Jarma Lewis

Jarma Lewis was an American film actress and model whose career was concentrated in the 1950s. She studied at Los Angeles City College, acted in school theater productions, and trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School in New York. After her first film roles in the early 1950s, she was working as a receptionist in a Beverly Hills dentist's office when the director Henry Hathaway discovered her and cast her as Queen Guinevere in Prince Valiant. Contracts followed at 20th Century Fox in 1954 and at MGM from 1955 to 1957, where she was among the studio's youngest signings. Her pictures spanned comedy, thriller, crime, drama, and historical films, and she worked for directors including Otto Preminger, Stanley Donen, and Vincente Minnelli. She also appeared in television episodes and guest spots, took up writing in the 1970s, and served 15 years on the board of the UCLA Art Council. She died in 1985.