Maxine Cooper

Maxine Cooper was an American actress who began in the theater before moving into film and television. Born in Chicago in 1924, she first became interested in acting at Bennington College and finished her drama training at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1946 she traveled to Europe with the USO to entertain American troops, then stayed more than five years, performing on stage and in BBC television plays such as You Can't Take It with You and I Killed the Count, and often appearing at the Cafe de Paris in London. Back in the United States in the 1950s, she took television roles on Dragnet, Twilight Zone and Perry Mason. Robert Aldrich cast her in her film debut, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), as Velda, secretary to Ralph Meeker's Mike Hammer, and later in Autumn Leaves (1956) and in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). She later returned to acting for a 1975 television series, Fear on Trial.