Who were the “Prehistoric Women” who made cinematic history with just 17 days of footage shot mainly on a studio sound stage?
Kerry Vaughn - Tulle
She shows up in July of 1944 “fully formed” in a studio-generated publicity photo as the “first contestant” to enter producer Walter Wanger’s contest to find the “most beautiful girl in America.”
The film he was promoting was Salome, Where She Danced and she appeared to be the “bait” … the ante to the promotional pot that ended up generating some 20,000 entries. Her pin up photo ran nationwide (AP wire) in newspaper after newspaper during the entire month of July.
When the contest was over, surprise, Kerry Vaughn is one of the “contestant winners” and is cast as one of “Salome’s girls,” with Yvonne De Carlo in the title role.
While Universal struggled with re-writes to the Salome, Where She Danced script over Production Code “violations” during the summer of 1944, Kerry Vaughn shows up once again in the press as an entrant in the Miss America contest to represent California … she was being supported by the Coast Guard as “Miss Minter Field.” Shirley Ballard, who was the 1942 National Junior Singles Bowling Champion, punched her ticket to Atlantic City and Vaughn went back to her movie career.
Both 1945 and 1946 are a repeat, lots cheesecake publicity photos and uncredited bit parts in such films as Shady Lady, Frontier Gal, Scarlet Street, Summer Night and Night in Paradise.
And then in 1947 and 1948 she vanishes … by some accounts she got married to actor Peter Coe. In March of 1949, Edith Gwynn’s syndicated “In Hollywood” column has this tidbit: “Kerry Vaughn, the blonde Texas beooty(sic), who dropped her career when she married Peter Coe a few years ago, is resuming and movie testing at 20th Century-Fox.”
On Wednesday, April 26, 1950, the Los Angeles Times reports, “Jo Carroll Dennison and Kerry Vaughn have been signed by Producer Albert J. Cohen for ‘Prehistoric Women,’ Gregg Tallas will direct.” This is the day before the film began shooting at the General Service Studios in Hollywood.
Then we get this, according to Charles Culbertson, Tony Fontane’s biographer and author of “A Bargain with God: The Tony Fontane Story,” recording artist Tony Fontane married Kerry Vaughn on May 2, 1950. What’s odd about this date is that it is right in the middle of the 17-day shooting schedule of Prehistoric Women.
In short order, Fontane has the hit single “Cold, Cold Heart” for Mercury Records in 1951, the couple have a daughter, Kerry Char-ae Fontane, who was born on Jan. 12, 1952 and in 1954 he signs for the Australian-produced musical production “Zip Goes a Million” and the family heads down to Sydney, Australia in March of 1954.
It is there that Fontane does an extensive interview for The Sun-Herald newspaper in Sydney where he says, “I met Kerry when she was a guest artist on one of my T.V. shows.” This would have been “The Tony Fontane Show” in Chicago.
He continues, “I flew down to Cleveland to take her out and in two weeks I flew to seven different towns just to see her … We were married four months later.”
Things are wonderful for Fontane: a happy marriage, a beautiful young daughter and a terrific recording career. He had just wrapped a rehearsal session at NBC and was headed home on the afternoon of Sept. 3, 1957, when he was blindsided by another car. One of those who happened upon the accident scene reached in the driver’s side window of his totaled car and felt for his pulse, couldn’t find one and declared him dead. The passerby was wrong. It took the Los Angeles Fire Department rescue team over two hours to remove Fontane from the twisted wreckage.
The first of these was with Kerry, at his bedside, she prays to God for his forgiveness, asks for her husband to return to her and promises to give her life to Jesus Christ. The second event is when Tony awakes from the coma and starts on his road to recovery, he says that he had a vision from God that he was going to have a second chance at life.
He gave up his pop music career, which generated a lawsuit from the William Morris Agency, who represented him with Mercury Records. Between the medical bills and the legal issues, Tony Fontane was essentially bankrupt.
Tony and Kerry Fontane then embarked on a new joint-career journey. He devoted himself to Gospel music, with her constantly at his side. At first it was a struggle, but by the early 1960s he was well-established in the field. His venues were no long nightclubs and concert halls, but churches. He died June 30, 1974, at the age of 47 from cancer.
On Nov. 26, 1996, Kerry Vaughn Fontane died in Nashville. The stone-age Tulle was gone.
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