 Marlyn Mason played the part of Sally Weldon in the "Ben Casey" TV
series during the mid-sixties, before making her film debut, as Charlene
(the role was originally intended for singer Bobbie "Ode to Billy Joe"
Gentry), in The Trouble With Girls (And How To Get Into It). With a
title like that, one would expect this to be a typical Elvis film, but
typical it ain't!! Many die-hard fans don't like it, siting, among other
things, that "Elvis hardly appears for the first forty minutes of the film"
(Paul Lichter, Elvis in Hollywood), but who cares!! With an ensemble
cast that includes Vincent Price
and John Carradine, set in the "Roaring 20's", this is a character-actor's
field day. The setting is a traveling
Chautauqua tent show. Elvis
plays the boss, and Marlyn is sort of the self-appointed union. Along the
way, they do a duet on "Signs of the Zodiac", a predictably silly novelty
song. In the 70's, Marlyn made mainly TV-movies and guest appearances. She
had a regular part as girlfriend/sidekick Nikki Bell on the much too
short-lived TV series, Longstreet, with James Franciscus. More
recently she appeared in the 1995 mini-series, Dead By Sunset, as
well as the TV-movie, Fifteen And Pregnant (1998). Also, Marlyn
appeared on a recent Candid Camera episode (2000), when the crew came
to her hometown of Medford Oregon! The gag was to convince people that they
were getting new street address numbers that were nine digits long! Marlyn
was suitably outraged, of course!
Have a look!
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