Suzy Mandel Interview

I had a chat with Suzy Mandel Sunday. She’s looking for a biographer.

She talks about her life after the Benny Hill show.

After Working with Benny I worked with many of the great comics in England, including Dick Emmery and Marty Feldman and in many films, the list of which goes on and on. Come Play With Me, Confessions of A Driving Instructor, Adventures Of A Plumber’s Mate etc., etc. and many TV shows.

After my first marriage broke up and two bad love affairs ended in disaster I came to the USA to do a film which was later released some years later as Blond Ambition, now a big cult movie. It was X rated, but I had a body double and it was a very good script. I Returned to England to do Play Birds and a few other shows, but then was offered more work in the USA, so I returned and eventually moved here when I got fed up with commuting.

I worked with many of the greats here, too. Tim Conway, Don Knots, Peter Lawford, Garry Owens, Larry Storch, Bernard Fox, Cheech and Chong and again, the list goes on. I was also under contract to Toyota, Nissan and Kawasaki for commercials and appeared on the Love Boat, starred in three TV pilots, one of which was directed by the late John Robbins who also directed many of Benny’s shows. I did many TV shows and films in the USA also.

I then retired from being in front of the camera, became an agent, personal manager, worked in the Music Biz with many big names, became a casting director and later a production coordinator and producer. I worked for Waymar Productions, (Malcolm Marmostine one of my bosses was the writer of Payton Place, Dark Shadows and Return From Witch Mountain) at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and did a film called Dead Men Don’t Die with Elliot Gould and later, The Reluctant Vampire (also known as Love Bites) with Adam Ant (in which you can see me in a small role!).

After that I was involved in many films including True Romance (Quintin Tarentino), which Stanley Margolis, my last husband, was a producer on. He was originally part of Tigon and Classic films who released a lot of my films in England. However I decided to make a change in my life after my Divorce from Stanly and returned to live in England and worked for a Dutch film company, but then returned to the USA to work for yet another film company and then independently.

In 1996 I left Show Biz completely and entered the medical field, which I left for a short time to run an art gallery in Beverly Hills. Alas, it is a long story, but in 2001, while working back in the medical field again, I was involved in a very serious accident and I have been in retirement ever since, but for being a Producer on a News show called Inside Erotica, which is about all things erotic and should be released shortly.

From Wikipedia:

Jacqueline Ann Elaine Jefcoate, better known as Suzy Mandel is an ex-actress and model best known for her roles in 1970’s British sex comedies like Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976), Come Play with Me (1977), The Playbirds (1978) and for her appearances on The Benny Hill Show.

Born March 6th 1953 in London and lived on the Isle of Sheppey and latter in Epping Essex and Then Woodford Essex and Buckhurst Hill Essex. Suzy began her career as a coat model then worked in modeling lingerie winning such prestigious awards as ‘Miss Teenage London’, ‘Miss Benson and Hedges’ and ‘Miss TV Times’ (broadcast on UK television in 14/06/1974 and presented by Hughie Green). Her acting career in British sex comedies began in 1976, and soon brought her to the attention of The Benny Hill Show. She appears in multiple roles in two episodes of the 1977 series (broadcast in the UK 26/01/1977 and 23/03/1977)[1] [2][3] [4]. A firm favorite of both British sex film directors and audiences alike Suzy was soon receiving equal billing to Mary Millington, the UK’s biggest sex symbol of the 1970s. She also had her own comic strip and a racehorse named after her [5].

In Los Angeles in 1981 she married wealthy British film financer Stanley Margolis, who had ties with Tigon British Film Productions the company that released some of Suzy’s best known films, and would later co-produce the 1993 film True Romance. Where Suzy had already been living for some time and working appearing in films like The Private Eyes (1981), Mistress of the Apes as well as a walk-on on TV’s The Love Boat. She also appeared in the hardcore film Blonde Ambition (aka Can I Come Again)which was shot in NY in 1977, released 1980.[6],playing Sugar Cane, one half of a talentless duo of singers who become embroiled in the search for a missing broach. Directed by the eccentric Amero Brothers, the role entailed Suzy to strip while ice-skating, impersonate a drag queen, play the tuba and perform in hardcore scenes- however it should be noted that she used a body double for the latter. Blonde Ambition wasn’t Suzy’s first encounter with hardcore, previously in 1975 she had made a fleeting non-sex appearance in Health Farm[7], a hardcore short directed by John Jesnor Lindsay.

Suzy disappeared from the screen in the mid-eighties, and moved behind the scenes, working on the horror comedy Dead Men Don’t Die (1991) starring Elliot Gould and co-producing Love Bites, starring Adam Ant, in 1993. She and Margolis divorced the following year.