Retro Video of the Week: Still of the Night" by Whitesnake

This Saturday -- which also happens to be Michael Jordan's 61st birthday -- marks a couple milestones for former model, actress, and MTV video vixen Tawny Kitaen.  On February 17, 1984, Sunset Strip rockers Ratt's debut album, Out of the Cellar, was released.  The album cover features Kitaen in an alley, crawling in a tattered leather dress towards some sort of underground chamber (a cellar, perhaps) emitting quite a bright light.  Kitaen and Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby had been high school sweethearts and were dating and living together at the time.

Fast forward five years to the day -- February 17, 1989 -- and you would see the wedding of Kitaen to Whitesnake lead singer David Coverdale.  Of course, in between Out of the Cellar and Kitaen's marriage to Coverdale, she made a name for herself as one of the preeminent video vixens, first in Ratt's 1984 video for "Back For More" (also with a cameo from Milton Berle!), and then, more famously, as the sultry, car-hood-cartwheeling eye candy we all know and love in three Whitesnake videos:  "Still of the Night," "Here I Go Again," and "Is This Love."

I'm going with "Still of the Night" for this week's Retro Video of the Week, as it's my favorite of the three songs.  Her marriage to Coverdale was short-lived, as they got divorced in 1991.  Kitaen went on to succeed Arleen Sorkin as Dave Coulier's co-host of America's Funniest People from 1992 to 1994.  She also starred as Jerry's hot actress girlfriend in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld -- "The Nose Job," in which Jerry's inner brain vs. dong have a chess match to figure out if Jerry can withstand her terrible acting because of how attractive she is.  She also had an affair with OJ Simpson when he was married to Nicole Brown Simpson, who OJ did not murder, according to a jury of his peers.  And she was also married to MLB pitcher Chuck Finley from 1997 to 2002, but that marriage also ended in divorce after she kicked him in the legs with her high heels while he was driving.  She went on to "star" in reality TV shows The Surreal Life, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and an episode of Botched.  Over the years, she had several DUIs and issues with drugs, and she died in 2021 at the age of 59.  But those of us males of a certain age will always think fondly of her whenever we see a mid-'80s Jaguar sedan.