SUSAN OLIVER

Susan Oliver (born Charlotte Gercke) was an actress from the 1950s to the 1980s. She was a beautiful blue-eyed blonde, who made her debut in 1957's "The Green-Eyed Blonde" (but the movie was in black & white, so no one noticed). She was in The Gene Krupa Story two years later with Sal Mineo. She did quite a bit of TV in the 1950s and early 1960s, including in a memorable Twilight Zone episode opposite Roddy McDowall called "People Are Alike All Over". She had a very memorable role as Vina on the original pilot episode of TV's "Star Trek" in 1966 (the one with Jeffrey Hunter that was not used until much later, as the two-part "The Cage"). She landed a part in the hit TV series "Peyton Place", but then her character was killed by being pushed off a cliff. In 1964, she co-starred with Jerry Lewis in "The Disorderly Orderly", and she played Hank Williams' wife in "Your Cheatin' Heart". In the late 1960s, the quality of her movies went downhill. In 1966, she had been on a commercial plane flight where the plane nearly crashed, and she dealt with the stress that caused by becoming a private pilot! She won the "Powder Puff Derby" flying event in 1970, being named "Pilot of the Year". In the 1970s and early 1980s, she mostly did TV. She never married, and she got lung cancer, and passed away in 1990, and she was only 58 years old.