Hollywood- While Barbara Walters was curious to discover if Academy Awards host Hugh Jackman was gay or not, James Bartholet found his own brand of entertainment the night of the Oscars.
Conducting interviews, Bartholet attended the Night of a 100 Stars. Whether this event is titled, literally, or not, it at least gave Bartholet, a personality whose autographed 8 by 10 glossies adorn brake shops in West Hollywood, an opportunity to name drop in a recent conversation we had.
In any event, it also gave Bartholet, who does an occasional porno in a non-sexual capacity now and then, an opportunity to interview silver screen personalities on that subject.
Batholet explains that this party is the successor to the old Swifty Lazar one which used to be an Oscars event mainstay and is held at Spago’s.
“There’s a lot of older stars there,” explains Bartholet who mentions that he was interviewing Anne Jeffreys from the old Topper TV series. Considering that the Topper show was around in the Fifties I was shocked to hear that Jeffreys has managed to keep out of the obituary column.
“And she looks good,” chimes Bartholet. For the record, Jeffreys, a glamour girl in her time, is now 86.
“I also saw Charles Durning there,” adds Bartholet. “And Ernie Borgnine.” See what we mean?
Bartholet, who’s cast as Scotty in Axel Braun’s upcoming porn version of Star Trek [you might recall Cash Markman’s Sex trek], also had the opportunity of kibitzing with songwriter Paul Williams, another personality who always managed to wind up either on Fantasy Island or Hollywood Squares.
“He was telling me that he and Garry Marshall were doing the musical version of Happy Days on Broadway," Bartholet tells me.
"I go isn’t that a coincidence? I just finished doing Happy Days, the porn version. He said, really? I want a copy of that!! I have all these celebrities telling me off camera that they want copies of these porn things. It’s really cool. They’re all porn aficionados. They’re like very very interested in all of this stuff."
"I said to James Cromwell if the actors strike goes on maybe you could get a job doing porn. He goes, nah, that’s okay. I’m just going to work around the house. I’m too old.”
Bartholet also talked to Florence Henderson.
“She was plugging the talk show she’s got, and I go we need to talk about the parodies. She goes what are you talking about, James? I go well those porn parodies. She goes, oh, I see and took a deep breath. She was worried about where I was going to go with this thing. And I said we have these porn versions of the Bradys, have you seen them yet?"
"She goes… no, I haven’t. But there was this big pause. So I think she has. She goes let me tell you something about this. I think it’s a shame that they’re making all this money off these parodies of us and they’re not giving us any money. I think it’s fine as long as they kick us back some bucks. I called Jeff Mullen and said I think Florence Henderson wants a check.”
And I can just see Mullen authoring residuals.
“I think that’s fine as long as she agrees to do a cameo in the next one,” laughs Bartholet.
“Well she did one in the mainstream parody that they did with Shelly Long. So why not have some thing at the end of Bradys 3 with Florence Henderson watching the movie on a TV then looking into the camera going that’s the worst porn I’ve ever seen. That would be hysterical.”
Besides talking to a number of other actors about the possible SAG strike, Bartholet also had a few moments with actor David Carradine.
“He’s just finishing up a Mata Hari movie that he’s spent the last 25 years doing,” reports Bartholet.
“David feels that the strike would be a shame. Then I proposed to him what if we did a porn version of Kung Fu? He goes nobody would want to see that. He asked me what would I call it. I said Cunt Fu, I don’t know. He goes, Cunt Food? I go, no, Cunt Fu."
"Then his wife would just sit there shaking his head and pulling him by the arm saying okay it’s time to go now. But David got a big chuckle out of that. He said you’re really doing these movies? I told him the way we’re making these now are high quality and have a good plot line. In Bewitched we had a laugh track in there.”
Bartholet also got to talk to Barbara Eden about an old movie she did with Tony Randall called the Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.
“Then I started to mention something about the porn parodies and she said, oh, I’m sure they’re harmless. Then along comes Larry Hagman with the big cowboy hat on and I asked him about the parodies. He goes, heck, Dallas was a parody of the Eighties. Who the hell would want to see that? I go a lot of people. Then I go on about happy Days and he goes what medium are you talking about? I go, you know, film, DVD, He goes, hmmmm. Who do you think would watch it."
"And his eyes just brightened up and he goes, REALLY? He said I’d like to see that. He goes did they make I dream of Weenie?”
[Actually there were a couple of I Dream of Jeannie porn parodies.]
“Then he goes, I don’t watch any of that kind of stuff. My wife and I don’t watch any of those kind of movies. And he also goes, I don’t even know anything about this computer-thing that they have nowadays. I go you mean the Internet? He goes, is that what they call it? I don’t even know how to turn it on."
"I told him he’s got tons of fan sites on there and clips of him on YouTube. He goes is that like YouSpace? I go, you mean MySpace? He goes, yeah, I heard about it on the news one time. I’m going to have to get me one of them computers, but when you buy one it’s like learning French and German. He goes maybe I can hire some kid to come in here and teach me how to do it. We’re old timers here. We just got a color TV the other day.”
Bartholet was also hoping to run into Shirley Jones, for obvious reasons, to talk about the Partridge Family porno.
“I have a photo of me and Shirley and she’s holding up the cover of This Ain’t The Partridge Family XXX. And I don’t think she realized until afterwards what was going on. Her publicist wanted thousands of dollars for her to even mention it in a conversation."
"Of course she’s not going to say something favorable. She’ll say how terrible it is that we’re doing this. Why give her money to have her say shit about it? Oh, because she’ll talk about it and it’ll make more sales? But we already got lots of sales. We’ve already got a shot of her holding up the cover- that’s a testimonial right there.”
Bartholet was also hoping to run into Tom Bosley but didn’t. Which is okay because Bartholet lends his rendition of Bosley in the upcoming porn version of Happy Days.
