Cool Hand Luke's Lucille Was Ready To Quit The 60s Film After An Appalling Request
In Stuart Rosenberg's 1967 prison film "Cool Hand Luke," Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) is thrown into a Florida penitentiary in the early 1950s for drunkenly cutting the heads off of parking meters. He is sentenced to two years hard labor working on a chain gang, and soon learns that the Floridian penal system is bleak and aggressive. The warden (Morgan Woodward) attempts to use modern, sensitive language to deal with the prisoners ("What we have here is failure to communicate"), but it's a gross juxtaposition given how cruel he is; the warden will give miscreants "a night in the box," a small wooden shack, as punishment for the smallest slights.
Partway through the movie, Luke and his fellow prisoners are taken out to a field next to a remote country home. The prisoners haven't seen a woman for a long time — some of them in years — so when a pretty young blonde woman exits the house, they are all instantly distracted. The woman, called "Lucille" in the film's credits, is played by actress Joy Harmon. Harmon has no dialogue and spends her entire time on screen washing a car. She gets wet and sudsy and the watching inmates all begin to moan lasciviously. The scene is played for laughs, the audience giggling at the men's sexual frustration.
Harmon's sexy car-washing is straight out of an exploitation movie, and the cinematographer, Conrad Hall, shoots Harmon in an ogling, prurient fashion. The scene may have been played for laughs, but it still required a thudding element of performative sexuality presented for the male gaze. Harmon spoke to EW in 2017 about her role in "Cool Hand Luke," and she recalled some pretty gross requests from the filmmakers. Notably, they asked her to get high before shooting.
Lucille in Cool Hand Luke
One might recognize Harmon for her roles in Bert I. Gordon's 1965 outsize-J.D. flick "Village of the Giants," or perhaps from her supporting turns in hit TV shows like "Batman" and "The Monkees." She also co-hosted the Groucho Marx talk show "Tell It To Groucho" back in 1961 and appeared on "Gidget," "Bewitched," "My Three Sons," and "The Beverly Hillbillies." Her career isn't vast, but it is impressive. Harmon retired from acting in 1973 and eventually opened her own bakery called Aunt Joy's Cakes in Burbank, California.
In speaking to EW, Harmon revealed some gross memories from the set of "Cool Hand Luke." Her scene was to be shot in Stockton, California, a town about five-and-a-half miles north of Los Angeles and 90 minutes east of San Francisco. When she arrived, the filmmakers clearly wanted her to be as "uninhibited" as possible. It sounds as if they expected Harmon to strip for the camera, but figured they could coerce her rather than merely ask. They suggested she smoke some marijuana to get in the mood. Harmon was incensed. She said:
"I don't do that; I never have done that. [...] I was so upset, and I called my dad and he said, 'You just come on home. Don't do the movie.' I told Mr. Rosenberg I was going home and then they came to the room, and he brought me flowers and chocolate. He said, 'Don't worry about it. We're not doing marijuana; you don't need it.' And it worked out fine."
Harmon understood she was being hired for a "cheesecake" scene, as her audition involved a bikini and no dialogue, but being asked to smoke weed was, well, one toke over the line.
A substitute cheerleader was used for a scene in Cool Hand Luke
According to Turner Classic Movies, Harmon's scene didn't quite go as planned. Rosenberg, wanting to capture real male sexual frustration, notoriously banned the cast members' girlfriends and wives from the set for several weeks in preparation. Harmon was brought to her room two weeks in advance, and the male cast members were told she was nearby, but that no one was allowed to see her. The shoot was only supposed to take half a day, but ultimately took three days to film.
Also, due to unforeseen circumstances, Harmon's car washing scene and the shots of the moaning prisoners had to be filmed separately, so Rosenberg's plan failed. Still wanting the men to be titillated, however, Rosenberg hired a cheerleader in an overcoat. The identity of the cheerleader is not known.
Be sure to watch Sara Bravo's and Molly Ingstad's short 2013 documentary "From Cheesecake to Cheesecake: The Joy Harmon Story," wherein Harmon tells the above story and several other amusing anecdotes about her 17 years in Hollywood, as well as how she moved into the baking business. Harmon doesn't resent her time on the set of "Cool Hand Luke," and was proud that she stood up for herself. Rosenberg was effectively humbled and, as Harmon said herself, the scene turned out fine without drugs.
Harmon, now 84, is still baking.