The Three-Minute Rule

One memory here leads to another. I was writing here the other day about a "crush" I had back around '71 on the actress Paula Prentiss…

I was hardly alone in this and hadn't been since certain of my friends discovered that the cute lady on He and She (a sitcom in desperate need of a DVD release) was undraped in Playboy. In 1970, she appeared with clothing off in the movie version of Catch-22 and the following conversation occurred in a group that included me and some male friends…

"Hey, that movie they made of that book — you know, Catch-22 — opens on Wednesday. We have to go see it."

"Oh, I hated that book. All that war crap and the story jumping around every which way…"

"The movie has Alan Arkin in it. And Bob Newhart and Orson Welles and Jack Gilford…"

"A team of wild horses couldn't drag me into that theater…"

"And Paula Prentiss is in it and I've heard she's naked…"

"What time is the first show?"

"Do you think we oughta go get in line now?"

I remember the conversation but I don't remember who said what. Any of those remarks could have come from any of us, even the friend whose current marriage is not recognized in Southern states. We all hated the book but not nearly as much as we liked the thought of Paula Prentiss ungarmented. About six of us went to the very first screening on the very first day at the National Theater in Westwood.

Ms. Prentiss removes her duds for about thirty seconds about ten minutes into the movie. It would be tacky of me to provide a link to view those sacred moments so for those of you who don't have the twenty seconds it would take to find those thirty seconds via Google, let's just say they did not disappoint. The rest of the film actually was pretty decent but, you know, it's not like they were going to top those thirty seconds.

So the film ended…and none of us left the theater. We all just sat there with the same idea, waiting for one of the other guys to suggest it. Finally, someone (not me) said it out loud: "Hey, let's stay for the next showing and see the first ten minutes again." This was back before home video, back before the Internet, back when no one had heard the term "frame grab." At that moment, we couldn't conceive of any way to ever see those thirty seconds again after we exited except to buy another ticket to see this movie…which would soon disappear from theaters, presumably forever. I mean, they might show Catch-22 on TV some day we figured…but probably not with those thirty seconds.

We decided by unanimous vote to stay for a second look. Then one of us (again, not me) said it would look wrong to sit there, wait until Paula Prentiss got naked again and then get up and walk out. Everyone else in the theater would say, "Wow, look at those horny guys…sitting through the first part of the movie again just to see the nude scene." Which is, of course, exactly what we were planning to do but we were somehow embarrassed to make it so obvious.

Finally, one of us (might have been me) said, "Here's what we'll do. We'll stay and then we'll wait three minutes after Paula's big scene before we leave. Then it won't be so obvious what we're doing." Everyone concurred. Three minutes.

Before long, the next showing began. Before long, Ms. Prentiss was naked again. After the last shot of her like that, we all looked at our watches. Precisely three minutes later, we all got up to leave…

…and so did about forty other males in the theater. We all had the same idea…including the three minutes.

I finally met Paula Prentiss in 2005 at the Memorial Service for her He and She co-star, Hamilton Camp. Despite the fact that at that moment she was 67 years old, mourning the loss of a dear friend and standing right next to her husband of 44 years, I still for about two seconds considered asking her to run off with me. Fortunately, the woman in my life then and now is even cuter so I kept my tongue and as much of my dignity as I ever have.

I can however report that she was quite charming and quite lovely and she did laugh (and "get it") when I told her that I sat through Catch-22 one and one-seventh times.