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USA  |  1960s

USA  |  1960s

USA: Filmmaking in Florida 1960s

Filmmaking in Florida 1960s

The Stars in Mimo-land

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1 Roger Ruhlin, Filmmaking in St. Petersburg, Florida, 1967. USphoto

Jerry Lewis

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Elvis

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Jackie Gleason

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The Florida Exploit-
ation Boom: Doris Wishman

Doris Wishman was a native New Yorker but began her filmmaking career shooting nudist features in sunny Florida. Between 1958 and 1964 she produced eight nudist films in total, travelling to Florida at least half a dozen times to shoot principle and background footage.

Doris’s first movie, Hideout in the Sun (1960) originally started shooting in Pinellas Pines, but the footage was deemed unusable. On her second outing she worked in South Florida instead, most conspicuously filming at the old Miami Serpentarium on the South Dixie Highway.

Perhaps Doris’s best-known film, Nude on the Moon (1961) was principally filmed at the world-famous Coral Castle in Homestead. Additional scenes were filmed around Miami Beach.

Doris’s third feature, Diary of a Nudist (1961) was partially shot at the Sunny Rest nudist camp in Pennsylvania and partially at the Sunny Palms nudist resort in Homestead. Both camps were owned in part by Zelda Suplee – the “Queen of the Nudists” – who also appears in the film.

Many of the actresses who appeared in Doris Wishman nudist films were models who posed regularly for Miami’s legendary cheesecake photographer, the late, great Bunny Yeager. Among them were Dolores Carlos, Lacey Kelly, Christy Foushee and Maria Stinger.

Blaze Starr was America’s best-known striptease performer when Doris approached her at the Club Piccadilly on Miami Beach about starring in a movie. The result was Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962). In one noteworthy scene, Blaze is seen entering the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road.
-Michael J. Bowen, Doris Wishman biographer

William Grefe

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Barry Mahon and Joseph Adler

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And Herschell Gordon Lewis...

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