Mara Corday

Mara Corday

Birth : 1930-01-03, Santa Monica, California, USA

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mara Corday (born Marilyn Joan Watts on January 3, 1930 in Santa Monica, California) is a showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and a 1950s cult figure. Wanting a career in films, Mara Corday came to Hollywood while still in her teens and found work as a showgirl at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard. Her physical beauty brought jobs as a photographer's model that led to a bit part as a showgirl in the 1951 film Two Tickets to Broadway. She signed on as a Universal International Pictures (UI) contract player where she met actor Clint Eastwood with whom she would remain lifelong friends. With UI, Corday was given small roles in various B-movies and television series. In 1954 on the set of Playgirl she met actor Richard Long. Following the death of Long's wife, the two began dating and married in 1957. Her roles were small until 1955 when she was cast opposite John Agar in Tarantula, a Sci-Fi B-movie that proved a modest success. She had another successful co-starring role in that genre (The Black Scorpion) as well as in a number of Western films. Respected film critic Leonard Maltin said that Mara Corday had "more acting ability than she was permitted to exhibit." Mara Corday appeared as a pinup girl in numerous men's magazines during the 1950s and was the Playmate of the October 1958 issue of Playboy, together with famous model and showgirl Pat Sheehan. In 1956, she had a recurring role in the ABC television series Combat Sergeant. From 1959 to early 1961, Corday worked exclusively doing guest spots on various television series. She then gave up her career to devote her time to raising a family. During her seventeen-year marriage to Richard Long she had three children. A few years after her husband's passing in 1974, Corday's friend Clint Eastwood offered her a chance to return to filmmaking with a role in his 1977 film The Gauntlet. She acted with him again in Sudden Impact (1983), Pink Cadillac (1989), and in her last film, 1990s The Rookie. Description above from the Wikipedia article Mara Corday,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Mara Corday

Movies

Pink Cadillac
Stick Lady
A bounty hunter helps out the wife of a bail-jumper after her child is kidnapped by neo-Nazi types.
Sudden Impact
Loretta - Coffee Shop Waitress
When a young rape victim takes justice into her own hands and becomes a serial killer, it's up to Dirty Harry Callahan, on suspension from the SFPD, to bring her to justice.
The Gauntlet
Jail Matron
Phoenix cop Ben Shockley is well on his way to becoming a derelict when he is assigned to transport a witness from Las Vegas. The witness turns out to be a belligerent prostitute with mob ties—and incriminating information regarding a high-ranking figure.
Girls on the Loose
Vera Parkinson
A nightclub operator (Mara Corday), her sister (Barbara Bostock), a beautician (Lita Milan) and two other women rob a payroll.
Undersea Girl
Valerie Hudson
A woman reporter, a navy investigator, and a heavyset police detective come across a gang which scuttled a ship in order to loot her later, underwater, for a Navy money consignment.
The Black Scorpion
Teresa Alvarez
Giant scorpions wreck havoc after being released due to volcanic activity.
The Quiet Gun
Irene
A mild mannered sheriff must fight both a hired gun and local anti-Indian bigotry in a small frontier town.
The Giant Claw
Sally Caldwell
Global panic ensues when it is revealed that a mysterious UFO is actually a giant turkey-like bird that flies at supersonic speed and has no regard for life or architecture.
Naked Gun
Louisa Jackson / Morales
Don Pablo Salazar steals a fortune in jewels from an Indian tribe and an Aztec medicine man puts a curse on the jewels until they are returned. Years later, an American insurance man promises to deliver the Salazar fortune to the rightful heir...
A Day of Fury
Sharman Fulton
Town marshal Alan Burnett life is saved by a stranger he meets on the trail. His rescuer turns out to be Jagade, a gunslinger just returned after years away, who finds when he gets into town that he can't abide the peace that has been settled between "his" people (i.e. the saloon-keepers, gamblers, etc.) and the righteous, "respectable" folk.
Raw Edge
Paca
A Texan arrives in Oregon and seeks justice for his innocently-hanged brother
Tarantula
Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton
A lone-wolf scientist sequestered in a mansion near a small desert town arouses the suspicion of the town's doctor when his lab assistant is found dead from a case of acromegaly which took only four days to develop. As the doctor investigates, aided by the scientist's new, and very female, assistant, they discover that, far worse, something much larger and hungrier than it ever should be, is devouring local cattle - and humans - in increasingly large quantities.
Foxfire
Maria
A part-Indian mining engineer looks for gold in an Arizona ghost town with his socialite bride.
Allen in Movieland
Self
TV goes Hollywood when Steve Allen visits Universal-International to prepare for his upcoming title role in "The Benny Goodman Story."
The Man from Bitter Ridge
Holly Kenton
The Man from Bitter Ridge is a film directed by Jack Arnold. Jeff Carr, a special investigator, arrives in Tomahawk. His assignment is to discover who has been holding up the local stagecoach and is guilty for a series of killings that terrorize the town. Sheepman Alec Black is suspected by the local population but it is not long before Jeff realizes the man is innocent. Alec even becomes a good friend although he is in love with the same woman as him, Holly. Jeff will manage to arrest the real culprits but not before the latter try to compromise him down.
Man Without a Star
Moccasin Mary
A wandering cowboy gets caught up in a range war.
So This Is Paris
Yvonne
Three sailors on leave head for Paris with one thing on their minds.
Dawn at Socorro
Letty Diamond
Brett Wade, gambler, gunslinger, and classical pianist, is wounded in a gunfight with the Ferris clan; the doctor finds signs of tuberculosis. En route to Colorado for his health, Brett stops in Socorro, New Mexico along with Ferris gunfighter Jimmy Rapp. Sheriff Couthen fears another shootout, but what Brett has in mind is saving waif-with-a-past Rannah Hayes from a life as one of Dick Braden's saloon girls.
Francis Joins the WACS
Kate
Peter Stirling (with his old friend the talking mule) is recalled to active duty...in the WACs!
Drums Across the River
Sue Randolph
When whites hunger after the gold on Ute Indian land, a bigoted young man finds himself forced into a peacekeeping role.
Playgirl
Pam
If you remember Shelley Winters from "The Poseidon Adventure" or "Bloody Mama," you might tend to forget what a knockout she was early in her career. This film will give you the chance to see her as a sexy nightclub singer teaching her just-in-from-the-sticks friend Colleen Miller the ropes in New York City. When Winters finds out that her married boyfriend Barry Sullivan has fallen for Miller, the recriminations...and bullets...start to fly!
Sweethearts on Parade
Belle
Cam Ellerby brings his traveling medicine show to town and it spells glamour and excitement to young Sylvia Townsend.
Tarzan and the She-Devil
Locopo Woman
The king of the jungle fights off ivory poachers.
Problem Girls
Dorothy Childers
A medical student (Ross Elliott) learns about a scheme to drug a girl (Susan Morrow) and pass her off as an heiress to an oil fortune.
Toughest Man in Arizona
Marshal Landry captures outlaw Girard and bringing him in finds a woman and two children, the only survivors of an Indian attack. Later, transferring the prisoner his brothers free him. Then a stage is robbed of a silver shipment by Girard and his brothers. Examining telegrams gets Landry a confession from Girard's girlfriend. The telegraph line has been tapped and the telegrapher is the supposedly dead husband of the woman he brough in. Now knowing Girard's location he sets out after him.
Sea Tiger
Lola, Hotel Proprietress
Murder ensues when owners and hired help contrive against each other to obtain diamonds and gold ingots secretly hidden on a derelict and abandoned Japanese freighter left lying in anchor in a New Guinea cove at the end of WW II.
Tall, Dark and Dead
Greta Varden
A 1952 crime film edited from tv series Craig Kennedy, Criminologist. A well-known stage star is shot at when he approaches the front door of Craig Kennedy's laboratory. Later, the actor is murdered in his backstage dressing room, and Kennedy, aided by Police Inspector J. J. Burke and Evening Star reporter Walt James, is drawn into one of his most bizarre adventures. Blamour, sex and publicity motivate the mystery, played before an intriguing background of Oriental stage-settings and theatrical backdrops. Passions, bot homicidal and amorous, almost lead to Kennedy's death at the hands of the killer.