In Praise Of Abigail Hayes

Maverick movie producer Rutherford T. Brady is famously quoted as saying that actress Abigail Hayes “Had a $1,000,000 body and a 10-cent brain.”  Brady’s next famous quote is “I got a mushy banana in my pants.”  So maybe Brady wasn’t exactly a quote machine, still, Abigail Hayes was able to cash in on and use her million-dollar body to full effect by starring in two movies.  First up was the Florida/Georgia lensed, OKEFENOKEE TANGO (1976).

OKEFENOKEE TANGO tells the tale of local small time marijuana dealers versus a big-time drug cartel that muscles in on their territory.  Hayes plays Birdie, one of the local dealers, who along with her boyfriend, Hank, and their friends, have to use their wits, her tits and their advantage of being on home turf to fight off the stylishly dressed Goombah intruders from Miami.  

Some highlights include a well shot airboat chase, silly swamp buggy races, seventies mob fashions and Abigail Hayes' $1,000,000 body . . . Even though we only get to see about $800,000’s worth.

OKEFENOKEE TANGO was a moderate hit and it unspooled for years on the drive-in circuit.

  

One of the films, and in particular Abigail’s admirers, was director Douglas Thacker, who had her in mind to star in his next feature, 1977’s high octane trucker/action film THE WILD ADVENTURES OF HONEY DOLL DAVIS.

PLOT:  Honey Doll is a feisty, over the road trucker, one of the few females making it in a heavily male dominated profession.  Honey Doll, who along with her bosom buddy Sugar Britches, who rides shotgun, toting a shotgun and a pair of non-stop fun bags, become the target of hijackers.

Sugar Britches was played by Tanya Trueblood, a brunette, amply bosomed, gap-toothed beauty, whose gap covered three of her top teeth, but none-the-less she was able to enunciate well enough and persevere to star in two more movies.  In 1979's UNFUNNY MONEY, Trueblood plays the girlfriend of a brutally unsuccessful prop comedian/counterfeiter, and in a made for television melodrama called THE SHAME OF SALLY HARDY (1981), she plays a woman running for a schoolboard election, whose past life as a nude mime comes back to haunt her (not so-much the nude part) and jeopardize her chances.

Hayes and Trueblood's chemistry on screen was solely due to their talent as actors, because off screen the two mixed like Joan Crawford and a wire hanger. 

DOUGLAS THACKER:  It was a constant competition between Abigail and Tanya.  Which one had the firmest breasts?  Which one had the smoothest legs?  Which one had the sexiest eyes?  Every day there was another argument and contest . . .  It got to a point where they decided to stage a soap box derby challenge to see who the better racer was.  They both designed, built, painted and raced their own cars. Tanya painted her soap box red with yellow lightning bolts. Abigail's was green and had her name in gold cursive.  Unfortunately, they picked an incredibly steep hill to race down, and they ended up crashing into each other and neither crossed the finish line.  The injuries were severe enough that they had to stay in a hospital for about a week, in the same room no less.  But in that time together, with no one else to talk to, they bonded and became friends.

Douglas Thacker's first film was 1974's political comedy COUNT DRACULA GOES TO WASHINGTON aka YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON DRACULA.

PLOT:  The infamous Count is persuaded by a sleazy press agent to run for President.  He is elected and starts to bite his way through the three branches of government.