WOW, I MEAN, WOW I just interviewed Joey Heatherton, and, boy, are my ears tired. She remains the same vibrant gal who became a 60s and 70s icon. However, she's actually less than vibrant on 1972's The Joey Heatherton Album. Heatherton's sole release for the MGM label—newly reissued with extensive bonus tracks on the internet label Hip-OSelect.com—remains a stunning showcase for the entertainer's bizarre vulnerability.
She was always a daring mix of glittering entertainer and pioneering Goth girl. When Heatherton wasn't singing and dancing on splashy variety shows, she was playing detached and troubled characters in underseen films such as My Blood Runs Cold. Speaking from her West Coast home, Heatherton's quick to invoke the days that started her out as a serious actress.
"They called me the New York actress back then," she recalls. "Richard Rodgers was my big daddy, my mentor, and Josh Logan, gosh, and I'd done a lot of plays and gotten very good reviews. Then I went out to Hollywood and did movies, working with George Segal and Bette Davis and Susan Hayward, and was treated with great respect. I never had a problem, because I was embraced by Frank Sinatra—and there was my beginning with Perry Como when I was 15, and working with Dean Martin, and Jerome Robbins when I was 13 years old, so I learned pretty young, and I loved it!"
Too bad that Hollywood didn't know what to do with her haunting beauty. "I had to fight the leotard thing," Heatherton agrees, "but I was always working." She's certainly grown comfortable as a sex symbol, with the reissued Joey Heatherton Album featuring a stunning topless pic as a new cover shot.
"That was done by the great Harry Langdon, Jr.," she recalls, "and I guess that was taken when I was making a movie with Richard Burton called Bluebeard. I think it was taken between scenes on the set, and Harry said, 'Come on, you opened your robe in Bluebeard, can I have a shot?' He told me we weren't going to ever do anything with it—and, years later, surprise!"
Sadly, Heatherton's primary exposure in later decades would come from some public spectacles in the 80s. All that got her was a cameo in John Waters' Cry-Baby. It remains her most recent screen appearance, but Heatherton's feeling—well, as enthusiastic as she sounds. "Things are terrific!" she exclaims. "Really wonderful! I feel like I'm Joey Heatherton's daughter. I should feel like Joey Heatherton's mother. I'm going to do a new CD, and I'm going to be playing Vegas again!"
That's good news, especially since I'll be in Vegas soon. When, exactly?
"Real soon!" And we better believe it, because Vegas needs Joey as much as we all do now. o
