Mari Blanchard

Mari Blanchard was an American film and television actress whose career centered on femme fatale roles in B movies of the 1950s and early 1960s. Born in Long Beach, California, she worked as a print model and film extra in the late 1940s until a producer noticed her in a bubble bath advertisement, which opened the way to small parts at MGM, RKO and Paramount. Universal-International signed her in 1952, and after her first film there, Back at the Front, she co-starred with Victor Mature in The Veils of Bagdad (1953). She played the Venusian queen Allura in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) and took the Brandy role in the Western Destry (1954), a character Marlene Dietrich had played in the 1939 original. Blanchard later appeared in Son of Sinbad, She Devil and Machete while shifting her focus to television, with a regular part in Klondike and guest roles in Perry Mason, Burke's Law and The Virginian.