Some days ago George Hamilton, whose early life inspired My One and Only, explained his man-wth-a-tan persona to Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale. The piece went up late this morning: “Originally my brother said to me, ‘You look paler than a nun’s butt,'” Hamilton recalls. “‘You need to get tan.’ So my brother would have me sit out with this reflector for about 15 minutes, and that would be it. Cary Grant told me and he told Tony Bennett, ‘Always have a tan. You look better.’
“It was vanity, but then when I was doing westerns, it made no sense whatsoever to go into makeup. They would always call me for an hour of makeup at 5:30 or 6. I said, ‘I don’t want to to go into makeup.’ So Glenn Ford said, “Look. You and I will get there at the same time. Take your lunch time, but don’t eat lunch. It just tires you out. We’ll sit out in the sun.” Little did I know that he would just drink a bottle of vodka and we’d sit there in the sun. But we got tan, and we never had to spend a minute in makeup.”