This exceedingly rust-colored creature is Belgian-born actress, singer, model, and dancer Monique Van Vooren (1927-2020). Van Vooren first came to my notice in her over-the-top performance as the Baroness in Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1973). And she was in a night club act with Christopher Walken! Investigation into her background rewarded suspicions that such credits climaxed a campy, crazy career.
In her youth, Van Vooren had won ice skating competitions and beauty pageants. Modelling work for magazines got her cast in the Italian movie Tomorrow is Too Late (1950) with Pier Angeli and Vittoria De Sica. This led to getting cast as the titular She-Devil in Tarzan and the She Devil (1953), her first American film. That same year she appeared in a Broadway revival of the revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. (In 1975, Warhol returned her to Broadway in the show Man on the Moon).
Van Vooren fills an interesting niche. That name is so close to that of Mamie Van Doren! And yet as a foreign model she seems to pave the way for the later Britt Ekland/Elke Sommer etc who were all the rage about a decade later. As with Jayne Mansfield, it was given out that she was a genius, who mastered up to eight languages, and studied philosophy. Van Vooren is perhaps less well known because her career was divided between a night club act, sporadic television work (not just dramas but also variety shows and game shows), and European and American films.
Other movies she appeared include Dean Martin’s first post-Jerry Lewis screen vehicle 10,000 Bedrooms (1957), the musical Gigi (1958), Happy Anniversary (1959) with Mitzi Gaynor and David Niven, Fearless Frank (1967, the second movie of director Philip Kaufman, and the first for co-star Jon Voigt), The Decameron (1971), and the soft-core Sugar Cookies (1973, co-written by Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, with Mary Woronov and Ondine). Oliver Stone was an associate producer on the latter film; he later cast her in a bit part in Wall Street (1987), and his son Sean put her in his found-footage horror film Greystone Park (2012).
On television, Van Vooren also played a Batman villain named Miss Clean, and appeared on such variety showcases as The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson), The Ed Sullivan Show, Playboy Penthouse, The Hollywood Palace, and The Les Crane Show.
For more on the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.
(Travalanche) 
You must be logged in to post a comment.