The lovely actress/writer Leslie Parrish celebrates her birthday today, March 13^th.  Though she’s been essentially retired from show business — in front of the camera, anyway — for almost thirty years, Leslie was a serene and extremely beautiful presence on movie and television screens during her active career years from 1955 until the mid 1970s.  This beautiful and talented actress also had a fascinating coda to her years in front of the camera, as we’ll see later.

Leslie — born Marjorie Helen Parris, in Pennsylvania, in 1935 — originally began in the world of performing arts as a pianist, but her stunning good looks could hardly be kept under wraps.  She did some modeling work, found it more lucrative and more steady than playing the piano, and so changed career direction.  She moved to NYC in the early 1950s, was spotted by a 20^th Century Fox, got a contract with them, and started making small appearances in Hollywood films, including Daddy Long Legs, The Virgin Queen, The Opposite Sex, Man on Fire and others.  She even made the requisite cheapie science fiction movie, the lunar adventure Missile to the Moon in 1958, complete with super-slinky spacegirl duds.

Leslie Parrish came into her own with the role of buxom and wholesome Dogpatch beauty Daisy Mae in Paramount’s 1959 fanciful big screen interpretation of the hit Broadway musical of Al Capp’s famous comic strip Li’l Abner.  Helmed by director/writer/producer Melvin Frank (Monsieur Beaucaire, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, White Christmas, The Court Jester, and many more), Li’l Abner is a VistaVision kaleidoscope of Technicolor excess, a splashy, exuberant and completely stylized Capp-esque vision brought to vivid life.  Leslie was a gorgeous Daisy Mae, dreamily beautiful in a movie filled with other va-va-voomy ladies like Julie Newmar and Stella Stevens.  (The movie hasn’t dated because it’s utterly timeless, and has been newly remastered on DVD.)

Leslie, despite her Li’l Abner success — though the movie wasn’t quite the smash hit Paramount had hoped for — would concentrate on television throughout the rest of her career, though she did make several very impressive theatrical features over the years.  She was a convincing gangster’s moll in 1961’s low-budget but effective Portrait of a Mobster, opposite Vic Morrow as the notorious Roaring Twenties crime figure Dutch Schultz.  In 1962 she co-starred along with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh and the rest of the amazing cast in John Frankenheimer’s stunning The Manchurian Candidate, the Cold War thriller to beat, and a bona fide classic.  Leslie’s gift for comedy was also front and center in 1963’s For Love or Money starring Kirk Douglas, 1964’s Sex and the Single Girl with Tony Curtis, and 1966’s Jerry Lewis psychiatrist-romp Three on a Couch. 

But it was on the small screen that Leslie Parrish would cement her show business immortality.  If there was a successful show airing during the 1960s and 1970s, Leslie was a guest star:  Bat Masterson, 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, Hawaiian Eye, My Three Sons, The Wild Wild West, Batman, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Big Valley, Family Affair, Petticoat Junction, Mannix, Love, American Style, Hogan’s Heroes, Adam-12, McCloud, Logan's Run, and many, many more.  Her most famous TV role undoubtedly was in a second season segment of the original Star Trek, in the episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” where she wore one of Trek’s most memorable William Ware Theiss costumes, the strategically-draped pink goddess gown which left her back totally bare.  Not only was she visually unforgettable in the episode, but she brought a credible strength and intelligence to the role of the lieutenant who was loved by the god Apollo, who was revealed to have been a space visitor to Earth during ancient Greek times.  (You can watch the whole episode online here on cbs.com!)

Leslie had always been an intelligent, motivated, politically-aware and highly intelligent actress, working for various causes and expanding her abilities. The personal side of Leslie Parrish’s life got very interesting in the early 1970s.  In addition to her acting roles she also began to work behind-the-scenes, and was a researcher on the 1973 film version of Richard Bach’s insanely successful metaphysical novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  The high-flying author Bach found his soulmate in Leslie Parrish, and the two were wed in 1977.  They authored/co-authored/inspired each other in two of his books — The Bridge Across Forever and One — but the pair divorced after more than twenty years together, engendering some rancor from fans who expected these two soul-mated celebrities to go on forever. 

Although Leslie has been absent from movie and TV screens for some time now, those of us who were awed and impressed by her beauty, talent and refreshing spirit have missed her appearances.  We have plenty of work to remember her by, and that is some consolation, of course.  We wish the lovely Leslie Parrish a happy birthday!