Yvette Mimieux, ‘60s starlet of ‘Time Machine,’ dies at 80
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NEW YORK (AP) — Yvette Mimieux, the blond and blue-eyed 1960s film star of “Where the Boys Are,” “The Time Machine” and “Light in the Piazza,” has died. She was 80.
Michelle Bega, a family spokeswoman, said Mimieux died in her sleep of natural causes overnight Monday evening at her home in Los Angeles.
In 1960′s “The Time Machine,” based on H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel, Mimieux starred opposite Rod Taylor as Weena, a member of the peaceful, blond-haired Eloi people in the year 800,000, who don’t realize they’re being bred as food by the underground Morlocks.
That role and others that soon followed made Mimieux one of the ‘60s most radiant starlets. The same year, she also starred in the MGM teen movie “Where the Boys Are” as one of four college students on spring break in Florida. Her character, distraught after being sexual assaulted in a motel, walks despondently into traffic.
“I suppose I had a soulful quality,” she told the Washington Post in 1979. “I was often cast as a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role.”
Yvette Carmen Mimieux was born on Jan. 8, 1942, in Los Angeles to a French father and a Mexican mother. She was “discovered” at age 15 when publicist Jim Byron, as he told it, spotted her on bridle path from a helicopter while flying over the Hollywood Hills. She and a friend were riding on horseback; Byron landed in front of them and gave her his card. Mimieux began as a model before MGM signed her in 1959.
“The subtle approach is the thing,” Byron told The AP in 1961. “I think we’ve got another Garbo on our hands.”
And for a few years, Mimieux was ubiquitous. Life magazine put her on the cover with the headline: “Warmly Wistful Starlet.” She made eight films before turning 21.
Mimieux starred in four films in 1962, including Vincent Minnelli’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and Guy Green’s “Light in the Piazza.” In the latter, she played the beautiful, mentally handicapped daughter of Olivia de Havilland. On a trip to Italy, Mimieux’s character Clara is pursued by a young Italian in Florence, played by George Hamilton.
Mimieux played a bride in “Toys in the Attic” (1963), an epileptic surfer in “Dr. Kildare” (1964) and a bride in “Joy in the Morning” (1965). She was three times nominated for a Golden Globe, including for her role in the short-lived ABC series “The Most Deadly Game,” from Aaron Spelling. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, she increasingly appeared in TV movies, some of which she helped write.
Mimieux co-wrote and co-produced the 1984 CBS TV movie “Obsessive Love,” about a deranged fan obsessed with a soap opera star. Mimieux said she had to battle the network over having a woman, played by herself, in such a role. Her idea stemmed from John Hinckley’s obsession with Jodie Foster, only with the gender roles reversed.
“The network felt people wouldn’t believe me as this woman. They said to me, ‘She’s a loner, and she shouldn’t be attractive,’” Mimieux told The New York Times in 1984. “I asked them, ‘Are you saying that only unattractive people can be crazy or lonely or have unfulfilled lives?’″
Mimieux said television was never the “love affair” she had with film. But she complained about the kinds of roles she was offered, and the one-dimensional type of women that were written. (One of her last notable movies was the 1979 Disney film “The Black Hole.”) So Mimieux retired from show business in her late 40s. Her interests — including archeology, painting and traveling — always went beyond fame. Off-screen, Mimieux was much more than the naïve starlet she was pigeonholed as.
“I decided I didn’t want to have a totally public life,” she told the Post. “When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no.
“You know, there are tribes in Africa who believe that a camera steals a little part of your soul, and in a way I think that’s true about living your private life in public. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them.”
Mimieux first married Evan Harland Engber in 1959 before later divorcing. She was married to the film director Stanley Donen, from 1972 to 1985. In 1986, she married the real estate mogul Howard F. Ruby. She’s survived by Ruby and numerous stepchildren.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This Dolly Parton Impersonator Will Make You Do a Double Take
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Hello Dolly 2.0!
Clash of the Cover Bands champ Karen Hester proved why she was totally deserving of her big win when she got the opportunity to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Jan. 19.
The Dolly Parton tribute artist wowed the crowd as she turned out a medley of the country star’s biggest hits, including “9 to 5,” “Jolene” and “Two Doors Down,” as seen in E! News’ exclusive first look at the episode.
The camp activities leader from Myrtle Beach, S.C. was a dead ringer for Dolly, taking to the stage wearing a gold and white striped mini-dress with fringe details, styled with T-strap heels and the iconic singer’s signature sky-high blonde hairdo.
“I’m sure there’s going to be all types of emotions I’m probably going to feel, along with nerves, but a whole lot of excitement, too,” Karen told her local NBC 10 News hours before her performance on Jan. 19, which happens to be on the same day Dolly herself turns 76.
Daniel Radcliffe tapped to portray ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic in biopic
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Produced by Funny Or Die and Tango, the project is being directed by Eric Appel, who sarcastically commented, “When Weird Al first sat me down against my will and told me his life story, I didn’t believe any of it, but I knew that we had to make a movie about it.”
Omicron Is in Retreat
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A typical 65-year-old American woman — to take one example — is five foot three inches tall and weighs 166 pounds. If she had been vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor, like an organ transplant, her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872, according to the calculator. For a typical 65-year-old man, the risk would be 1 in 434.
Among 75-year-olds, the risk would be 1 in 264 for a typical woman and 1 in 133 for a typical man.
Those are meaningful risks. But they are not larger than many other risks older people face. In the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them, according to the C.D.C.
And Omicron probably presents less risk than the British calculator suggests, because it uses data through the first half of 2021, when the dominant version of Covid was more severe than Omicron appears to be. One sign of Omicron’s relative mildness: Among vaccinated people in Utah (a state that publishes detailed data), the percentage of cases leading to hospitalization has been only about half as high in recent weeks as it was last summer.
For now, the available evidence suggests that Omicron is less threatening to a vaccinated person than a normal flu. Obviously, the Omicron wave has still been damaging, because the variant is so contagious that it has infected tens of millions of Americans in a matter of weeks. Small individual risks have added up to large societal damage.
- Effective boosters
The final major piece of encouraging news involves booster shots: They are highly effective at preventing severe illness from Omicron. The protection is “remarkably high,” as Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote.
Switzerland has begun reporting Covid deaths among three different groups of people: the unvaccinated; the vaccinated who have not received a booster shot; and the vaccinated who have been boosted (typically with a third shot). The first two shots still provide a lot of protection, but the booster makes a meaningful difference, as Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser of Our World in Data have noted:
Grammys postponed to April 3 - and in a new city
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Since the Grammy Awards shifted airdates, the CMT Music Awards will move from its originally scheduled date of April 3 to later in the month. Information about the date and location of the fan-voted country music awards show will be announced in the coming weeks.