R.I.P. Mary Ann Mobley

So sorry to hear of the passing of 1960s starlet Mary Ann Mobley. I always wished I got to interview her for my books. I did come close about 15 years ago but after playing phone tag with her assistant and then her, I stupidly gave up out of frustration and a looming deadline. A few years later her husband Gary Collins’ illness preoccupied her and I missed out again.

Sweet as Southern pie, is the way Mary Ann Mobley was described by some of her co-stars. After being crowned Miss America in 1959, Mobley began honing her singing and acting craft on television for a few years. She snagged the lead and made her film debut in the teen musical Get Yourself a College Girl in 1964. A Sam Katzman production, this is a Sixties Starlet lover’s delight as Mobley co-stars with Joan O’Brien, Nancy Sinatra, and Chris Noel.

But it was her performance as the thrill-seeking girlfriend of John Dillinger (Nick Adams) in Young Dillinger (1965) that won her real kudos and made the critics take notice. She shared the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomers with Mia Farrow and Celia Kaye and was voted a Star of Tomorrow, placing higher on the list than Julie Christie. Mobley next co-starred with Elvis Presley in Girl Happy (1965) as a Southern sexpot who loses combo leader Elvis to coed Shelley Fabares; and in Harum Scarum (1965) as an Arab princess who wins the heart of Elvis this time playing a matinee idol. Her vivaciousness made for a charming Elvis leading lady and she always brighten up every scene she was in with her big Southern smile. But she was not all sweetness, and exuded much sex appeal too.

To spy fans, she is remembered as the original Girl from U.N.C.L.E. on an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Unfortunately, when it was picked up as a series, Stefanie Powers replaced her because the producers felt that Mobley was too soft. She also tested for the role of Batgirl on the TV series Batman and lost out to Yvonne Craig. Fox though chose her to play Wayne Maunder’s love interest in the TV western pilot Custer. The pilot was picked up as a series, but Mobley’s character was dropped.

A few more movies followed (but none that offered the acting challenge of Young Dillinger) including the Jerry Lewis comedy Three on a Couch where she, Leslie Parrish and Gila Golan play kookie patients of therapist Janet Leigh. She needs to marry them off before she accepts the marriage proposal of Jerry Lewis who masquerades as the girls’ three different suitors. Her last leading movie role was in the swinging youth film For Singles Only (1968) with John Saxon, Lana Wood, Peter Mark Richman, Chris Noel, Ann Elder, and Duke Hobbie. Mobley and Wood played two friends who move into a “hip” singles complex in Southern California run by Milton Berle. Though advertised as a light-hearted view of the singles set, Wood’s character falls in love with a married man, contemplates suicide, and then gets gang raped on the beach. Mobley meanwhile brushes off the advances of lothario Hobbie while fighting her attraction to tight pants wearing Saxon. The movie is a hoot because it is too square to be cool even for back then. The title song though is quite catchy.

After 1978, Mobley retreated to television and worked steadily until the Nineties. Her easy going charm was perfect for such lightweight fare as Love, American Style; The Love Boat; and Fantasy Island (where she and Carol Lynley tie for most guest appearances) plus a slew of game show (The Match Game and The Hollywood Squares in particular) and TV talk show appearances. The Eighties saw her replacing Dixie Carter on the last season of Diff’rent Strokes; recur as a psychiatrist on Falcon Crest in 1988; and give one of her finest performances as pertinent Southern Belle tour guide of Old South homes on an 1990 episode of Designing Women where she amusingly butts heads with Dixie Carter as Julia Sugerbaker.