Pamela Tiffin Would Be 80 Today

Pamela Tiffin (1941-2020) passed away a few months ago, but I thought I’d leave a tribute for this birthday benchmark she never made it to.

I think of Tiffin was one of the “’60s youth generation” of actors that includes Russ Tamblyn, Millie Perkins, and others. She’d done a little modeling and one short film when Hal B. Wallis discovered her and cast her in the 1961 screen version of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke with Lawrence Harvey, and Geraldine Page. Next Billy Wilder cast her as the troublesome teenager in One, Two, Three (1961) opposite James Cagney, and it was beginning to look like the start of a charmed career. Other notable stuff she appeared in included the 1962 remake of State Fair, the 1964 youth pictures For Those Who Think Young and The LivelySet with James Darren, The Pleasure Seekers (1964) with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley,The Hallelujah Trail (1965) with Burt Lancaster,Harper (1966) with Paul Newman, and Viva Max (1969) with Peter Ustinov and Jonathan Winters. These appearances alternated with a small amount of television work and, beginning in the mid ’60s lots of roles in Italian films, which increasingly became her base of activity.

Tiffin retired in 1974 to marry a son of Italian producer Marcello Danon. Her first husband, from 1962 to 1969 was the famous exponent of New Journalism Clay Felker, best known for founding New York Magazine in 1968.