Gene Krupa, Sal Mineo, and "The Green Girl"

Dorissa (Susan Oliver) turns on Gene (Sal Mineo) 
in "The Gene Krupa Story." 

Having just seen the new "Elvis" biopic, I decided it was time to watch "The Gene Krupa Story" (1959) starring Sal Mineo in a fantastic performance playing the drums much as Krupa did. 

In the film, Krupa is turned on to marijuana by a fictional vixen named Dorissa Dinell, much as Eve lead Adam astray with the Forbidden Fruit (dubbed "the world's first controlled substance" by Timothy Leary). 

After handing him a joint, Dorissa (played by Susan Oliver) watches him take a puff. Immediately, the music turns ominous and discordant. "Don't diddle it," she admonishes him, encouraging him by example to inhale fully. "Put your miseries out to pasture and nobody gets you," she tells him.  

In the next montage, Krupa gains popularity playing in inventive styles, like walking around the drum set as he plays, and beating on a bass guitar with his drumsticks, culminating in a frenzy. Headlines like, "Detroit Cats Await Hot Swing Drummer"
are shown. 

Mostly, it seems the writers had heroin in mind when they wrote about pot in the movie. "One sip and you're gone from the vale of tears," a carny-like guitarist wearing a polkadot bowtie says when he proffers some "tea, and I don't mean Oolong" to Krupa, calling him "Daddy-O." 

In real life, Krupa performed with Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall in 1938, bringing swing to the music with his intense drumming, an event described in the "Swing: The Velocity of Celebration" episode of Ken Burns’s Jazz series for PBS. Like Billie Holiday and other jazz musicians, Krupa became the target of an investigation by Harry Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and in 1943 he was arrested in San Francisco for possession of marijuana. 

In the film, Krupa smokes marijuana only at low points in his life, never enjoying it. "You know I don't mess with that stuff anymore," he tells Dorissa later in the movie. "That's what's wrong with you," she replies. Slapping the joint out of her hand, he guzzles a drink. Next thing you know, he's busted, and claims that the reefers were planted on him. The headlines in the film now scream, "Are Jazz Pied Pipers Leading Our Youth to Dope?"

Mineo as Krupa takes a toke

"Sure I've messed with some reefers," Mineo as Krupa admits in the film, but claims it threw his timing off. The evil temptress Dorissa refuses to testify for him (unlike in real life, when Baroness Nica Rothschild took a pot rap for Thelonious Monk). The real-life Krupa said the film would have been better if it told his real story. 

Sal Mineo: A Biography by Michael Gregg Michaud reveals the actor was introduced to marijuana while filming Rebel Without a Cause (1955), when James Dean also smoked, and Mineo grew his own plants in his backyard to save money. Michaud recounts tales of Mineo having philosophical discussions on pot with one friend, and taking mushrooms with another. The Sicilian boy from the Bronx appeared as a Mexican in Giant (1956) and as a Jewish emigrant in Exodus (1960). Later, the openly gay actor used "poppers" and his 1976 murder in West Hollywood may have had a drug connection. 

Anita O'Day, who sang with Krupa's band, has a cameo in the movie. O'Day was arrested for pot possession in 1947, after two undercover policeman came to her home during a party at which Dizzy Gillespie was playing from the branches of a tree in their front yard. One paper wrote, "What appears to be an all-out campaign by local authorities to tag a big name in the music business with a marijuana charge hit a peak with the arrest of Anita O'Day, winner of numerous national magazine polls." O'Day was likely the inspiration for Barbara Stanwick's character Sugarpuss O'Shea in the 1941 film Ball of Fire, in which Krupa appeared. 

Oliver as Vina, "The Green Girl"

Oliver, from all accounts, was a dissident like her character in the Krupa movie. The beautiful and versatile actress made many movie and TV appearances, including playing Vina, who is transformed into a green-skinned Orion slave girl, on TV's Star Trek, making her forever known as "The Green Girl." She also played Hank Williams's wife Audrey in the surprisingly good "Your Cheatin' Heart" with George Hamilton, and appeared with Elizabeth Taylor in her Oscar-winning performance in Butterfield 8. 

Oliver reportedly turned down offers to star in her own TV show so that should could do theater and take a variety of roles, as well as write and direct. "Do you realize that in my 18 years in the business I've never worked with a woman director?" she asks in the documentary "The Green Girl." She directed an episode of TV's M*A*S*H* at a time when "being a female director was like being a woman playing professional football." When she tried to direct an episode of Star Trek, she was told she didn't have any experience in special effects, which some say is a dodge used to deny women opportunities to direct.  

Overcoming a fear of flying, Oliver earned a pilot's license and was only the fourth woman to fly solo on an intercontinental flight, and one of the first women to pilot a Leer jet. 

Yvonne Craig, who became TV's Batgirl, plays another wanton woman in The Gene Krupa Story. She was up for the role of Vina and was also covered in green as an Orion in a later episode of Star Trek. Craig reprised her Batgirl role in this 1974 public service announcement for equal pay for women sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. She also advocated for free mammograms.