Gee, but the 1960s seem like a really long time ago.  Some…many…of our readers were probably not even born then, but it was, by everyone’s account, an amazing decade.  Movie stars were MOVIE STARS, bigger than life and still held shakily aloft on pedestals shored up by a more discreet press and slightly more genteel public celebrity behavior.  But you can’t change human nature, and when married Elizabeth Taylor, wed to Eddie Fisher, met and fell in crazy love with Richard Burton, married to Sybil Williams, it was the scandal of the decade.  Sybil, an actress, had two children with Burton, but picked up her life after the well-publicized break-up with Burton and went on to become a major figure in the discotheque culture of New York of the ’60s, and got herself a boyfriend along the way, singer-actor Jordan Christopher.

Jordan Christopher was born Jordan Zankoff, in Youngstown, Ohio, on October 23, 1942.  He was of Armenian extraction; his mother and father owned a tavern in Akron, but it wasn’t long before Jordan set off to make his fortune in the really big city.  He had aspirations as a musician and actor, but in 1960s New York City the handsome young man also made a reputation for himself as a popular hairdresser, a whiz with all the up-and-coming mod styles that were de rigueur with the young celebrity crowd.  Jordan and a quartet of musical friends formed a band named The Wild Ones, and they were good enough to get a gig as the house band at a club called The Peppermint Lounge. 

It was around this time that Sybil Burton was making history as the proprietor of newly-opened discotheque Arthur, at the site of the old El Morocco nightclub.  The Wild Ones were hired away to be the house band.  Sybil financed her new venture by selling shares to friends at a $1,000 apiece, and she had a unique vision for Arthur:  it would cater to the young, hip working men and women of New York, the models, and fashion people, and hairdressers, and show biz types, and everybody else who would soon make Arthur a sensation.  The combination of Sybil’s innate charm and perfect reading of the social climate, and a crowd that was hungry for a new place to party, turned Arthur into an overnight success.  Politicians, actors and actresses, Broadway stars, Rudolph Nureyev, Truman Capote, Sophie Tucker, Leonard Bernstein and everybody who was anybody tried to get in to the hottest place in town, and she earned her investment back in less than a year.  Arthur also was instrumental in the development of the club DJ as artist; Arthur’s DJ would fill in when The Wild Ones took a break, and he (Terry Noel) became so good at reading the crowd’s mood and building excitement on the dance floor that eventually the live band was out of a job. 

Well, most of the band was out of a job.  Not Jordan Christopher, who had caught the eye of Sybil and eventually the two were married, with a bit of scandal attached:  Sybil was more than a decade older than the 25-year-old Jordan.  But it was a love match, and the pair worked together at Arthur during the club’s glory years.  Before The Wild Ones were out at Arthur, they recorded an album “The Arthur Sound – Recorded Live at Arthur”, which actually turned out to have been recorded in a studio with a bunch of people brought in to chatter and simulate a discoteque crowd.  But such was the excitement generated by New York’s most popular disco, a mid-1960s phenom that spawned several franchises across the U.S. — Los Angeles, Detroit, Dallas and San Francisco — and stayed as a media darling until the late 1960s when things started to go a little sour.  An unfortunate racially-charged incident at the original NYC location and then a shooting convinced Sybil it was time to sell and move on in 1969.

Meanwhile, Jordan Christopher had made a name for himself, both as Mr. Ex-Richard Burton and in his own right as a handsome and talented entertainer.  In addition to releasing at least one popular solo album, Christopher also caught Hollywood’s eye.  He — along with his band — made his screen debut in 1966’s The Fat Spy, starring rotund comedian Jack E. Leonard, Jayne Mansfield, Phyllis Diller and Brian Donlevy.  It was a cheapie secret agent/beach party comedy, obviously not an A-level production, but Christopher impressed enough to be given another role that same year in Return of the Seven, the sequel to The Magnificent Seven, starring Yul Brynner.   He did some television, another movie called The Tree in 1969, and then came the movie which put him at the intersection of classic Hollywood and completely psychedelic. 

American International’s Angel, Angel, Down We Go, starring Hollywood legend Jennifer Jones, featured Christopher as Bogart Peter Stuyvesant, a charismatic rock star ala Jim Morrison who makes a play for both the breathtakingly wealthy character played by Jones, as well as her plump and awkward daughter, played by Holly Near.  (Near is today a highly respected singer and social activist.)  Written and directed by Robert Thom (The Subterraneans, The Legend of Lylah Clare, Wild in the Streets), AADWG, also starring Roddy McDowall, Lou Rawls, and Charles Aidman, was not the hit that Thom’s Wild in the Streets had been, and it was re-released a couple of years later under the title Cult of the Damned.   It’s garnered a bit of a reputation over the years, as much for the presence of Jennifer Jones in such an un-Jennifer Jones-type movie, as for its extremely kooky and over-the-top glimpse into a world of excess that probably never was. 

To understand what a definitive portrait of the times it was, here are the trailers to both Angel, Angel, Down We Go and the re-release version Cult of the Damned, as well as the complete title song performed by Jordan Christopher in the film. 

Jordan Christopher went onto make other appearances, including roles in Star 80 and Brainstorm, and he and Sybil remained happily married until Christopher’s death in 1996.  He was stepfather to Sybil’s children with Burton, including actress Kate Burton, and he and Sybil had one daughter together.  He found himself caught up in the crazy fame surrounding Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and all the hubbub it generated, and while not perhaps a household name to everyone, Jordan Christopher was a charming and talented young man with much promise who bore his fame well and probably gave up some of himself to make it through.  We remember him on the anniversary of his birth. 

(Interesting photos and movie items from Angel, Angel, Down We Go and many other films can be found on Ebay; check out the site and purchase them for yourself!).