The Mystery of Jim Plunkett

Jim Plunkett, Heisman Trophy winner, two-time Super Bowl champion, and…actor? Well, if the Internet Movie Data Base (IDMB) is to be believed, the former quarterback has acted in two films: Harlow and The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters. I have no idea who or what the hell The Lemon Grove Kids are but the movie looks to be some low-budget Grade Z piece of crap from the disturbed mind of “Cash Flagg” aka Ray Dennis Steckler, best known for disasters such as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? and Rat Pfink A Boo Boo. But IMDB’s other acting credit for Plunkett is from a real-live legitimate Hollywood movie, Harlow, that, as you might have guessed, was a biopic about 1930’s movie star Jean Harlow. That movie featured one actual movie star, Ginger Rogers, and several other much-travelled actors like Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Bochner, Efrem Zimblast, Jr., and its star Carol Lynley (who was quite the hottie back in her day, certainly hotter than Harlow).


Apparently Harlowmania was as big as Beatlemania in 1965 since Hollywood actually put out TWO different movies that year, both imaginatively named Harlow, about the long-dead screen goddess. Now IMDB credits Plunkett with the role of “Stretch” in the Lemon Grove Kids movie but in Harlow he plays an actual person of note: Stan Laurel. Yeah. Laurel and Hardy. That guy. The one who wasn’t fat. A quick search with ”The Google” reveals that Jean Harlow acted in a 1929 Laurel and Hardy short called Double Whoopee, which was probably not about a menege a trois between Laurel, Hardy, and Harlow. Stan Laurel would have been close to 40 at the time he acted with Jean Harlow. Now when the Harlow crew worked on their movie in 1965, Jim Plunkett was a 17-year-old high school athlete. So, if IMDB is right, the clearly insane producers of Harlow hired a 17-year-old Mexican-American non-actor to play a world famous 40-year-old Englishman. Here’s picture of the young Jim Plunkett:



And here’s one of Stan Laurel:



Wow, they could be twins!

Go figure but I’ve lived this long without ever seeing Harlow (or Harlow for that matter) and I don’t plan to ever see it so I can’t say definitively that two-time Super Bowl champion Jim Plunkett did not play Stan Laurel in that movie. But, I’ve gotta say, the only person less likely to be cast for that part in 1965 was freakin’ Eddie Munster!!! I’d say IMDB probably needs to fix their entry on Jim Plunkett.


Update: Past Interference Gets Results