new haven | The Timothy Carey Experience

Today’s pic captures the hot-headed Cajun Ulysses, the most colorful denizen of Harold Daniels‘ swamp melodrama Bayou (1957), as he goes into his infamous dance. This screen cap catches the beginning of that amazing moment when he unbuttons and strips off his shirt while simultaneously twirling a distressed Marie (Lita Milan) around by her hair.

Timothy enjoyed doing the dance during publicity tours for the film. “In New Haven, they put me on the stage to help whip up some interest in Bayou. They hollered when I did the dance,” he told columnist George Murray in 1958. Murray continued, “Carey admits the picture’s producers censored parts of his dance. He says modestly: ‘It out-Elvises Elvis.'”

Tim Carey, 27

Not at All Shy.

His Publicity man said of Tim Carey: “He needs a press agent like he needs a hole in the head. He’s his own best advance man.”

Carey, an unsophisticated 27, is at the Ambassador East to beat the drums for Bayou opening tonight in the Monroe Theater.

Carey is an actor—off as well as on. He’ll tell you: “We were shooting this picture in New Orleans. I told the cabby I had to learn to dance real wild. He took me to the French Quarter.”

It was there, Carey says, that a girl named Lilly Christine at “The 500 Club” did a special dance. They billed her as “The Cat Girl.”

Carey watched her every night for a week. Later, he recalls:

“In New Haven, they put me on the stage to help whip up some interest in Bayou. They hollered when I did the dance.”

Carey admits the picture’s producers censored parts of his dance. He says modestly: “It out-Elvises Elvis.”

– George Murray, “Loop Movies,” Chicago Daily News, January 15, 1958