Director Stanley Kubrick's Attention To Detail Extended To Actors' Nether Regions

Stanley Kubrick's 1971 dystopian sci-fi film "A Clockwork Orange" points out that a modern British society — so devoted to stuffy manners, politeness, and keeping evil out of sight — won't know how to deal with legitimate sociopaths. Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) is a violent little punk who regularly leads his teen gang — the Droogs — into fights, into bars that serve drug-laced milk, and into the locked homes of their victims. Alex beats and assaults people without a scrap of conscience, and sees the world as something to consume, use up, and have sex with. Kubrick toys with the audience a little, presenting Alex as charismatic and funny, even though he's a monster.

When Alex is finally apprehended for his many crimes, the juvenile delinquent is thrown into prison and subjected to a new kind of rehabilitation technique ... involving movies. Alex has his eyes clamped open and he is forced to watch violent movies until he loses his taste for committing real violence. There is certainly a meta-commentary at play; we are watching a violent movie about the horror of violent movies.

Through various plot twists, Alex has the conditioning undone, however. Something about free will and publicity. The final scene of "A Clockwork Orange" is a fantasy sequence of Alex having sex with a pretty young woman in a snow bluff while Britain's high society applauds.

Kubrick, famously a perfectionist who demanded dozens of takes from his actors, also had to pay attention to the nudity in that final scene. The unnamed woman in "A Clockwork Orange" was played by actor/model Katya Wyeth. As reported by Entertainment Weekly in 2012, Kubrick felt he had to alter the color of her pubic hair.

Wyeth made regular appearances throughout the 1970s on British TV and in various films. Fans of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" might recognize her as the pretty nude woman making out with Eric Idle in "Owl-Stretching Time" when he sang "And Did Those Teeth in Ancient Times," or as the woman from "Full-Frontal Nudity" who said "I'm not your grace, I'm your Elsie." Later, she would appear in the vampire film "Twins of Evil" and in Peter Collinson's drama "Straight On Till Morning." She retired in 1977 after appearing in "No. 1 of the Secret Service," a not-very-notable James Bond knockoff.

In "A Clockwork Orange," Wyeth had no lines and was only required to engage in simulated coitus with Malcolm McDowell while the Victorian-era crowd looked on. In the EW article, McDowell remembered talking to Kubrick about Wyeth, clarifying that he was already friends with her as he knew her husband, actor Michael Bangerter. McDowell recalled the day of the shoot and the awkward scene Kubrick made. It seems that, because Wyeth was to appear nude, Kubrick had no compunctions about asking her to disrobe. Wyeth wasn't taken aback, however, and happily stripped.

McDowell remembered Kubrick saying, perhaps grossly, "I thought you were a blonde." Evidently, Kubrick envisioned this "Clockwork Orange" scene as featuring a woman with yellow-blonde pubic hair. This wasn't something that might be noticed in the final cut of the movie, but it seems it was yet another detail that Kubrick was obsessed with. A brave makeup girl (that McDowell didn't name) stepped forward and said she could fix the problem.

Out came the paintbrushes.

So, by McDowell's recollection, a portion of the shooting day was lost to Wyeth getting her pubic hair painted at the last minute. One has to admire the makeup girl who offered to apply the paint, and to Wyeth for being so patient with such an intimate detail. McDowell also recalled that it ultimately didn't work, saying:

"So she fixed it — and it went green! [...] So ... that was a bit of a hold-up for that day." 

Watching the scene again, a viewer doesn't even see what Kubrick wanted. The sequence — nicknamed the Ascot Fantasy sequence — doesn't feature any nude close-ups, plays in slow-motion, and takes place in a pile of snow. It was meant to be surreal and kind of abstract, the version of a perfect world for a sociopath like Alex; having sex while high society cheers your efforts. Why Kubrick needed the woman in that sequence to have blonde pubic hair is not explained. And it doesn't necessarily seem like it was lascivious on Kubrick's part; it was merely an aesthetic flourish he would have preferred. Luckily, Wyeth was game.

Wyeth, in addition to her credits above, also hosted a game show called "The Sky's the Limit" and appeared in episodes of "The Sweeney," "The Avengers," and "Space: 1999" (the sci-fi series that led to the Millennium Falcon being redesigned for "Star Wars"). She was typically hired for her looks, often playing "pretty girl" roles (her credits include "Miss Budapest" and "1st Pub Whore"). After retiring, Wyeth stayed out of the public eye. She is now 73 and presumably living happily at home.