The Carpetbaggers

I'm like, "Okay, I see what you're doing."

And unfortunately, she did that, and she's in Giant, and she's in The Big Country, but then by the time you get to the '60s, the roles aren't good, and then she's in The Carpetbaggers and Harlow-

Oh, yeah

... and she's bordering on joke.

Carroll Baker's presence in the film is a product of this particular moment.

A few years earlier, she had been one of Hollywood's biggest names on the strength of The Carpetbaggers, and her producer, Joseph Levine, had positioned her as a kind of successor to Marilyn Monroe, and that ambition culminated in the film Harlow in 1965, which was a lured biopic that failed badly, and Baker subsequently sued Levine and Paramount over the handling of her contract and her image.

She won the case eventually, but by then her standing in Hollywood was finished, so she relocated to Rome in 1967, learned Italian, and began again, and Deborah was among the first films she made once there.

The conspiratorial structure at the heart of The Sweet Body of Deborah didn't originate with this film either.