Margaret Blye

Maggie Blye is a character actress whose peaking popularity of the mid- to late-1960s provided ample momentum to keep her working steadily for 40 more years in the industry. The blond's first phase of steady work came on TV in the mid-1960s, with appearances on the Westerns "Gunsmoke" and "The Virginian," as well as the hospital drama "Ben Casey." Blye's first credited film role was a substantial part in the 1967 action Western "Hombre," starring Paul Newman, followed that same year by her co-starring turn in the comedy-inflected Western, "Waterhole #3," which starred James Coburn and in which Blye played the sheriff's daughter. She reconnected with Coburn again in the street fighting drama "Hard Times," in 1975, while more than 20 years after playing Carroll O'Connor's daughter in "Waterhole #3," she played his girlfriend on the NBC crime mystery "In the Heat of the Night," in 1988. Blye's other more visible parts include Michael Caine's love interest in the hit 1969 crime comedy "The Italian Job," Kristy McNichol's mother, Ms. Bright, in the 1980 coming-of-age drama "Little Darlings," and as Matt Dillon's mom in the 1982 romance, "Liar's Moon." Otherwise, Blye kept busy through the 1990s and well into the 2000s with mainly forgettable film and television projects, with one notable exception being her appearance on the pilot episode of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," as Mrs. Platt.