Mara Corday
Born Jan. 3rd, 1930

There are some actors and actresses that only make a handful of genre pictures, but make such a strong impression that we always remember them. Mara Corday is one of them. If she would have kept acting longer, instead of deciding to take care of her growing family, maybe we might have seen her in a few more. But it didn’t sound like her marriage to actor Richard Long was the easiest, so maybe it was better not to compete in the business.

But she did make a few genre pictures within a couple of years that I’ve always remembered her from. The first one was Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955), where she met a young actor who she became good friends with. His name was Clint Eastwood. In fact, they remained such good friends, that after her husband died, Eastwood would give her little bit parts in his films, such as The Gauntlet (1977) or Sudden Impact (1983).

She would appear in The Black Scorpion in 1957, with Richard Denning, but it was the other film she made that same year is one that I am most fond of, those she probably isn’t. It is The Giant Claw! Granted, she, along with the rest of the actors, never saw the title terror until it was already out. 

Corday even appeared in Playboy magazine as Playmate of the Month in Oct. 1958, but this was when they didn’t appear nude. But it is shame that we didn’t see more of her on the big screen, since she was a talented actress.