There’s only one Sweaty Betty

Work in Progress

By Ivan Morgan

Okay, it was over 50 years ago so I have added explanations for younger folk to follow along.

In the summer of 1976, a Hollywood production company came to Newfoundland to make a movie called Orca about a killer whale terrorizing a small fishing village. It was a cheesy attempt to cash in on the blockbuster success of Stephen Spielburg’s 1975 movie Jaws. There was no film industry here then, and curious teens like me went out to Petty Harbour, where it was shot, to check it out and see if we could make a few bucks.

For those interested, Orca can be seen for free on YouTube and it has to be – even by Hollywood standards – one of the worst movies ever made. It’s so bad, it’s kind of great.

We heard there were movie stars to see and cash to be earned. There was Richard Harris (then a middling name) Charlotte Rampling (same) Will Samson (fresh from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a big movie back then) and an unknown starlet named Bo Derek.

A few of the lads in Petty Harbour told me about this young woman. They were smitten. Young people have to remember this was 1976. To them she as the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen. “She looks like they do on TV!” one of them exclaimed. I got a few glimpses and yes, she was good looking in a Southern California blonde type of way.

What amazed them was every day she would emerge from her trailer clad in mauve. A mauve sweatsuit, mauve headband, wristband and socks. Mauve sneakers. She would run from Petty Harbour to the Goulds and back. That’s a fair distance, and uphill on the way to the Goulds.

Again, this was the mid-Seventies, and the fitness culture had yet to take hold in Newfoundland, especially outside St. John’s. The lads, mostly fishermen, had never seen the like. They were amazed at her athleticism. And a woman too! (again, this was 1976).

They had a nickname for her: they called her Sweaty Betty.

She had a minor role in the movie. The movie disappeared without a trace.

Three years later, in1979, a blockbuster movie came out – one of the biggest to date – a global sensation. It was a hugely popular film, called 10, a romantic comedy about a man’s obsession with this unbelievably beautiful young woman. A perfect ten. The actress playing her was none other than Bo Derek.

This was an epic film for its time, with the biggest stars, and was an unprecedented box office smash. In a time before social media, the regular media – TV, radio, newspapers – were gaga about the movie, and about Ms. Derek.

I was reminded of all this recently when I watched Ms. Derek, now 70, talk in an interview about the overnight fame she won and its effect on her life and on her acting career. Well- spoken and elegant, she reminisced about that movie. She spoke of her overnight international fame and wealth and described what she called “pretty privilege” which at a young age she was not ready for. Not a word about Orca.

In 1979, no longer a teenager but now a grown-up university student, I remember a bunch of us going to the mall to see 10, starring a young woman I had seen in Petty Harbour years before.

And here’s what I have always loved about Newfoundland. Media around the globe shrieked about the movie, the young actress Bo Derek and the effect she was having on global manhood. People went mad for her. Pundits compared her to Hollywood beauties of the past. Was she the “perfect woman.” There were lakes of ink spilled on her allure. How did she do it? What was her magic? The actress herself was mobbed by a frantic press desperate for any picture, any utterance, anything they could get.

And in the Avalon Mall, in little St. John’s, Newfoundland, a forgotten outpost stuck out in the North Atlantic, a group of men from Petty Harbour went to the mall to see the movie. Looking up at the garish posters they said:

“I minds her. Dat’s Sweaty Betty!”