Joyce Jameson

Actress Joyce Jameson made her initial splash as a performer in the musical comedy revues of Billy Barnes (her future husband) in the early 1950s. Her curvaceous figure and platinum blond hair were de rigueur in show business at the time, thanks to the phenomenal stardom of Marilyn Monroe. She made her screen debut (albeit uncredited) as a chorus girl in the 1951 musical "Show Boat." She played on her looks, portraying the bubbly bimbo to a host of male TV personalities like Danny Thomas, Steve Allen, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and Jack Benny. She began to be taken more seriously and received juicier parts in the 1960s, in Billy Wilder's comedy "The Apartment," an adaptation of Jean Genet's drama "The Balcony," opposite Elvis Presley in the musical "Frankie and Johnny," and every bit the match for Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in the horror film "Tales of Terror." Jameson continued to appear in a variety of hit TV shows throughout the 1970s and diversified her film roles with appearances in the cult classic "Death Race 2000" and alongside Clint Eastwood twice, in the western "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and the comedy "Every Which Way But Loose." She was a long-time girlfriend of "Man From U.N.C.L.E." co-star Robert Vaughn, who later revealed in his autobiography that Jameson was prone to depression. She committed suicide by an overdose of pills at the age of 54.