(This page is proof that you can, indeed, find anything on the World Wide Web.)
When I was 13 years old, I was in love with Joey Heatherton, the dancer/actress who was one of the Golddiggers on the Dean Martin Show, and who was married to Lance Rentzel, a wide receiver for my favorite football team, the Dallas Cowboys.
What Greg Brady has to say about Joey
Joey News: Playboy Pictorial in April
Joey was born in Rockville Center, NY, September 14, 1944. Her given name was Davenie Johanna Heatherton and her father, Ray, was the Merry Mailman on a kids show from New York. Joey became a dancer/singer/actress in the 1960s. In 1969, she married Lance Rentzel, a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. For a year or two they were football's glamour couple, appearing in magazines and even on game shows. But the fairy tale life turned grim when Lance was arrested for exposing himself to a 10-year old girl. Joey tried to hang in there with Lance through the troubles, but the marriage couldn't last and they soon split up. (Lance wrote a book about this period of his and Joey's lives called When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow.) Joey had some success in the '70s, but her career never really got back on track after her broken marriage. In the 1980s, she had troubles with substance abuse, another bad relationship and even the law. I don't know what has become of her, except that she did make a movie in 1990, which makes me hopeful that she has pulled her life together.
Note: the titles that start with a quote (") are TV series
Football pose from 1970
This excerpt is from Barry Williams' book "Growing Up Brady: I Was A Teenage Greg." HarperPerennial, 1992, pages 23 & 24.
I had landed a job on a two-part episode of Robert Wagner's show "It Takes a Thief," playing a world-class-genius kid--typecasting? My character was working on a complex and sophisticated mathematical formula with enormous military potential; and, of course, a horde of bad guys with affected accents were out to waste me. Rober Wagner's assignment was to save me from the evil foreigners and reunite me with with my sister--Joey Heatherton. Before I go any further, please know that when you're twelve, it's not easy working with a white-hot, vaguely slutty-looking sex goddess. At twelve, even the wallpaper can make you horny, so you can imagine how my raging adolescent hormones and overactive imagination consipered to make my blood pressure rise whenever I got near her...
...the best part of the entire shoot was the final scene. Sitting in a golf cart and driving away into the sunset with Joey Heatherton's arm around my shoulders, I was in heaven. By the way, if you ever happen to bump into this particular episode..., look closely at this final shot. You'll notice that as Joey and I drive away, I'm smiling warmly, sighing a contented sigh... and desperately trying to look down her blouse.
This is from the March issue of Playboy magazine: An announcement that Joey will be featured in a pictorial in the April issue.
We've also had reports that Joey has showed up in Calvin Klein ads.
Send me e-mail: zeoli@champlain.edu
