Margia Dean, who co-starred in the sci-fi cult classic The Quartermass experience and appeared alongside Clint Eastwood, Vincent Price, Esther Williams and George Reeves in other films, has died. She was 101 years old.
Dean died June 23 at her apartment in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., her niece Denyse Barr said. The Hollywood Reporter.
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From 1948 to 1956, Dean worked in about twenty feature films for producer Robert L. Lippert, founder of the B film studio Lippert Pictures, earning the nickname “The Queen of Lippert”.
She starred for Sam Fuller in two of those films, the first two feature films he ever made, in fact – I Jesse James shot (1949), in which she played a saloon singer, and the award starring The Baron of Arizona (1950).
Based on a popular BBC series, Hammer Films’ The Quartermass experience (1956), directed by Val Guest and starring Brian Donlevy, tells the story of an astronaut (Richard Wordsworth) who crash-lands on Earth and transforms into an alien organism that threatens humanity.
Dean played the astronaut’s wife, who foolishly helps him escape from a hospital. “I’m going crazy in this,” she noted in a Western Clippings interview.
Dean also starred with Richard Arlen in Grand Canyon (1949), with Reeves in Superman and the mole men (1951), with Charles Chaplin Jr. in nature fangs (1954), with Eastwood in Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958), with Brian Keith in Villa!! (1958) and with Williams in the circus setting The big show (1961).
She has appeared in around 60 films over her two-decade career.
Of Greek origin, Marguerite Louise Skliris was born in Chicago on April 7, 1922 and grew up in San Francisco. His father, Evangelis, was a lawyer.
After performing on stage as a child, she won a national women’s Shakespeare competition at age 15 and the titles of Miss San Francisco and Miss California before competing for the 1939 Miss America award, finishing first runner-up to Patricia Donnelly.
“I won the talent contest of this competition by doing Shakespeare when I should have been singing! I have a fiery voice,” she said. “After losing to Donnelly, I was told singing would have been better – because spouting Shakespeare wasn’t the kind of thing a Miss America could do across the country.”
She returned to San Francisco to graduate from Galileo High School, performed at the Biltmore Theater in downtown Los Angeles, and made her big-screen debut in Republic Pictures. Casanova in burlesque (1944), starring Joe E. Brown and June Havoc.
His first major role came in the sequel shep come home (1948), financed by Lippert. They then became involved with each other, she explained in Mark Thomas McGee’s 2014 book, Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive: The Films of Robert L. Lippert.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was running with a married man,” she recalls. “I don’t think I ever liked him, but he was crazy about me. He gave me all this work, and it was nice to be with him. He made my job easier. »
His resume also included red desert (1949), Ringside (1949), FBI girl (1951), The lonely path (1955), Raoul Walsh Grandma Stover’s revolt (1956), The Secret of the Purple Reef (1960), 7 women from hell (1961) and Moro Sorcerer (1964), his last acting credit.
Dean was also a producer on The long rope (1961), starring Hugh Marlow, and The horror of it all (1964), starring Pat Boone. She later served as vice president of a real estate/construction company and owned a clothing store in Brentwood and a cafe in Beverly Hills.
Dean lived for six decades in a house in the Hollywood Hills before moving to Dana Point, California. “She was a remarkable, brilliant and generous woman with exquisite taste,” said her niece.
Among the survivors are her husband, Spanish architect, author and singer Felipe Alvarez, 92, whom she met at a Sunset Strip cafe and married in Mexico in August 1965 (hear him sing to her here) ; nieces Denyse, Christina, Lisette, Irene and Olga; and his nephews José, Richard and Miguel.
Dean’s first husband was Hal Fischer, an outstanding basketball player and coach. After their six-year marriage ended in 1945, she dated Prince Aly Khan, the third husband of actress Rita Hayworth.
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