In the 60s PI classic, Harper, Shelley Winters (then at her most Rubenesque) plays Fay Estabrook a once gorgeous movie starlet whose days as an onscreen sex symbol are far behind her.
Unhappily married to a sadistic gangster and the mistress/plaything of a "kinky" millionaire, Fay is now an emotionally vulnerable alcoholic who is reduced to working as an astrologer and interior decorator. She's obviously fairly good at her job as we later see the stunning atrologically themed hotel room she designed for Ralph Samson, the kidnapped man who the titular PI is trying to track down. While Fay has indeed piled on the pounds since she lit up the silver screen, she still looks very, very sexy for a woman of her age. Ralph Samson the aging playboy Fay calls her "oldest friend" certainly thought so. He gave the busty beauty's picture pride of place on his bedside table and her over-ripe body pride of place in his bed. Having found out the bar where his quarry hangs out, Harper heads over in the hope of pumping her for information. He arrives just in time to see Fay’s absusive husband Troy dismissively throw a few bills on the table and storm out leaving the former movie goddess to fend for herself in a bar full of randy drunks and lonely businessmen, With her considerable curves packed into a toothpaste-tight shiny black and white silk dress whose daringly low-cut front show off her ginormous boobs to maximum effect, the vulnerable-loooking hottie is unlikely to be lonely for long. Seizing his chance, Harper makes his move. Although initially immune to Harper's smarmy charms, Fay's resolve quickly unravels. Blissfully unaware that her new "admirer" is only interested in what she might let slip about her rich boyfriend she happily gulps down every drink he buys her, Having told Harper very little, poor Fay eventually passes out, Taking her home, Harper unceremonoiusly dumps her unconscious body onto the sofa in her living room. Gi.ving his helpless quarry's black and white sheathed body a scornful look, he sneaks off to search her bedroom.The last we see of the lovely if rather pathetic evil babe is towards the end of the movie. Looking drop-dead gorgeous in a tight leopardskin top, leather pencil skirt and matching arm length kid gloves, poor Fay is forced into a closet at gunpoint and left to await her arrest.
FAY'S STORY (FULL)
When down-at-heel PI Lewis Harper is asked to investigate the disappearance of millionaire Ralph Sampson by his long-suffering wife, the first place he looks is Sampson’s astrologically-themed hotel room at Los Angeles’ Bel Air hotel. By Sampson’s bed, he finds a framed black and white publicity shot of a one-time movie starlet called Fay Estabrook. When he asks Sampson’s pilot what happened to Fay the man cruelly sniggers "She got fat”.
H eventually tracks Fay down to a supper club where she has just been publicly humiliated and dumped in a bar full of predatory males by her sadistic gangster husband Troy. While poor Fay has indeed piled on a few pounds, it is obvious she knows how to make the most of her physical attributes. The expensive-looking designer outfit she's chosen tonight consists of a skintight black and white silk dress whose plunging decotellage is straining to hold back her ginormous jugs and topped off by a black and white jeweled choker and a black silk bow which sits front and centre of her platinum blonde bob-cut.
Having sized up the fact that Fay is consoling herself with a few drinks and aware that she is unlikely to lack company for very long, Harper moves in and pretends to be a fan. Although dubious at first, the ex-siren of the silver screen is so starved of affection, she's soon eating out of Harper’s hand. Eager to find out what he can about her relationship with Sampson, the PI cruelly exploits his quarry's alcoholism by pouring drink after drink down her throat and lie after lie into her ear. “Yeah, I am classy. Not everybody notices," Fay says wistfully when Harper pays her an insincere compliment. Sadly, she is initially too smitten and later too far gone to notice the lengths Harper goes to to dodge her clumsy attempts at kissing him.
Realizing the bow in her hair has started to list following a particularly energetic if rather graceless bout of frugging on the dance floor, Happier than she's been in what seems like years, F is determined to get herself looking as good as she feels and repairs to the Gals Room. Humming tunelessly, she finishes touching up her slap. Checking everything is just so in her compact, she snaps it shut and heads back out into the bar and her new beau's arms and - fingers crossed - bed. Oh, no,. Fay's spent so long over her make over, the party's moved on,
"Where've all the merrymakers gone?" she wails. Harper tells her not to worry as it's time to take her home! Eager for the night not to end just quite yet, Fay reassures him with a cosquettish looks and a promise-laden "Oh, don't try to rush me! Let's have another lil drinkie! ' When Harper tells her that she's too classy for a place like this. Fay struggles to remember the last time a man paid her such a compliment "Yeah, I am classy!", she says in a sad wistful voice. "Not everybody notices."
Too besotted or too sozzled to register the contemptuous looks H keeps giving her as the night goes on, Fay delightedly accepts when H proposes taking her to the Bel Aire Hotel. Barely have they sat down when Harper starts quizzing her about Sampson. Despite being three sheets to the wind and having mistaken Harper’s probing for jealousy (“What is it with me that men all the time want to possess me!”), Fay gives very little away. Obviously over the moon that she has still proved so attractive for such a handsome young stud, she tells her new admirer that there is nothing to worry. Ralph she says tellingly is her "oldest friend", albeit one with “not a nice man with a very kinky personality”
Seeing Sampson’s daughter at the entrance to the bar, Harper makes an excuse and leaves the banquette. Thinking that’s she’s been dumped for a second time, Fay is left to console herself by polishing off another mini-bottle of champagne. While she is doing so, Harper is telling his client that Fay isn’t a date, “she’s a hard night’s work.”
When he returns to the lounge, Fay is drunkenly trying to lead the band in a tin-eared rendition of La Cucaracha. Sensing that his victim is too pissed to stand, H deftly dodges her latest attempt at a kiss and she collapses into a banquette.
When Harper gets Fay home he unceremoniously dumps her semi-conscious body onto the sofa. Her pretty, if overmade up eyes full of confusion, the poor deluded woman still thinks Harper wants to make love to her. “Don’t try anything tonight, dumpling,” she says in a small, scared voice, “some other time, any other ti….”
Soon Fay is dead to the world and sawing logs. Pausing only to compare a framed portrait of the former pin-up in her prime against the dumpy drunken wreck beneath it, H goes into her bedroom to search her things.
Before he can get out of the house, Harper is confronted by Troy who promptly pulls a gun on him and asks him what he thinks he is doing. When he explains that he was Miss Estabrook’s escort for the evening, Troy rather ungallantly remarks “what do you want with an old bag of worms like her?”.
Scoffing at Harper’s easy lie that Fay is in fact “the sexiest thing he ever done seen”, Troy calls his bluff. “Sport, if you want her, you can have her”. When Harper declines to do so, Troy gives his once stunning wife's prone body a contemptuous look and says “she never could handle her liquor”
The second and last time we see Fay she is with Troy in the house of another kidnapper called Betty Fraley. While the plainly terrified Fay is begging Betty to tell Troy all she knows, Harper bursts in and shoots Troy dead.
When Harper hears Fay wail that “you’ve killed him in cold blood”, he says “and if you don’t shut up your yapping, I’ll kill you, too!”
Desperately scuttling up the wall, her ginormous jugs hyperventilating inside the too-tight leopardskin top and black leather pencil skirt in which are struggling to contain her generous curves, Fay begs for her life. “I’ll give you anything, everything I own,” she pleads.
A sour look on his face, Harper looks the one-time starlet up and down, cruelly remarking “rich choice, I’ll take your shoes”.
All Fay can manage by return is a breathy ‘What?” of confusion before she finds herself bundled into, and locked inside, a flimsy looking closet. As Harper and Betty leave the house, Betty remarks, “Fay’ll get out”.
Sexy leatherclad Lady Storm epic struggle against G.I. Ho (better quality)-0
“A fat barefoot alcoholic? Sure she will” is all Harper says as Fay continues frantically rattling the closet door in a futile attempt to escape before the police come to arrest her.
TRIVIA
In the original shooting script, Fay managed to escape from the closet and the last time we see the "fat, barefoot alcoholic" she is struggling up a rocky slope in the faint hope of evading arrest.
Shelley W was so fond of her wardrobe for Harper she recycled it in several other movies. Most notably Patch of Blue (the sexy low cut black and white silk dress) and WIld in the Street (her sexy choker).
A few years later, Shelley donned a sexy head-to-toe leather outfit while playing the fiery, red-headed lesbian gang leader, Mommy, in the first Cleopatra Jones movie. Her OTT performance ended with CJ's literally throwning SW over the top of a crane gantry and to her death far below.
Fay Estabrook 1 - strangely sexy Czech lady dub
Fay Estabrook 2 more strangely sexy Czech dubbing