The ”effortless attractiveness” of Joi Lansing

TVC 700.1: Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and producer Joseph Dougherty and author and artist Alexis Hunter join Ed for the first of a special two-part look at the life and career of Joi Lansing, the legendary Blonde Bombshell best known for her pin-up photos, her frequent work in movies and television throughout the '50s and '60s, and her successful nightclub singing act. Joe's latest book, Comfort and Joi, is a part-biography, part-filmography, and part-appreciation of Joi Lansing that makes the case that Lansing was not only a much better actress than people gave her credit for, but could make even a seven-second silent bit in which she appears on the far edge of the frame interesting to watch just because she was in it. Alexis is the author of Joi Lansing: A Body to Die For, an intimate memoir of Alexis's four-year relationship with Lansing, a period that coincided with the last four years of Joi's life before she died from breast cancer in August 1972. Joi and Alexis had to keep their relationship secret, partly because of the pressure Joi felt to maintain her public image as the ultimate object of desire for men, and partly because the public at large in 1969 was not as accepting of intimate relationships between two members of the same sex as they are today. Topics this segment include the many karmic coincidences that brought Joe and Alexis together (as well as the many ways in which their books complement each other); how Joi honed her comedic skills while working with Lucille Ball and Bob Cummings; and Joi's experience working with Orson Welles not only in Touch of Evil, but in the award-winning comedy-drama Fountain of Youth.