Actress Diane McBain (1941-2022)

[Zoneboy]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...ut-1235286200/

Diane McBain, whose career playing spoiled rich girls included turns as the yacht owner Daphne Dutton on the ABC crime show Surfside 6 and an author stalking Elvis Presley in Spinout, has died. She was 81.

McBain died Wednesday morning at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills after a battle with liver cancer, her friend and writing partner, Michael Gregg Michaud, told The Hollywood Reporter.

McBain also guest-starred on four episodes of ABC’s Batman, first as a hat shop assistant who’s in cahoots with David Wayne’s Mad Hatter in 1966 and then as stamp company proprietor Pinky Pinkston — she wore only pink and had a pink dog — on the memorable 1967 installment that featured The Green Hornet (Van Williams) and Kato (Bruce Lee).


Mike Hodges, Director of 'Get Carter' and 'Flash Gordon,' Dies at 90
In her first film, McBain appeared with Richard Burton in Vincent Sherman’s Ice Storm (1960), then starred alongside Troy Donahue and Claudette Colbert in Delmer Daves’ campy Parrish (1961) and as the title character, a farm girl who meets a tragic end, in Claudelle Inglish (1961).

A contract player at Warner Bros. straight out of high school, McBain broke out as the loopy Daphne on the 1960-62 Miami Beach-set crime show Surfside 6. Her character owned a yacht, the Daffy II, that was berthed next door to the houseboat that served as home base for the private detectives portrayed by Williams, Donahue and Lee Patterson.

She portrayed Diana St. Clair, an author of books that help women get their men, in Spinout (1966), finding Elvis’ Mike McCoy the perfect subject to track for her next project, The Perfect American Male.

In Tom Lisanti’s 2001 book, Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema, McBain said she regretted being typecast as bad girls. “I wanted to play the ingenue,” she said. “I could never understand why everyone wanted to play the bitch. Because when you go into society, people view you as they see you onscreen. It’s terrible to be thought of as this messy, horrible person when you’re not!”

Born in Cleveland on May 18, 1941, McBain moved with her family to Glendale in 1944. She modeled for TV commercials and magazine ads as a teenager, and while appearing in a play at Glendale High School, she was spotted by a talent scout and signed by Warners to a seven-year contract on her 18th birthday.


“When I was about to graduate from high school, they offered me the role of Richard Burton’s granddaughter in Ice Palace,” she told Lisanti. “And believe it or not, I didn’t even know who Richard Burton was! … He was an English actor, and I was a teenybopper.”

She had made her onscreen debut in 1959 on an episode of ABC’s Maverick, and in addition to Surfside 6, she showed up on many other Warner Bros. TV shows, including The Alaskans, Sugarfoot, Lawman, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Bourbon Street Beat.

McBain beat out Shirley Knight for the lead in Claudelle Inglish, then starred as a farm owner in Black Gold (1962), a nurse opposite Joan Crawford in The Caretakers (1963) and a health nut in Mary Mary (1963), starring Debbie Reynolds. She then reunited with Donahue for A Distant Trumpet (1964), the last film directed by Raoul Walsh.

She left Warner Bros. after refusing a small part in Sex and the Single Girl (1964). “I was doing leads and thought this wasn’t a good idea,” she said.

McBain battled with characters played by Shelley Fabares and Deborah Walley for Elvis’ affection in Spinout, but her Diana wound up marrying an older guy portrayed by Carl Betz.

McBain then appeared in the low-budget AIP films Thunder Alley (1967), directed by Richard Rush; Maryjane (1968); and, as the savage leader of a motorcycle gang, The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968).

Her résumé included the films Five the Hard Way (1969), I Sailed to Tahiti With an All Girl Crew (1969), The Broken Hearts Club (2000) and Besotted (2001) and episodes of Burke’s Law, The Wild Wild West, Police Story, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, Charlie’s Angels, Eight Is Enough, Dallas, Days of Our Lives and Knight Rider.


She entertained U.S. troops overseas in the ’60s and counseled rape survivors after she herself was victimized in 1982.

McBain published her autobiography, Famous Enough, a Hollywood Memoir, co-written by Michaud, in 2014, then wrote two novels, 2020’s The Laughing Bear and 2021’s The Color of Hope.

“She lived a full life and experienced every opportunity that presented itself. She was very kind, thoughtful, loyal and generous, and she had a wicked sense of humor,” Michaud, her friend of 35 years, wrote on social media. “Despite her remarkable professional accomplishments, she was the most un-affected movie star I have ever known.”

The pair did numerous book signings and autograph shows, the latest just months ago, he said.

McBain was married to Rodney Burke, whom she met at a Buddhist camp, from 1972 until their 1974 divorce. Survivors include her son, Evan, and her goddaughter, Mary.

[Alan Brady's Hair]

A beautiful girl. There were way too many actresses to staff the available movies then. RIP.

[Dude111]

Very sad

[biffbronson]

R.I.P. Diane

[TMC]

Five Great Diane McBain Guest Appearances

MAVERICK (HOLLY VAUGHN)

Besides being an overall excellent TV series, Maverick also had some of the sharpest satire on television during the 1950s. In the Season 3 episode, “A Fellow’s Brother,” the show set its satirical lens on the concept of the “code” of the West. McBain plays Holly Vaughn, whose brother, Smoky, keeps trying to get into shootouts over violations of the “code.” Smoky somehow believes that Maverick is all about that life, which we all know he isn’t.

When it seems as though Maverick killed a guy’s brother, he has to answer to the “code,” while Holly thinks it is foolish. She’s basically Grace Kelly in High Noon, only this time, Maverick totally agrees with her! He hides out with her, hoping the heat will die down. Smoky, of course, fouls that up, but it’s still funny, and it’s great when Holly explains that she wishes Bret could teach Smoky how to behave. Bret jokes about teaching him cowardice, but she explains that it is just plain ol’ wisdom.

This is one of the rare Maverick episodes to have both Bret (James Garner) and Bart (Jack Kelly) in it. When Bart is seemingly killed, Smoky insists that Bret avenge his brother’s death (as “A fellow’s got to kill the fellow who kills a fellow’s brother”), and Bret gets caught up in some nonsense. In any event, McBain is excellent as the common-sense-having sister in this cool episode.

77 SUNSET STRIP (CARLA STEVENS)

As noted, McBain starred in Surfside 6, the quasi-spinoff of 77 Sunset Strip, but she also made a number of 77 Sunset Strip guest spots, most notably in the Season 6 FIVE-PART opener, “5.” As I’ll write about in the future, Season 6 of 77 Sunset Strip essentially rebooted the series, and to kick things off, it did a five-part noir adventure, with the artsy motif of having the star-ladden cast (William Shatner, Burgess Meredith, Peter Lorre, Brian Keith, Tony Bennett, Wally Cox, Ed Wynn, Keenan Wynn and more) introduce themselves at the start of the episode with close-ups of their faces.

In a dark, dark story, McBain’s Carla Stevens was a breath of light into the otherwise dark, dark tale. So, of course, right when Stu Bailey solves the mystery, he’s too late to prevent her from being run down by the bad guys. He gets her to the hospital, and then brings the bad guys down. The episode ends with the news that she died in the hospital. The weary cop who has been working with Bailey throughout the story (and working at ODDS with him, too, when he suspected Bailey of being up to no good) lets him know, as he knows she meant something to Bailey. Bailey retorts, “I hardly knew her” as the episode ends. That’s technically true, but we know that that doesn’t tell the whole story.

KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE (MARY JORGENSON)

In “My Enemy, This Town,” an episode of the anthology series, Kraft Suspense Theatre, a man gets out of prison after seven years after being convicted of raping a local woman. He returns to the town, as he knows he is innocent and he won’t allow them to make him act like he shouldn’t be back in his hometown. So the woman’s husband decides to frame him for another rape (of course, this being 1964, no one ever actually says “rape”).

At his trial, things aren’t looking great when McBain, as the original “victim” shows up and admits that she made it all up, and that her husband bribed the sheriff’s deputy to frame the guy. She gets to do some hardcore emoting, even had a big ol’ tear dripping down her face!

BATMAN (PINKY PINKSTON)

Female characters on the Batman TV series, pre-Batgirl, tended to fit into a few very narrow boxes, the femme fatale or the just sort of useless line-reader, which made McBain’s Pinky Pinkston, a socialite who visiting Brit Reid (this was a Green Hornet crossover, episodes “A Piece of the Action” and “Batman’s Satisfaction”) and Bruce Wayne sort of “fight” over, stand out so much.

She’s sharp in the episode, and, of course, with the pink motif, she stood out so much that I’m sure many fans mostly remember her for this guest spot.

SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH (GRANNY BECKER)

Many years later, when McBain had mostly stopped acting (she became a rape counselor following her own rape in the early 1980s), she still did the occasional guest spot here and there, and one I thought was great was in a Season 1 episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch called “A Halloween Story.”

As you may or may not know, Sabrina was half-witch/half-mortal. Her mother was mortal, and the Becker side of the family included Sabrina’s mortal grandmother who died soon before the series began. Well, on Halloween, Sabrina’s aunts give her a special present. They bring Granny back to life for an hour so that she and Sabrina can talk. McBain is so endearing in the talk, especially when Sabrina reveals that she is a witch, and her Granny is totally accepting. It’s adorable.

RIP, Diane McBain.

[principehomura]

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