Carol Lynley: Actor forever associated with cult classic The Poseidon Adventure

A former child model, she acted with Olivier but it would be the doomed cruise liner for which she would be remembered

‘We had to swim underwater, climb across tiny catwalks, walk over flames ... They hosed us down at least 20 times a day’ (Getty)

Carol Lynley enjoyed a lengthy career on stage and screen, first appearing on Broadway in her early teens, then became a film actor whose best-known role was as a ditzy, shrieking lounge singer in the 1972 cult-classic disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

Lynley, who has died of a suspected heart attack aged 77, was a child model and actor who was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1957, when she was 15. She soon moved to Hollywood and became a minor star in mostly minor films. She appeared in a series of lightweight sex romps, such as Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) with Jack Lemmon and The Pleasure Seekers (1964), about the romantic adventures of three young American women in Spain.

In one of her more challenging dramatic roles, Lynley shared the screen with Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward in Otto Preminger’s 1965 psychological thriller Bunny Lake is Missing, playing a young mother searching for a lost daughter.

But her most recognisable role was as a shipboard singer in the star-studded The Poseidon Adventure. The film was part of a series of blockbuster disaster movies in the 1970s, including Airport, The Towering Inferno and Earthquake.

The film takes place on New Year’s Eve, as the festivities aboard the SS Poseidon are thrown into turmoil when the ship is capsized by a 90ft tidal wave. In the movie, Lynley sings the movie’s Oscar-winning theme song, “The Morning After”, although her voice was dubbed by singer Renee Armand. Dressed in a clinging orange blouse, white hot-pants and go-go boots, she spends much of the film climbing through the wreckage, screaming and getting drenched by water.

“It was the most physically demanding role you can possibly imagine,” she said in 1972. “We had to swim underwater, climb across tiny catwalks, walk over flames ... They hosed us down at least 20 times a day. And there were no safety precautions for the first two weeks of shooting. I’d be up there on a catwalk, and if I slipped, it was six stories straight down through flames to a concrete floor.”

Parts of the movie, directed by Ronald Neame, were filmed on a cruise liner, but most of it was shot on a Hollywood sound stage, inside a huge tank that took three days to fill with water. The claustrophobic setting seemed to intensify the egos and fears of the cast.

Lynley was praised for her portrayal of a pregnant teen in 1959’s ‘Blue Denim’ (Getty)

“Everybody hated something,” Lynley said of the star-studded cast. “I hated the heights. Red Buttons hated the water. Stella [Stevens] hated the dirt and so did Ernest Borgnine. Shelley Winters hated being fat and Jack Albertson hated Shelley Winters.”

Carol Ann Jones was born in 1942, in New York City. Her parents divorced when she was a toddler, and her mother worked as a waitress. Lynley became a child model, under the name Carolyn Lee, and by age 10 was her family’s primary breadwinner. She later took the name Carol Lynley because another actor had the name Carolyn Lee.

The cast had a gruelling time making ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ (20th Century Fox/Rex)

Shortly before her 15th birthday, Lynley was appearing on Broadway in Graham Greene’s The Potting Shed and soon after was featured in Life magazine. During the day, she had dance lessons and up to five modelling assignments before going to the theatre at night.

In 1958 Lynley appeared on Broadway in Blue Denim, a play by James Leo Herlihy and William Noble in which she portrayed a pregnant teenage girl considering whether to have an abortion. She starred in a film adaptation the following year, drawing good notices.

She was considered a rising star in Hollywood, but other than Bunny Lake is Missing and The Cardinal, a 1963 religious drama also directed by Preminger, her film roles were often forgettable.

Lynley appeared in dozens of television shows, including The Man from UNCLE, Run for Your Life and Fantasy Island, and she posed nude for Playboy magazine in 1965.

Her marriage, to publicist Michael Selsman, ended in divorce. Lynley later had a long relationship with the broadcaster David Frost. Lynley is survived by a daughter.

Lynley was gratified but puzzled by the continued popularity of The Poseidon Adventure, which inspired a devoted following. She and other cast members sometimes appeared at gatherings of the film’s fans, many of whom memorised the dialogue, made tribute (and spoof) videos or constructed elaborate models of the doomed ship.

Acting royalty: with Laurence Olivier in ‘Bunny Lake is Missing’, 1965 (Moviestore/Rex)

“The movie has a life of its own,” she said. “I went through 10 or 15 pairs of shorts because they kept shrinking. At the end of it, we had the choice of taking our costumes home. But after three and a half months, you don’t want them.” She came to regret her decision: “I could sell them on eBay for a fortune.”

Carol Lynley, actor, born 13 February 1942, died 3 September 2019

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