JEANNE CARMEN in new book on Rock N Roll Hall of Famer EDDIE COCHRAN

Pinup Icon JEANNE CARMEN is featured in this new book on Rock and Roll Hall of Famer EDDIE COCHRAN.

EDDIE COCHRAN was in the first wave of American Rock Stars along with ELVIS PRESLEY, BUDDY HOLLY, JERRY LEE LEWIS, CHUCK BERRY, JAMES BROWN and LITTLE RICHARD

They were all inducted in the very first award ceremony in 1987

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11, page 61

There was another persistent rumor on the set of UNTAMED YOUTH, this time that Eddie was getting close with an actress named JEANNE CARMEN who was paying LILIBET in the film.

Jeanne was vivacious and beautiful and came with a backstory that read like a movie script. At age thirteen, tired of picking cotton beneath the harsh southern sun, Jeanne had run away from home.  She’d wound up in New York where she got work as a burlesque dancer in BERT LAHR’s big show and posed as a pinup model for the popular girly magazines of the day.  As well as the bump n’ grind of burlesque and the stag shoots, Jeanne supplemented her income by working as a trick shot golf hustler in Las Vegas.

 

The world she moved in brought her into contact with connected guys, it was “Handsome” JOHNNY ROSELLI, a mob guy with movie connections, who first introduced her to FRANK SINATRA, and Frank who got her out to Hollywood.  Once in Tinsel Town, Jeanne went on to appear in twenty movies.  There weren’t many women like JEANNE CARMEN around in the mid-1950’s.

 

She was a strong, independent, smart and beautiful trailblazer.  She smouldered on screen and took her acting seriously enough to study with Strasberg while she was in New York. That Eddie fell for Jeanne, while at the front of the stages he’s playing on, groups of pretty girls are starting to gather, tells us a lot about him, about how he was starting to become attracted to cool, powerful, accomplished women, the same women that other young men found intimidating and hard to approach.

 

Eddie liked Jeanne for real even though that meant keeping their relationship under wraps and off MAMIE VAN DOREN’s radar.

 

One time while the pair were leaning against a car necking on the studio lot, Mamie sashayed by and would have seen Eddie and Jeanne in loves young embrace had they not ducked down behind the car and waited for the bombshell starlet to pass.

 

Eddie got romantic with Jeanne. He sent her bunches of red roses surrounding a single yellow flower at the center. 

 

When the pair of them took part in a set-piece dance seen in the film featuring a whole bunch of cast members they situated themselves at the back of the shot and got caught up in their own bump-and-grind routing, not caring whether or not they made the final cut.