Luana Anders
Nude

All-American blonde Luana Anders began her long, successful career as Josie Brigg in the bad-gal flickReform School Girl (1957). She appeared in multiple TV shows, took an uncredited role as Mrs. Graham in The FBI Story (1959) with Jimmy Stewart, and played Ellen Sands in Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper. Somewhere in all this, it should be mentioned that Luana took an improv class with fellow classmates Sally Kellerman, Richard Chamberlain, Jack Nicholson, producer/director Roger Corman, and screenwriter Robert Towne. When Corman was looking to cast a couple of films, he remembered the acting chops of Luana and cast her as Catherine Medina in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) alongside Vincent Price, and as Henny in The Young Racers (1963). On the set of Racers, the sound guy asked if she wanted to be in a movie he wrote and was going to direct—that was Francis Ford Coppola, and Luana took on arguably her most well-known role, that of Louise in the cult classic Dementia 13 (1963); she gave audiences ample opportunity to ogle her goodies in a bra and panties in that flick. In 1967, all her friends came together in one big project, The Trip; it was written by Nicholson, directed by Corman and starred Hopper (Luana was the waitress). The actress frequently hung out in the movies with Nicholson, also a good friend in real life, and the two were cast-pals in no less than five pictures. She rejoined him and Hopper, along with Peter Fonda, as the free-spirited Lisa in Easy Rider (1969) (She skinny dips! We see partial boob!). She was Devra in the movie Shampoo (1975), written by improv mate Towne along with Warren Beatty, the two allegedly basing the story on Luana’s affair with a hairdresser. All told, she did 43 feature films with Hollywood’s biggest names, not to mention all the TV shows she appeared in. Nicholson mentioned her in his 1998 Oscar acceptance speech (she convinced him to go to that improv class when they were mere bike messengers at MGM), and Dennis Hopper said of her, “She’s so wonderful. A great actress. She was so simple, so endearing, so full of life.” Luana passed away in July 1996 at the age of 58.