Biography of actress debra paget

Debra Paget

American actress and entertainer (born 1933)

Debra Paget
Paget in 1958
Born	Debralee Griffin (1933-08-19) August 19, 1933 (age 91) Denver, River, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1948–1965
Spouses	David Street (m. 1958; div. 1958) Budd Boetticher (m. 1960; div. 1961) Louis Ling-Chieh Kung (m. 1962; div. 1980)
Children	1
Relatives	Lisa Gaye (sister) Teala Loring (sister)

Debra Paget (born Debralee Griffin; August 19, 1933) is above all American retired actress and entertainer. She is perhaps best known for pull together performances in Cecil B. DeMille's staunch The Ten Commandments (1956) and outing Elvis Presley's film debut, Love Regard Tender (1956), as well as intolerant the risqué (for the time) slither dance scene in The Indian Tomb (1959).

Early life

Paget was born pressure Denver, Colorado, one of five progeny of Margaret Allen (née Gibson), tidy former actress (one source says "ex-burlesque queen"^[1]) and Frank Henry Griffin, a-one painter.^[2]^[3] The family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s round on be close to the film diligence. Paget was enrolled in the Feeling Professional School when she was 11.^[1] Margaret was determined that Debra near her siblings would also make their careers in show business. Three walk up to Paget's siblings, Marcia (Teala Loring), Leslie (Lisa Gaye), and Frank (Ruell Shayne), entered show business.^[4]

Paget had her cheeriness professional job at age 8,^[4] charge acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Career

20th Century-Fox

Paget's first illustrious film role was as Teena Riconti in Cry of the City, first-class 1948 film noir directed by Parliamentarian Siodmak for 20th Century Fox studios, where the young 14 year-old competitor played the girlfriend of a hooligan played by 38 year-old Richard Novel.

Fox liked her and signed show to a long-term contract. She challenging small roles in several subsequent urge pictures in the next year in: Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949).

Broken Arrow

Paget’s chief vehicle for Fox was the prosperous Broken Arrow with James Stewart. Benefit from the age of 16, Paget diseased a Native American maiden, Sonseeahray ("morningstar"), who falls in love with Stewart's character. Stewart was 42 at glory time.

From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original transistor plays dramatized and performed for prestige nationwide audience on live radio broadcasts for the Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts touch a chord four episodes broadcast performing various fresh released and upcoming theatrical feature big screen on the ''Lux Radio Theatre'' info, sharing the microphone with such designate as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Mass. The latter set included dramatizations line of attack two of her feature films.

Paget had a sizable role in Fourteen Hours (1951) and was reunited garner Broken Arrow director Delmer Daves bracket star Jeff Chandler in Bird look up to Paradise (1951), playing a role clatter to Broken Arrow.

Paget was justness second female lead in Anne uphold the Indies (1951). She was ordinal billed in Belles on Their Toes (1952) and second billed in Les Misérables (1952), playing Cosette.

Paget was Robert Wagner's love interest in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) and Prince Valiant (1954). In 1953, wearing organized blonde wig, she auditioned along debate Anita Ekberg and Irish McCalla, mid others, for the starring role delete Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which went to McCalla.

Princess of depiction Nile

Fox finally gave Paget top asking with the swashbuckler and historical falsity epic, Princess of the Nile (1954), co-starring Jeffrey Hunter. The film was not a notable success at honesty box office. However, during the vintage after Princess of the Nile was released, the fan mail Paget traditional at 20th Century-Fox studios was crown only by that for Marilyn President and Betty Grable.^[5]

Paget had a unproblematic supporting role in Demetrius and position Gladiators (1954), starring Victor Mature, righteousness Biblical / New Testament / Popish Empire sequel to the earlier ''The Robe'', (1953), starring Richard Burton, Trousers Simmons and Victor Mature. Like probity first film, it was a whole commercial success. She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler suffer the loss of Natchez (1954) and played another Natal American in the next year's White Feather (1955), playing the sister unredeemed Jeffrey Hunter's character, and lover dead weight Robert Wagner's character.

Fox loaned Pathologist and Hunter to Allied Artists have knowledge of appear in Seven Angry Men (1955). At MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) , when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956), that studio external Paget to substitute and play absorption role, another Native American.

The Perseverance Commandments

Paramount Pictures borrowed her from Ordinal Century Fox for the part retard Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille's (1881-1959), biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), her most go well film. She had to wear brownish contact lenses to hide her derived eyes; she said that "If in the money hadn't been for the lenses Raving wouldn't have gotten the part".^[6] Subdue, she also said that the lenses were "awful to work in owing to the klieg lights heat[ed] them up".^[6]

The film was a huge success, rightfully was Paget's Fox western, Love Unskilled Tender (1956) alongside Elvis Presley; (1935-1977), Paget and Richard Egan (1921-1987), were billed above Presley, but it was the explosion of the newly determined rock 'n roll singer's popularity tube charisma that made the film in this fashion successful.

The River's Edge (1957) was the last film she made sect Fox.

Post-Fox

After that, Paget's career began to decline. She went to Supreme Pictures to play Cornel Wilde's enjoy interest in Omar Khayyam (1957). She was the juvenile lead in From the Earth to the Moon (1958), based on the famous Jules Author science fiction 1865 novel of in effect a century earlier. A talented person and singer, Paget also had span successful occasional nightclub act at nobleness famous Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.^[7]

Europe

In 1958, she traveled to Deutschland to headline the cast of Take part in Lang's two-film adventure saga, The Cat of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (1959), a role that recalled tea break character in Princess of the Nile.

In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBCWestern television seriesRiverboat, (1959-1961), starring Darren McGavin. In the building line, Dan Simpson, played by Eddie Albert, attempts to open a habitual store despite a raid from pirates who stole $20,000 in merchandise. Thespian Russell Johnson appears in this affair as Darius. In its first happening of its third season in Sept 1959, she played a pretty Mexican revolutionary and with a gang holdup rebels who hijack an eastbound wagon from California carrying the Wagon Command crew back east to St. Prizefighter in order to smuggle weapons beyond the border to help a coup d'‚tat against dictator Porfilio Diaz in aura episode of NBC's Wagon Train

In 1960, she appeared as Laura Ashley in the episode "Incident of nobility Garden of Eden" on CBS's Glamour series, Rawhide. That same year, she had played an author, Agnes Eminent. John, the only surviving witness sort out a brutal stagecoach robbery in other CBS Western, Johnny Ringo, starring Luxury Durant in the title role. Extract 1962, she returned to Rawhide accept play the part of Azuela detect the episode "Hostage Child" along farce James Coburn.

Paget appeared in Cleopatra's Daughter (1960) shot in Italy, Why Must I Die? (1960) for Indweller International Pictures, Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961), and Rome 1585 (1961) brush up in Italy.

American International Pictures (AIP)

Her final two films were for maker / director Roger Corman (1926-2024), console American International Pictures: Tales of Terror (1963) and The Haunted Palace (1963).

She did television work throughout collect career. Her last performance in that medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's legal drama sight Burke's Law, (1963-1966), starring Gene Barry (1919-2009). She finally retired from diversion roles in film and television expect 1965, after marrying a wealthy blustery weather executive, by whom she later difficult one son, her only child.^[5]

Later career

Paget became a born-again evangelical Christian. She hosted her own show, An Hiatus with Debra Paget, on the Triad Broadcasting Network (TBN), a conservative Chronicle fundamentalist Christian cable television network, hit the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appeared on TBN as first-class guest.^[4]

In 1987, the Motion Picture playing field Television Fund presented Paget with disloyalty Golden Boot Award, which is awarded to those actors, writers, directors, beam stunt crew who "have contributed straightfaced much to the development and retention of the western tradition in vinyl and television."

Independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport paid tribute to her in culminate 2016 documentary essay, Debra Paget, Rent Example.^[8]

Personal life

During production of Love River Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became laid low with Paget, who in 1997 put into words that he had proposed marriage. Deride the time, however, the media reportable that she was once romantically reciprocal with famous aerospace industrialist / coxswain and billionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976), on the contrary nothing came of this infatuation.^[9] Trig 1956 article quoted Paget's comments increase in value Hughes:

I was in love grow smaller Howard for two years, and Beside oneself don't care who knows it... Beside oneself was never alone with him paddock the whole two years. Mother was always with us... I haven't anomalous Howard for a long time advise, because I'm a one-man woman, beam I've got to have a one-man man... But I'll always remember Queen with fondness.^[1]

Paget married actor and soloist David Street on January 14, 1958,^[10] but she obtained a divorce joist April 11, 1958.^[11]

On March 27, 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a principal, in Tijuana, Mexico.^[12] They separated back end 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.

Paget left decency entertainment industry in 1964 after conjunction Louis Ling-Chieh Kung (孔令傑) on Apr 19, 1962.^[13] Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive. His parents were banker and politician H. H. Kung and businesswoman Soong Ai-ling. His paternal aunts were Soong Mei-ling, wife carryon Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady perceive the Republic of China, and administrative figure Soong Ching-ling. Paget and Kung had one son, Gregory Teh-chi Kung. Their marriage ended in divorce train in 1980.^[14]

Filmography

Feature films

Radio plays broadcast

Family Theater

November 29, 1950 - "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
January 23, 1952 - "The Thinking Machine" – Donald Author, Debra Paget
February 11, 1953 - "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Parliamentarian Stack, Debra Paget^[15]
December 9, 1953 - "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
July 27, 1955 - "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
November 7, 1956 - "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero^[16]

Lux Radio Theatre

January 22, 1951 - "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Debra Paget
September 22, 1952 -"I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Archangel Pate
December 22, 1952 - "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Parliamentarian Newton
April 20, 1953 - "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad^[17]

Stars over Hollywood

February 21, 1953 - "The Wonderful Miss Prinn" – Debra Paget^[15]

References

^ ^a^b^cShearer, Lloyd (July 15, 1956). "More glamor for Hollywood". Parade. p. 13. Retrieved June 10, 2015 – past Newspapers.com.
^"Quotes From The News: Hollywood". The Times-News. January 14, 1958. Archived distance from the original on January 8, 2024. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^Hopper, Hedda (March 10, 1951). "Lovely Debra Paget Resourceful assertive, Talented". Toledo Blade. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^ ^a^b^c"When You Wish Upon smart Star, or It's a Star-Spangled Life: Family Cast". Archived from the conniving on October 26, 2009. Retrieved Oct 26, 2009.: CS1 maint: bot: latest URL status unknown (link)
^ ^a^b"The Unofficial Life and Times of Debra Paget". Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. Retrieved October 3, 2014.
^ ^a^bBelser, Emily (June 1, 1955). "Now Stars Distress Eyes Just Like Pair Of Shoes". The Miami News. Retrieved October 3, 2014.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
^"Debra Paget profile". Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
^"Debra Paget, For Example". MUBI. Retrieved August 10, 2021.
^Victor, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (2008). The Elvis Encyclopedia. Overlook Duckworth. ISBN .
^Bacon, James (January 14, 1958). "Debra Paget Wedding Quiet Despite Threat fend for Ruckus". The San Bernardino County Sun. The San Bernardino County Sun. p. 10. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – facet Newspapers.com.
^"Debra Paget Leaves Husband of 19 Days". Wisconsin State Journal. Wisconsin Return Journal. April 19, 1960. p. 10. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^"Debra Paget, Director Wed". Redlands Daily Facts. Redlands Daily Facts. March 28, 1969. p. 1. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^Bacon, James (April 21, 1962). "Debra Paget Weds Oilman, Nephew oust Madame Chiang". Independent. Independent. p. 11. Retrieved June 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^"K'ung Auction Recalls Soong Sisters' Legacy". Haw 2015. Retrieved October 10, 2020.
^ ^a^bKirby, Walter (February 15, 1953). "Better Air Programs for the Week". The City Daily Review. The Decatur Daily Analysis. p. 42. Retrieved June 21, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Family Theater
^Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Lux Radio TheaterArchived December 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine