PAMELA TIFFIN ,AMERICAN ACTRESS
BORN 1942 - 2020 DECEMBER 2
Pamela Tiffin Wonso (October 13, 1942 – December 2, 2020), better known as Pamela Tiffin, was an American film and television actress.
Early life[edit]
Tiffin was born in Oklahoma City to Stanley Wonso and Grace Irene (Tiffin) Wonso[1] of Russian and British ancestry,[2] but grew up in suburban Chicago, where she achieved success as a teen model. She attended Hunter College and appeared in a short film, Music of Williamsburg (1960).[3]
Hollywood career[edit]
Tiffin was vacationing in Hollywood when she visited the Paramount Pictures lot at the age of 19. She was spotted by producer Hal B. Wallis, who had her screen tested. This led to her being cast in the film version of Summer and Smoke (1961).[4]
She then played the daughter of James Cagney's boss in the comedy One, Two, Three (1961), directed by Billy Wilder who called her "the biggest find since Audrey Hepburn".[5] She earned a Golden Globe nomination for this film as well as one for Summer and Smoke.[6]
20th Century Fox gave her the leading role in the musical State Fair (1962), a remake of an earlier film, where she was romanced by Bobby Darin and directed by José Ferrer.[7] She was one of the three leads in MGM's comedy Come Fly with Me (1963).
Tiffin studied at Columbia and continued to model. She guest starred on The Fugitive and filmed a pilot for Fox, Three in Manhattan, that was not picked up.[8][5]
She made two films with James Darren, both aimed at teen audiences: For Those Who Think Young (1964) and The Lively Set (1964).[9] Fox put her in another remake, The Pleasure Seekers (1964), a new version of Three Coins in the Fountain.
She co-starred with Burt Lancaster in the 1965 western The Hallelujah Trail and went to Italy where she appeared in a segment of Kiss the Other Sheik (1965) with Marcello Mastroianni. She returned to make the private-detective film Harper (1966) with Paul Newman. She then performed in Dinner at Eight on Broadway.[10]
Italy[edit]
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In 1967, Tiffin decided to move to Italy "to find out what I want".[3] She appeared in The Almost Perfect Crime (1966) with Philippe Leroy; The Protagonists (1968); Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses (1968), a hugely popular comedy; and The Archangel (1969) with Vittorio Gassman.[11][3]
The February 1969 issue of Playboy did a photo feature titled "A Toast to Tiffin".
She made her first American film in two years when she played a liberal college student and the love interest to Peter Ustinov in the comedy Viva Max! (1969). She performed Uncle Vanya on stage and was in an episode of The Survivors.[3]
Tiffin returned to Italy to appear in Cose di Cosa Nostra (1971), No One Will Notice You're Naked (1971), The Fifth Cord (aka Evil Fingers) (1971), E se per caso una mattina... (1972), Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1973), Kill Me, My Love! (1973) with Farley Granger, La signora è stata violentata (1973), and Brigitte, Laura, Ursula, Monica, Raquel, Litz, Florinda, Barbara, Claudia, e Sofia le chiamo tutte... anima mia (1974). She returned to Hollywood briefly to appear in the TV movie The Last of the Powerseekers (1971).
She appeared as herself in a 2003 documentary, Abel Ferrara: Not Guilty, opposite her daughter Echo Danon.
She released a memoir, Daring: My Passages with Gail Sheehy in 2014 and a biography of her life, Pamela Tiffin: Hollywood to Rome, was written by Tom Lisanti in 2015.[citation needed]
Personal life[edit]
Tiffin married twice. Her first marriage was to Clay Felker, an American magazine editor, whom she married in 1962 and divorced in 1969.[12] Her second marriage was to Edmondo Danon, a philosopher, who is a son of the Italian movie producer Marcello Danon. They married in 1974 and had two daughters, Echo and Aurora.[citation needed]
Tiffin died on December 2, 2020, in a Manhattan hospital, at the age of 78.[13] The cause of death was not disclosed.[
Pamela Tiffin, who appeared in the musical State Fair, the comedy One, Two, Three, and the Paul Newman detective film Harper, died in New York on Friday, according to reports. She was 78.
Tiffin, born in Oklahoma and raised in Chicago, moved to New York to attend Hunter College and start a modeling career in the early 1960s. On a visit to Los Angeles she experienced what every erstwhile star dreams about. She was spotted on the Paramount lot (some reports say the commissary) by producer Hal B. Willis. He cast Triffin, still in her late teens, in the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play Summer and Smoke, co-starring Laurence Harvey, Geraldine Page, and Rita Moreno. She was nominated for the Best Female Newcomer Golden Globe for the performance.
That same year, 1961, she co-starred in the peak Cold War comedy One, Two, Three, directed by Billy Wilder. Like Wilder's other leading comediennes Marilyn Monroe and Shirley MacLaine, Tiffin exudes a kind of clumsy sexuality as the uncontrollable "boss's daughter" under James Cagney's avuncular watch in West Berlin. Naturally, the Southern belle heiress to the very capitalist Coca-Cola fortune ends up in love with an unwashed Bolshevik played by Horst Bucholtz, launching zingers like "you just tell Daddy I'm on my way to the U.S.S.R. That's short for Russia." The performance netted her her second Golden Globe nomination, for Best Supporting Actress.
She followed this up with the role of Margy Frake in the José Ferrer-directed remake of Rogers and Hammerstein's State Fair. Though not as highly regarded as the 1945 version (and, quite frankly, maybe not the best entry in the R & H resumé to begin with) this film did afford Tiffin the opportunity to look forlorn in a gingham dress during the musical's loveliest tune, "It Might As Well Be Spring." (Her voice was dubbed by Anita Gordon.)
At around this time, Tiffin married her first husband, Clay Felker, then a senior editor at Esquire magazine. He later co-founded New York magazine. The following year she appeared in the jet-age comedy Come Fly With Me, in which she co-starred with Dolores Hart and Lois Nettleton as airline hostesses looking for a first class romance. In his New York Times Bosley Crowther referred to Tiffin as a "crazy-cute number ... begin[ning] to look like a new Audrey Hepburn."
Tiffin next appeared opposite James Darren in two films, For Those Who Think Young and The Lively Set, then as the wide-eyed roommate of Ann-Margaret and Carol Lynley caught in the whirlwind of Euro-romance in the Madrid-set The Pleasure Seekers. She also appeared on Broadway in the role of Kitty Packard in a well-received production of Dinner at Eight.
Her career started segueing into European productions, but not before one last Hollywood hit in 1966 as the young seductress in Paul Newman's hard-boiled detective picture Harper. This film has one of the better trailers of the era.
Tiffin relocated to Italy by the late 1960s, where she married her second husband, Edmondo Danon, whose father, Marcello Danon, co-wrote and produced La Cage aux Folles, among other international hits. She was featured in the February 1969 issue of Playboy in a pictorial called A Toast to Tiffin. Lorrie Menconi was the centerfold and Nancy Chamberlain was on the cover. Others in that issue included Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, J. Paul Getty, and Nat Hentoff. What a time.
She then appeared in a string of Italian films, effectively retiring in 1974 at the age of 32. She and Danon had two daughters, Echo and Aurora.
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