1. The Tarnished Gold of the Amazon Women: Anita Ekberg on Trinidad
- Author:
- Jonathan Rickert
- Publication Date:
- 11-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Visits to Trinidad by international celebrities, even relatively minor ones, were few and far between during our years at Embassy Port of Spain (1977-1980). We did not get to host even a single Congressional delegation. Though we never saw him, we heard that Mick Jagger came there at least a couple of times to take part in the annual Carnival festivities and that famed British portrait and fashion photographer Norman Parkinson liked to visit. If there were others of note, I didn’t know about them or no longer recall them. So, it was a pleasant surprise when we heard toward the end of our tour that on-location portions of an American film were to be shot on the island. Titled “Gold of the Amazon Women,” the made-for-TV opus featured Swedish actress Anita Ekberg, Donald Pleasence, Bo Svenson, and a bevy of starlets, models, and others to play the Amazon women. The presence of the actors and film crew caused quite a stir among the local diplomatic corps and expat community. Although our ambassador had the opportunity to meet with the movie folks, the rest of the embassy staff, much to their disappointment, had no such possibility. We were, therefore, particularly pleased to learn that we would be allowed to watch some of the filming taking place at Chaguaramas, a disused and by then somewhat overgrown former US naval facility near Port of Spain that had been turned over to the Trinidadians in 1963. The tropical vegetation there apparently made it a suitable location for the movie’s “jungle” scenes.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago