She looked like Jean Harlow, people said. Almost too much like Marilyn. But she had It -- that all-important intangible, and that was good enough for them. She didn't need formal education -- she was going to be a movie star, after all -- and so she dropped out of Los Angeles High School. She won local beauty contests, taking titles once held by another blond named Norma Jean, and then she met Howard Hughes. Mamie will not discuss their relationship, except to say that he was 40 and she was 16, and how, really, was a girl that age supposed to deal with Howard Hughes, especially when he asked, during their very first meeting, if she was a virgin.

She will talk about the others, though -- the ones she had after she got contracts at Universal and MGM; the ones who met her after Eisenhower was inaugurated for his first presidential term and suggested she take the first name of Ike's wife; the ones who understood what the actresses of the day had to go through to get off the casting couch and onto a movie set. The sexual mores of that era meant -- and still mean -- nothing to Van Doren. She would not sleep with a man just to get a job; neither would she turn him down if he happened to turn her on. She even carried condoms with her everywhere she went; the men would stare incredulously when she pulled them out of her bag.

"I have had more of a sex life than a love life," Van Doren admits, sounding damn proud. "Love was secondary to me."

She did not love Tom Jones, for example. Hell, she didn't even like having sex with him. She went to see one of his concerts -- it was during his "What's New Pussycat?" phase, if she recalls correctly -- and afterward they ended up in his room. He told her he'd seen her pictorial in Playboy, and he told her, nervously, that he couldn't believe he was going to sleep with her. This, from the guy she thought followed his dick every time he strutted across a stage.

"He must have socks stuffed down there," Van Doren insists, "because his penis is very, very small."

Burt Reynolds was even worse, Van Doren says. Not that there was no there there, but what was there didn't last very long. One champagne-skewed night, as they were just a minute into "the pony ride," as she puts it, Reynolds gasped the name "Judy" and then promptly began to snore.

Warren Beatty didn't have Tom Jones' problem either. In fact, Van Doren says, even she -- a proponent of the size-does-matter theory -- grew timorous when he unzipped his pants. "He's got a big salami in there," Van Doren recalls, serious. "I mean, goddamn. I looked at him and knew it was something you would fondle, but you just didn't want it in you. It was too large for me -- though it's probably large and soft by now."

Then who was good? Certainly not Jack Webb, star of the cult classic '50s and '60s TV show "Dragnet." One night, Universal Studios set them up on a date. Webb fed her dinner and a rather potent Mickey. The next thing Van Doren knew, she was tied spread-eagle on a bed and "Sergeant Joe Friday was humping me with a wild look in his eyes."

Football great Joe Namath was just OK. She dated him in '65 and '66 and claims he was well built but, frankly, not that interested in her. "Not a good lover," Mamie asserts, "but a good lay."

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