Mara Corday
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| Mara Corday[1][2] | |
|---|---|
| Playboy centerfold appearance | |
| October 1958 | |
| Preceded by | Teri Hope |
| Succeeded by | Joan Staley |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Marilyn Joan Watts[3] January 3, 1930 Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Measurements | Bust: 35" Waist: 24" Hips: 35" |
| Height | 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) |
| Weight | 118 lb (54 kg; 8.4 st) |
|
Official website |
|
Mara Corday (born Marilyn Joan Watts on January 3, 1930) is a showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and a 1950s cult figure.
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Early life
Corday was born in Santa Monica, California. Wanting a career in films, she 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.
Career
Corday signed on as a Universal International Pictures (UI) contract player. 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.[4]
Her roles were small until 1955 when she was cast opposite John Agar in Tarantula,[5][6] a Sci-Fi B-movie that proved a modest success (with Eastwood in an un-credited role). 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,[7] together with famous model and showgirl Pat Sheehan. In 1956, she had a recurring role in the ABC television series Combat Sergeant.[8] From 1959 to early 1961, Corday worked exclusively doing guest spots on various television series.
A few years after her husband's death 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 had a brief-but-significant role in Sudden Impact (1983), where she played the waitress dumping sugar into Harry Callahan's coffee in that movie's iconic "Go ahead, make my day" sequence.[9] And she acted with Eastwood again in Pink Cadillac (1989) as well as in her last film, 1990's The Rookie.
Personal life
Following the death of Suzan Ball, the first wife of actor Richard Long, in 1955, Corday began dating Long, and they married in 1957. In the early 1960s, she gave up her career to devote herself to raising a family. During their seventeen-year marriage, they had three children: Valerie; Carey, and Gregory. Corday has also been a lifelong friend of actor Clint Eastwood, whom she met while working for Universal Pictures.[9]
Partial filmography
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See also
References
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