The Celebrity Olympics: Part IX

Battle of the Network Stars IX

December 5th, 1980

When I began this series, I thought I'd breeze through the episodes from beginning to end quickly and easily.  The best laid plans...  It's taken longer than I planned, especially ensuring the shots I feature are from the episode I'm spotlighting.  I know I've made some mistakes, especially with actors like Gregory Harrison, who wore his tight speedos in multiple battles.  Although the bathing suit bulge is my focus, sometimes I can only identify the exact battle by the color of the speedo who else in the photo.

Every time I begin researching a new episode of the celebrity competition series, I get a little overwhelmed.  There were quite a few episodes, and I wonder if it's worth the effort to feature them all.  Then, I start collecting images of hot hunks from the time in their speedos, and I get re-energized to finish off the series.  

Now that we're finishing 1980, we're on the home stretch.  I don't mean we're near the end, but I was really struggling with some of the episodes from the 1970's with so many celebrities I'd never heard of before.  Most of the speedo wearing stars in this installment, I'd at least heard of.  There were only a few male contestants, (Robert Walden, Byron Allen and Arte Johnson) I had to look up.  I knew who most of the female celebrities were, (except Phyllis Davis) and was surprised to see actress Diane Ladd on one of the teams.  I'm not sure I knew that Ladd had a short stint on the sit-com Alice at the time.

So, onto more studs in speedos and a surprisingly hot strip by Tom Selleck when he's chosen to take his place in the dunk tank.  Check out more on the NEXT PAGE HERE: