Why the multiple dates? This film site gives an extremely detailed summary of this film, including this explanation for the multiple dates: “Adrift was one of the last, if not the last, Czechoslovak New Wave films before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Filming was actually interrupted by the invasion, with a military bridge being temporarily erected at the filming site on the banks of the Danube River.” (Filming resumed after the fighting quieted down.)
I don’t recall ever having heard of this Slovak film before today, but it has some righteous nudity, and this clip of Paula Pritchett is well worth a look.
Samples:
Hef and his crew published some outtakes and on-set photos from this film in the December, 1970 issue
Paula is an American. She doesn’t have a long film resume, having appeared in only three films including this one. In 1972 she scored a role in a Robert Mitchum film, which seems to indicate that she was making some inroads into the Hollywood scene.
In July of 1972, the Hefmag published a topless outtake of her in that film, The Wrath of God.
The angle used in the actual film is much more modest.
For reasons unknown to me, her film resume ends there. There must be an interesting story to explain how the career of such a beautiful woman went totally dry after a role in a major film. It’s impossible to evaluate her acting since I don’t think she spoke in either Adrift or the Wrath of God. She doesn’t speak Slovak, so she couldn’t have said much in Adrift, and she played a mute in The Wrath of God. It’s possible that there may have been problems with either her voice or her line readings, but I don’t know that for a fact.
Roger Ebert was impressed by her. He wrote in his review of The Wrath of God:
“What I do remember (she is impossible to forget) is the lovely Paula Pritchett, who was last seen emerging like a nymph from the waves in ‘Adrift.’ If there is a candidate for the American Sophia Loren, it is Miss Pritchett, who is womanly and not girlish and who has eyes that will visit you in your dreams. Yum.
She plays a fairly ridiculous role: She’s the mute Indian maiden who falls forever in love with Ken Hutchison after he rescues her from a gang-rape. When she finally speaks, it is a moment of such unashamed corny melodrama that the audience finds itself in good nature.”
There must be an even more interesting story about her experiences in Czechoslovakia – how she scored a leading role in a Slovak-language film, and what it was like when the Russian tanks rumbled in and the film was “called on account of war.” I don’t know that story, but if she wrote a book about it, I would probably read it.
What I do know comes from the archives of the Virginian Pilot: “Paula Pritchett was born on April 13, 1947 in Miami, Florida but grew up in Norfolk, VA. After attending Granby High School, she was signed by a prestigious New York City modeling agency. After making her modeling debut on the cover of Cosmopolitan in September 1965, she went on to appear on Broadway, in films and on television. She eventually returned to the Norfolk area and worked at WTVZ channel 33 in Portsmouth reading the news at 8, 10 and midnight. Pritchett later had a successful career working in the building and construction business, working on projects in Virginia and surrounding states.”
As you can probably guess, Hef’s team convinced her to pose for pictorials to accompany both of her film escapades, topless in December of 1970, and full-frontal in July of 1972.
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Special thanks to all the commenters who helped with this article. You gave me the inside scoop on the Hefmag and Ebert’s review. (I deleted the comments and incorporated the info into the body of the text.)