Leslie Parrish

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Leslie Parrish (born March 13, 1935 in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania) is an American actress. She starred under her birth name, Marjorie Helen Parrish, until she changed it in 1959.


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[edit] Education

Parrish was once a promising piano student at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. She discovered that by modeling she could earn more money than as a concert pianist. She came to New York City in November 1953. Before modeling she worked as a waitress in a diner.

She joined the Home Theatre Group of professional performers who put on plays at a private theater in Hollywood. Ruth Warrick and Mark Herron were also members. Parrish benefited greatly from the experience of facing a live audience. She believed it made her a better actress and more capable of transforming a scripted part into a three-dimensional human being.

[edit] Movie Actress

Parrish signed with 20th Century Fox in 1954, when she was 19. The studio gave her statistics as 5 feet 6 inches, with measurements of 35 - 24 - 34. Her hair is reddish gold and she has gray eyes with a cream complexion.

In May 1956 Parrish signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Her two most notable roles are as lithe Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner (1959) and as the doomed Jocie Jordan in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

In Portrait of a Mobster (1961) Parrish plays the wife of a detective who consorts with criminals. She is the daughter of a bootlegger who rebuffs the advances of Dutch Schultz, played by Vic Morrow. Eventually she becomes disillusioned with the corruption among the police force. She leaves her husband to live with Schultz.

She made a number of films of the B-movie and sci-fi genres. Among these are Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Three on a Couch (1966), The Money Jungle (1968), The Candy Man (1969), The Devil's 8 (1969), Brother, Cry For Me (1970), and The Giant Spider Invasion (1975).

[edit] Television

In 1954, NBC-TV borrowed the studios of WPIX every weekday morning. Parrish was employed by NBC as its "human test pattern" in regard to color tones. She sat for hours on a stool in front of color cameras. All the while engineers adjusted the tints and the lighting, and worked with costumes in different tints. Parish was seldom seen on WNBC, Channel 4, since most of her color work was performed on closed-circuit television. [This is very questionable since color TV was rare to nonexistent in 1954.]

Parrish was in an episode of the Kraft Suspense Theater entitled The Kamchatka Incident (1961). She performed with John Forsythe in a drama which concerned a U.S.-bound airplane's encounter with Russian fighter planes above Siberia.

She has numerous television appearances, including her notable role in the Star Trek episode Who Mourns for Adonais? (1967), in which Parrish plays the beautiful Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas, who becomes the lust object of the Greek god Apollo.

In the TV series Logan's Run (1977), Parrish played the commander of an alien space ship on a Noah's Ark-typee mission to gather and study specimens of beings from planets in different solar systems.

[edit] Marriages

Parrish was divorced from actor Eric Marlow in May 1961. They had been married for five years.

She wed Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, in 1977, during the making of the movie of the same name.[1] She was a major element in two of his subsequent books — The Bridge Across Forever and One — which primarily focused on their relationship and Bach's concept of soulmates.[1]. They divorced amicably in 1999.

[edit] Partial filmography

[edit] Selected TV appearances

  • 1960 Bat Masterson (1958) playing "Lucy Carter" in episode: "The Elusive Baguette" (episode # 2.34) 2 June
  • 1965 The Wild Wild West (1965) playing "Greta Lundquist" in episode: "The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth" (episode # 1.3) 1 October
  • 1966 Batman (1966/II) playing "Dawn Robin" in episode: "Fine Feathered Finks" (episode # 1.3) 19 January
  • 1966 Batman (1966/II) playing "Dawn Robin" in episode: "The Penguin's a Jinx" (episode # 1.4) 20 January
  • 1966 The Wild Wild West (1965) playing "Morn" in episode: "The Night of the Flying Pie Plate" (episode # 2.6) 21 October
  • 1967 Batman (1966/II) playing "Glacia Glaze" in episode: "Ice Spy" (episode # 2.59) 29 March
  • 1967 Batman (1966/II) playing "Glacia Glaze" in episode: "The Duo Defy" (episode # 2.60) 30 March
  • 1967 Star Trek (1966) playing "Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas" in episode: "Who Mourns for Adonis?" (episode # 2.2) 22 September
  • 1967 The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) playing "Leslie Welling" in episode: "The Master's Touch Affair" (episode # 4.6) 16 October
  • 1968 The Big Valley (1968) playing Layle Johnson in episode "Bounty On A Barkley" (Episode #23, Season 3, Aired: 26 February 1968
  • 1974 McCloud (1970) playing "Lynne O'Connell" in episode: "The Gang That Stole Manhattan" (episode # 5.2) 13 October

[edit] References

  • Florence Morning News, Leslie Parrish To Guest Star, August 20, 1977, Page 34.
  • Hayward Daily Review, Leslie Parrish:Aware of the Magic, February 25, 1968, Page 70.
  • Los Angeles Times, Fox Signs Marjorie Hellen To Pact, November 4, 1954, Page A9.
  • The Marion Star, Movie Attractions, June 2, 1962, Page 27.
  • Oakland Tribune, Leslie Parrish Gets Default Divorce, May 14, 1961, Page 153.
  • New York Times, Television In Review, May 3, 1954, Page 32.
  • New York Times, Kings Go Forth Will Be A Movie, May 9, 1956, Page 36.
  • New York Times, Role of Daisy Mae, June 10, 1959, Page 42.
  1. ^ a b Leslie Parrish (I) Biography. Retrieved on 2007-03-13.

[edit] External links