Kathleen Hughes, the statuesque Fifties starlet who unleashed a terrifying scream in connection together with her position within the 3D sci-fi traditional It Got here From Outer House, has died. She was 96.
Hughes died Monday, in response to her close friend, John Jigen Griffin-Atil.
A onetime contract participant at Fox after which Common, Hughes made for a “dainty dish of poison,” as New York Occasions critic Bosley Crowther put it, in her flip as an actress having an affair with John Forsythe within the crime drama The Glass Net (1953), starring Edward G. Robinson.
A 12 months earlier, she dyed her darkish hair blonde to star as a coed in For Males Solely (1952), directed by and starring Paul Henreid.
Hughes gave Rock Hudson maybe his first onscreen kiss when she acted with him in a 1949 screen test, then appeared with him as Piper Laurie’s handmaiden within the journey movie The Golden Blade (1953).
She additionally portrayed a extremely terrible particular person in Three Unhealthy Sisters (1956). “I simply liked the scene the place I horsewhipped my sister and despatched her sobbing and bleeding into the night time the place she obtained right into a automobile and drove off a cliff,” she said in a 2019 interview. “For some cause, it simply struck me that it’s very humorous.”
Hughes was married for 59 years to writer-producer Stanley Rubin (The Slim Margin, River of No Return, The President’s Analyst), who died in March 2014 at age 96.
After taking part in Ann Blyth’s pal in Sally and Saint Anne (1952), Hughes agreed to assist take a look at the 3D cameras that have been to be employed for Common’s It Came From Outer Space (1953), impressed by a Ray Bradbury story and starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush.
“They requested me if I’d thoughts simply strolling forwards and backwards on somewhat runway in a showering go well with, perhaps as a result of I used to be fairly three-dimensional [at the time],” she said with a chuckle throughout a 2012 Movie Noir Basis chat with Alan Okay. Rode. “So I used to be completely happy to do it.”
Hughes wished a task within the Jack Arnold-directed film however was informed the movie already had been forged, however she obtained a maintain of the script and located an element “with one good scene” that she preferred. After she “nagged and nagged and nagged” for a couple of month, she obtained to painting the girlfriend of Russell Johnson’s human-looking alien.
Later, Hughes was among the many actors being photographed for advert stills to advertise the film when she was informed to ‘Throw up your arms and scream,’” she said in one other chat with Rode, this one in 2017. The photograph would tackle a lifetime of its personal. “The image has been used for thus many issues, like ‘Hummus, a taste that screams’ … One in every of my cousins was in Canada and noticed my image on a birthday card!”
Her husband put his foot down when her photograph was used for a condom commercial.
Elizabeth “Betty” von Gerkan was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 14, 1928. Her uncle was F. Hugh Herbert, a screenwriter and playwright who created the character of teenager Corliss Archer, performed by Shirley Temple within the 1945 Columbia Footage comedy Kiss and Inform.
“My uncle all the time informed me that I might by no means be in photos as a result of I’m too tall,” the 5-foot-9 actress said in 1970. “He mentioned all of the main males are quick. I feel one of many causes I caught to appearing was to show him improper.”
After graduating from Fairfax Excessive Faculty, she was a pupil at L.A. Metropolis Faculty and showing within the Maxwell Anderson play Night time Over Taos on the Geller Theater on the Miracle Mile (now the location of the Petersen Automotive Museum) when she was approached by a Fox expertise scout.
She signed with the studio, then made her big-screen debut in Highway Home (1948), starring Cornel Wilde and Ida Lupino. She would seem in a handful of Fox movies, together with Mr. Belvedere Goes to Faculty and the baseball film It Occurs Each Spring, each launched in 1949.
Fox dropped her after three years, and after she appeared in Warner Bros.’ I’ll See You in My Goals (1951), starring Doris Day and Danny Thomas, and Lippert Footage’ For Males Solely, she spent one other three years as a contract participant at Common.
Hughes performed a producer’s secretary named Mitch on Bracken’s World, a 1969-70 NBC drama set on the planet of Hollywood that was produced by her husband, and confirmed up in a house film because the spouse of Lt. Col. Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) on a 1973 episode of M*A*S*H.
She additionally appeared on such different exhibits as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, 77 Sundown Strip, The Tall Man, Perry Mason, Bachelor Father, Gomer Pyle, USMC, I Dream of Jeannie and Quincy M.E. and in movies like Daybreak at Socorro (1954), Cult of the Cobra (1955), The Late Liz (1971) and Revenge (1990).
She was employed to play a “sexy girl” who has a love scene with Jack Nicholson in Ironweed (1987), however her work was left on the cutting-room ground.
Survivors embody her three youngsters, Angie, a movie music editor; John, a documentary filmmaker; and Michael.
