. Richard was irresistible“}—she never went back: having public love affairs with California political boss Willie Brown in 1983, as well as original Late Night with David Letterman {and now John Mayer’s} drummer Steve Jordan in 1987.

Yet the curvy Canadian was just warming up: Two nights before the California Primary in 1988, “Margot KIdder was filmed leaving candidate Jesse Jackson’s hotel suite at 10:30 p.m., declaring that the reverend’s bedroom was a mess.” A newswoman with the ABC crew noted that “Kidder appeared drunk and also proclaimed, ‘I’m Margot Kidder,  and I’m whacked.’” The lady reporter {”High and Lois?”} revealed that the actress “later insisted the word was white, not whacked.”  Jackson campaign workers also confided that Kidder “does travel on the plane with him from rally to rally“—where she marched by his side while wife Jackie stayed away. “Any work that I have done is now destroyed,” snapped a miffed Margot. “It becomes the bimbo actress fucking the cute politician. And sure she’s committed, ha, ha, ha.” It was no laughing matter, however, when Kidder next encountered the ABC reporter who had revealed the tryst: “I grabbed her,” the actress admits, “threw her up against the bus and went, ‘Look, you stupid cunt.’ I said, ‘This is the most sleazy thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Until April 20, 1996, that is…when Margot went missing for three days, threw away her purse because “I thought there was a bomb in it,” then took off running, slept in yards and on porches in a state of fear,” until she was found by police behind a stranger’s house in Glendale, California–cowering in this rotted woodpile. “You shouldn’t be back here,” homeowner Elaine Lamb told the intruder. “There are black widow spiders.” To which the “dazed and disheveled” drifter replied: “What’s chasing me is a whole lot worse than black widow spiders. You may not believe me,” she whispered, “but I’m Margot Kidder.” Said one of the cops who took her away, “It was a classic case of paranoia {say it ain’t so, Lo’}. The woman we saw {crazed and missing two teeth} was in obvious mental distress.”

What triggered it was a computer virus that wiped out 3 years’ of work on her memoirs, aptly titled Calamities. “That’s when I went from really distressed to absolute delusion,” the actress recalls, becoming convinced that first husband Thomas McGuane {her hot tub honey above} “was trying to kill me.” {What the buck?!}. Living off the streets—a far cry for help from the days she hosted Saturday Night Live—Margot was nearly “raped by a homeless man” but reasoned with him: “You’re a good person. You don’t want to do this.” Thankfully, “he backed off.”

“We were sure that she would turn up dead,” sighed an eyewitness who saw the actress wandering in L.A. airport at 3 a.m., and was later “surprised to learn she is safe” {since crazed Kidder had slipped him a note that read: “I am DEAD”}. But others had faith: “Margot is incredibly strong,” her brother John said at the time. “She’s a survivor.” Indeed, she’s proved to be a real Superwoman, facing her demons and examining her past: “I’d been insane for many years,” Kidder confesses {her shaky signature might have provided a clue}, “probably from age twelve when I first contemplated suicide. If I felt myself starting to go manic, I’d get drunk. Better drunk than crazy.” In the swinging Seventies, the high-spirited hippie recalls: “I love men and sex {in her Wilder days}. I was a binge drinker. In another era, I probably would have been called a party girl.”

Now realizing that the answer to her “totally empty life” couldn’t be found in the bottom of a shot glass, the “addled actress” has cleaned up her act: “I’d had episodes before, but I swept them under the carpet. This time, I couldn’t do that because everyone knew. Coming out of the closet as bi-polar was not my idea,” Kidder laughs. “I mean it was all over the news. What happened to me—the biggest nervous breakdown in history—is not so uncommon. It’s just that mine was public. If you’re gonna fall apart, do it in your own bedroom.” Speaking of which, Margot once ironically mused: “Nudity in the flesh doesn’t bother me. But having my mind uncovered–that scares the hell out of me.”

To recover, she returned to her roots: “I owe it all to my family,” Kidder crowed just 3 months after her famous “freak-out.” She stayed at younger sister Annie’s home in Canada—”where they spent weeks discussing Margot’s problems and sorting out her priorities.” Activist Annie–who now looks remarkably like big Sis—was recently honored for founding “People for Education”…but Sleuth recalls her playing the victim in 1987’s Deadly Deception. Margot also got help from actress niece Janet Kidder who got Auntie a comeback role playing an older version of herself in the 1999 Canadian series La Femme Nikita. We, however, prefer this version of niece Janet the next year in the  film XChange. Admits Margot: “I was really fucked up at the time.” Ditto for naughty niece Janet …

“I’ve always played either bad girls or whores or psychos,” Margot mused {ass-uming Janet’s pole position},  “and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. But I guess I got tired of kissing ass to get parts I thought were stupid.” She hit bottom a year later in 1985’s Little Treasure … and also hit her legendary co-star! “There is a report out of Cuernavaca, Mexico that veteran actor Burt Lancaster and actress Margot Kidder got into a slapping, punching brawl on the set in March 1984″—a fight Esquire dubbed “The Shocka in Cuernavaca!” According to Sleuth’s hometown Washington Post: “Kidder, showing the 70-year-old star how she wanted the scene played, shoved him. He smacked her twice across the face {how’s this for a Sleuthian “find”?}. They then were in a free-for-all battle, tumbling onto the floor. Kidder was bleeding from the back of her head and Lancaster had a cut lip by the time the fight was broken up.” Even today, Margot gets her shots in: “Yeah, he beat me up! I virtually whacked him back and said, “You washed-up old fag!” or something horrible. Well, then I got a reputation for being sort of nuts and difficult, because I was at that point, so I wasn’t much in demand.”

Happily, she is again—reuniting with Superman’s Lana Lang, Annette O’Toole, on two episodes of Smallville and landing a recurring role as Sally Field’s bosom buddy in the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.”There aren’t a lot of parts,” Kidder concedes, “when you get to be my age {60} if you refuse to have face-lifts” {chin up old girl!}. Though there was a time when Margot mused: “I’m thinking of getting my tits lifted“—recalling her teens when “I spent hours trying to figure out how I could get my breasts to shoot skyward like Miss January when I lay on my back instead of having them fall down on either side of my armpits.”

Instead, she lifted her spirits…and now proudly proclaims, “My career virtually ended after the breakdown, but I plowed through, which I consider a triumph. I went to work and did a lot of homework about what was wrong with me.  Now it’s just part of my story {she’s working on an autobiography entitled I Slept With Everyone on Television}. It’s been almost 14 years now since that happened. No, 13 years, without an episode of bi-polar or depression or mania, so I can safely say I’m cured.” And thus finally free to hit the convention circuit, along with other familiar faces from her past!

Speaking of which, they’ve named the road that Margaret Ruth Kidder was born on in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada Lois Lane. There’s even a new street sign that bears her name … and a makeshift sculpture that recalls her bare frame. “I’ll have ‘Lois Lane’ inscribed on my damn grave,” Margot sighed just last month. A quarter century earlier, when reduced to a walk-on in Superman III for calling its producers “beneath contempt as human beings,” Kidder concluded: “I love Lois Lane. I could play her till I die, but I’m not going to die if I don’t play her.” Because of some super powers she’s survived…and today has the last word: “You know, I’ve had a colorful life, and I have to live with that. But right now things are pretty darn good.” And looking pretty darn good too!

Share on Facebook

feMail Request: Margot Kidder is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“Everyone’s favorite family of Utah polygamists are back,” raved one review this January. Quipped another: “By a rough count, the Henrickson family was guilty of six of the seven Deadly Sins in last night’s episode”—no one could ever accuse them of sloth! As critic Emily Nussbaum enumerated: “Man, what a kinky episode of Big Love—dishing up one graphic sequence for each sister-wife: a Bill-on-Barb makeout session cut short by interruption, ‘naughty-girl’ oral sex between Bill and Margene, and ‘good girl’ petticoat intercourse with Nicki. Bill Henrickson may be trapped in every man’s dream—three naked ladies!—but he’s also living every man’s nightmare: relationship processing so endless it might paralyze a 70s lesbian cooperative.”

Fifty-five years ago, the strangest show on television was entitled I Led Three Lives, the true account of advertising executive turned Communist Party infiltrator Herbert Philbrick, which became the favorite show of 12-year-old future assassin Lee Harvey Oswald: “He became really engrossed in that particular show,” believes brother Robert Oswald.  “The fact that he could put on a facade and pretend to be somebody he wasn’t—to me, it gets down to what happened later on.” Today, Big Love could be subtitled, I Wed Three Wives, as star Bill Paxton can barely watch the Three Ring Circus that revolves around him! And like Three Lives, the HBO series is inspired by real life—based on a Texan known only as Brian, the subject of a 2006 Learning Channel documentary titled My Husband’s Three Wives.

“If there’s a better written, better acted, more originally conceived show on television,” Matt Fowler of the L.A. Times wrote of Big Love on 2/5/09, “I defy you to name it.” Just 24 days later, wife #2 Chloë Sevigny came the closest: “I was watching some episodes the other night and I was like, ‘This is the weirdest show I’ve ever seen in my life!,” she smiled. “And then my friend was over, and she said, ‘Yeah, weirdest show since Twin Peaks.’” She took the words right out of my mouth…

Sleuth holds this original 1989 VHS cassette of the not-yet-aired pilot {April 8th, 1990} as a treasured icon, and still laments that the landmark series ended on his birthday {June 10th, 1991}. “It was the first of its kind,” observes one TV historian, “and raised the bar on the look of television series.  Twin Peaks tested the limits of prime-time television {at either extreme before places like HBO had stepped into the game.” And that’s where we step in…

The two shows share some eerie similarities: Both had a core quartet at the center of the action, with three hot women always up in arms. Yet, if the “king” played his cards right, he might score a four-way! Each then branched out into family trees that required an org chart to unravel, featuring no shortage of crazed villains in various guises—including false prophets steeped in scripture. And who can ignore the ravishing resemblance between Twin totty Sherilyn Fenn and Love lust object Ginnifer Goodwin, who maintained the same sexpot aura when both went briefly blonde? Why, each even knew her way around a ripe cherry pie! Or a cherry stem—Fenn’s Audrey tying it in a knot with her tongue paid tribute to a true talent of castmate Mädchen Amick!

The series also shared a comely cross-dresser {David Duchovny pre-X Files} and a terrorized transvestite {Roman’s sister Selma}…not to mention a tall, bald and menacing stranger popping up from time to time. And they don’t get much stranger than Grace Zabriskie—called upon as Laura’s loony mother on Peaks and Bill’s beserk mom on Love ! Will we ever erase the memory of her Lois telling Bruce Dern, as hated husband Frank: “I’ll let you come in the back door” if he hands over the hidden cash? “If I want an old caboose,” he smirks, “I’ll call Union Pacific.” The edgy shows also had in common a logo for the ages: a haunting theme song that’s become a classic; a beautiful blond waitress in a diner looking for love; and even a raped runaway clad in virginal white. But let’s be honest, most of all the two shows offered a plethora of prime-time pulchritude!

Sleuth used to jokingly call Twin Peaks‘ Snoqualmie Falls, Washington location {where the show’s sign stood},  “The Babe Capital of the Pacific Northwest” … and now Big Love’s Sandy, Utah exteriors {Triplet Peaks?} make it “The Babe Capital of the Mountain West!” But the hottie quotient is hardly limited to The Big Three or the Mormon Trifecta … there are more carnal cast members than the Log Lady or the Log Man can shake a stick at! Beginning with the very first line of the very first show of Peaks: “She’s day-ud. Wrapped in plastic,” forlorn fisherman Pete Martell moans in the 911 call that opened the pilot. “She” was Laura Palmer–the prom queen with a past embodied by Sheryl Lee, a local girl from Seattle whom director David Lynch intended to cast, due to budget restraints, “just to play a dead girl.” Reveals Lynch: “But no one had any idea that she could act {she bloody well could!}, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead”–both during and after the show {as a spokescorpse for PETA}.

Not so enduring was the happy but hapless husband who found her body,  played by Jack Nance  of Eraserhead cult fame, who married Kelly Van Dyke {Sleuth somehow found their wedding photo!} a mere month before Twin Peaks’ final episode. With his show salary no longer coming in, the daughter of comedian Jerry Van Dyke {playing brother Dick’s brother on the latter’s classic sitcom} secretly sought to capitalize on dad’s role on the series Coach by starring in a porn film called The Coach’s Daughter under the name Nancee Kellie {a play on Kelly Nance}. Instead she used the money on drugs, and after her final film Anal Adventures, the end came quickly: When Jack told her over the phone he was leaving, a crushed Kelly hanged herself on Nov. 17, 1991, just 6 months into their marriage! Distraught, her Peaks partner was day-ud within 5 years…falling down drunk and hitting his eraserhead on the bathroom floor. He lives on like Laura, whose body he unearthed, in Twin t-shirts worn over the Peaks whose sales never seem to die.

With all this booty, I feel it my duty to link the lovely ladies from Twin Peaks (listed first) and Big Love, grouped with their character counterparts beneath descriptions often quoted directly from their cast bios. And since Peaks revolved around the two lawmen’s love of donuts—which they devoured by the stacked dozen—while the governing body of the Mormons is the Council of the Twelve Apostles, dubbed “The Twelve” when established in 1835 {two have no surviving images; the handsome head shown first is none other than Brigham Young!}—it seems only fitting that we present the “Dirty Dozen” below…

Similar Archetypes on Twin Peaks and Big Love :

1.  Teen beauty queen turned “charitable pillar of the community” and major M.I.L.F.
PEGGY LIPTON as Norma Jennings, former Miss Twin Peaks, nude in rare photoshoot
JEANNE TRIPPLEHORN as Barb Henrickson, mother of three, nude in Basic Instinct

2.  “Goody two-shoes” from deranged family with powerful father who’s not what he seems
LARA FLYNN BOYLE as Donna Hayward, daughter of town doctor, nude in The Road to Wellville
CHLOË SEVIGNY as Nicolette Grant, daughter of ‘ The Prophet,’ nude in frontal photoshoot

3.  Sultry nymphet who’s much more savvy and kind than she seems and has head for business
SHERILYN FENN as Audrey Horne, secret half-sister of Donna, rare autographed nude
GINNIFER GOODWIN as Margene Heffman, secret sister-wife of Nicki, spied-on having sex in Big Love

4.  17-year-old blond beauty, “a figurehead of youthful innocence and purity,” with a secret sex life
SHERYL LEE as Laura Palmer, whose death is the catalyst for the series, nude in Backbeat
AMANDA SEYFRIED as Sarah Henrickson, whose pregnancy shapes the season, nude in Alpha Dog

5.  “Manipulative and cold-blooded” wealthy wife who “can’t be trusted”
JOAN CHEN as Josie Packard, tries to kill Agent Cooper and first husband, nude in Wild Side
MARY KAY PLACE as Adaleen Grant, tries to kill anyone who crosses husband, nude in Captain Ron

6.  Wife of “a monstrous home dictator, wife-beater, and dangerous criminal” who controls her life
MÄDCHEN AMICK as Shelly Johnson, angelic high school dropout wife of Leo, nude in Dream Lover
ANNE DUDEK as Laura Grant, seemingly sweet home-schooled wife of Alby, nude in Park

7.  “High-voiced childlike” waif who gets pregnant and marries presumed father of her child
KIMMY ROBERTSON as Lucy Moran, quiet but conflicted sheriff’s receptionist, nude in Bad Manners
MELORA WALTERS as Wanda Henrickson, “at least mildly insane” poisoner, nude in Desert Saints

8.  Middle aged wife and mother, estranged from family and “cold and calculating,” {but still ‘hot’}
PIPER LAURIE as Catherine Martell, gets revenge on Josie for killing her brother, nude in Ruby
ELLEN BURSTYN as Nancy Dutton, gets revenge on Barb and Bill by siding with sister, nude in Tropic of Cancer

9.  Cold blooded, “repressed bitch” disapproving of alternate lifestyles
BRENDA STRONG as Ms. Jones, assassin who tries to rub out Sheriff Harry Truman, nude in Undercurrents
JUDITH HOAG as Cindy Dutton-Price, Barb’s sister who gets her excommunicated, nude in Carnivale

10. Busty, fresh-faced “Cherry Pie” teen ripe for the ‘plucking’
HEATHER GRAHAM as Annie Blackburn, who gives herself to Agent Cooper, nude in Killing Me Softly
SARAH JONES as Brynn, curly haired cutie who takes virginity of gentle Ben, ‘losing it’ on Big Love

11. Exotic and sexy immigrant who finds menial job to make ends meet while keeping her pride
LISA ANN CABASA as Jenny (3rd from left), perfume counter girl at Horne’s Dept. Store, nude in Wild at Heart
BRANKA KATIC as Ana, counter waitress who became Bill’s 4th wife, bra in bed in The Truth About Love

12. Budding beauty and music prodigy, the youngest of several sisters, who dreams of stardom
ALICIA WITT as Gersten Hayward, Donna’s little sister whose piano skills are featured, bareback in 9/00 pose
DAVEIGH CHASE as Rhonda Volmer, psycho singer and Roman’s bride-to-be, buns on the beach in 9/07 candid

Reviewer Sara Cardace’s conclusion to the 2009 season of Big Love might equally apply to both the Polygamists and their Peaks predecessors: “The terror of being exposed, which once simmered under the dialogue in almost every scene, has died down, to a far-off-in-the-future problem that doesn’t seem to bother anyone all that much.” Least of all us …

Share on Facebook

BIGGEST BLOG EVER: Polygamy Peaks is a post from: The SleuthSayer

And don’t forget to click on the SleuthSayer tab at top left to view our 3-part “Inaugural Super-Sized Special” and all my latest Blog Posts. Which reminds me of Night Court’s conservative counsel MARKIE Post…

Share on Facebook

X Marks the Spotlight is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“AMBER LEE ETTINGER probably did more to spread Barack Obama’s name around the world than anyone else,” England’s Daily Star noted just after his November election, “by performing a love song called ‘I Got a Crush on Obama’ on the Internet. Over the past 17 months, an estimated TWENTY MILLION people have watched her sexy routine in a tight T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Some put the total viewing figure at 50 MILLION! (Obama won with around 67 million votes). “I didn’t think it would get this HUGE” Amber admitted.

How could we not…with lyrics like: “So I put down my Kerry sign/Knew I had to make you mine,” followed by, “I cannot wait ’til 2008/Baby you’re the best candidate/Of the new oval office/You’ll get your head of state.” And Obama Girl, as she become universally known, made clear what oval orifice she was offering up (in anonymous ad modeling in Allure unearthed by Sleuth). Plus precisely where “B-Rock” (as she calls him) should put it! “I really am shocked that this video blew up the way it did,” Amber allowed. “But I don’t want to sound like I have a big head now” (stroking the big head of her Bravo A-List Award for 2008).

[By the way, you'll get no stale "Lewinsky jokes" here: Sleuth has met Bill Clinton at least a half dozen times and he's never been anything but a great and gracious guy.]

Yet despite the song’s overt offer that, “You can Barack me tonight” (now cut it out, Girl!), her candidate crush was not amused: “Sasha asked Mommy about it,” Obama opined of the video. “She said, ‘Daddy already has a wife’ or something like that {who looked something like this—in a controversial bust in a NYC gallery). I guess it’s too much to ask,” the candidate concluded, “but you do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families.” What Amber wished was for some face time with her Crush: “I just feel it,” Obama Girl gushed. “It’s bound to happen one day. We haven’t spoken and we haven’t met yet. But we will.” In her dreams…(continued in part 3)

Share on Facebook

INAUGURAL SUPER-SIZED SPECIAL: Part Two is a post from: The SleuthSayer

He found her on The Stern Show, where Italian-German “Amber Lee” (not using her long last name) wowed the crowd in studio to promote her June 2007 selection as the inaugural “Miss Howard TV”: Refusing to don a bikini, the former Miss Hawaiian Tropic New Jersey 2003 instead put on lingerie she’d brought along, causing corpulent comedian Artie Lange to call her “the hottest chick who was ever in here!” After getting to smell her, Amber laughs: “Artie started offering me money to sleep with him!”—eventually reaching $200,000 and “she wouldn’t even have to kiss him, just let him fuck her.” Says the former Hooters waitress: “He was hilarious!” {Find “the funny” at www.HowardStern.com…5/21/07 show}.

What she didn’t find funny was Howard hinting that her 34DD breasts weren’t real—Baba Booey Dell’Abate even checked her bra label! When others felt Obama Girl had undergone a “Change!,” Amber spoke out: “They were saying my boobs are fake. But I’ve never had plastic surgery. If I had fake boobs, I’d say, ‘I have fake boobs.’ But definitely not, I like mine just the way they are”—though hers seemed smaller when she was an “unDiscovered” model in 2002 who listed her bust as “33.” Not to mention the usually telling “Silicone Valley!” D that as it may, at least Amber hadn’t gone to the lengths alleged by Harlem pastor Dr. James Manning, who shouted in a sermon: “She must be a 54D! Double D!! Obama, that’s the first place I saw his name—on two great big ol’ tits!” But when Our Girl con-fronted the Rev. on camera, he backed off.

Another debate Stern would happily host is over Miss Howard TV’s sexual orientation: Asked if she’s “ever had a lesbian experience?,” Amber replied, “Yes, who hasn’t? LOL” {Lady On Lady?}. To the queery, “If you could have sex with someone on the Stern Show, who would it be?,” she purred: “One word…Robin. Love her!” {Quivers gave her shivers flashing on June 6, 2001–a real D Day!}. And while most MySpace profiles list “Orientation,” Ettinger’s only reads: “Single.” No wonder she evasively explains that Howard “asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said no.”

Breasts and broads aside, there’s one issue on which O Girl leaves no doubt: “I don’t do any nude pictures. And I don’t feel like I do any kind of lacy, racy pictures.” We’ll let the voters decide: Sleuth’s cOllection includes pert pOkies, camel tOe, see thrOugh and full-on areOlae!

We have a winner! While Amber says she “cried” when the election results came in, and flew in for the inauguration, she still hasn’t Capitolized on “it” with  her Man: “He’s pretty busy,” she smiles. “I don’t think I’m gonna meet him this week, but maybe someday. I’ve met his campaign manager (David Plouffe) and it’s opened a lot of doors. I never would have expected to be invited to the White House Correspondents dinner”—or to almost be felt up there by an interviewee!

So, can we finally END this super-sized entry on a high note? “Yes We Can!”

Share on Facebook

INAUGURAL SUPER-SIZED SPECIAL: Part Three is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Share on Facebook

Turning the Page is a post from: The SleuthSayer