“Warning! Unless you can stand vivid realism… IT MIGHT SNAP YOUR MIND!”

They say that behind every great man is a woman being terrorized by a rockabilly swamp creature. June Carr Ormond was that woman.

Born in Pennsylvania, when she was still a child Carr’s family made the move to New York City and opened a coffee bar. There, she began a lifetime performing, eventually moving downstairs from the coffee shop to the Rialto theatre and the world of vaudeville. She married in 1935 to Ron Ormond, who moved the clan to Hollywood in order to cash in on the movies, where their speciality was low-budget Westerns as well as B-classics such as Mesa of Lost Women and Untamed Mistress.

By the mid-60s, work in the movies was drying up for the Ormonds in Hollywood and they made the pilgrimage to Nashville, becoming that city’s renowned First Family of Film. Here the Ormond clan, with June as co-producer, costume and set designer, chauffeur to a man in a gorilla suit, sometime star and all-around go-to-it person, took country music, religion, and “the necessity of boobs” and worked their magic on the drive-in circuit with films like The Monster and the Stripper and Please Don’t Touch Me. So wrapped up in the exploitation racket were the Ormonds that their pressbooks actually said “It’s Exploitable!” on the covers. And if that doesn’t stir your soul, you’re dead to me.

What an amazing life. They just don’t make them like they used to. For more information on June and the rest of the Ormond clan, please click here, here and especially here.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Ormond.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Hicksploitation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.