Belgian collectors card by Merbotex, Bruxelles (Brussels), no 10. Photo: Universal.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 494. Photo: Universal International.
Italian postcard by Rotalcolor, no. 4.
Cult success
Mara Corday was born Marilyn Joan Watts in Santa Monica, California, in 1930. Her parents were Emerson Watts and Shirley Wood, both hardworking middle-class but thrown into a financial struggle during the Depression era. Her grandfather was David Watts, a Shakespearean actor. The family moved frequently until her father found steady work as a certified public accountant.
With her elder brother Richard, Marilyn often spent entire days at the local cinemas. By age 13, when her family moved to the greater Los Angeles area, she worked as an usherette in legitimate theatres. It provided her the opportunity to see first-hand the behind-the-scenes inner workings of live stage productions and fed her developing aspirations to be an actress. One day on the beach, at age 15, she was approached by a boy who needed a model for a photo contest in the local paper. Agreeing to pose, the picture was submitted and won the contest.
At 17, she 'advanced. her age to eighteen and found work dancing in the back row of the chorus at the Earl Carroll Theatre, the famous showman's theatre restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. She fashioned herself the name Mara Corday - believing it to be more exotic or glamorous. Within the first year, Mara graduated from the ensemble line to principal showgirl. She went on to perform skits with the show's comic star, Pinky Lee. When the theatre closed upon Earl Carroll's untimely death in a plane crash, Mara moved on to short stints dancing at Las Vegas' Last Frontier Hotel, George White Scandals of 1950 at the San Francisco's Geary Theatre, and briefly (as a blonde) in the Los Angeles Greek Theatre production of 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'.
Her physical beauty brought her jobs as a photographer's model, and she became one of the most photographed models of her era. In 1951, Corday was lucky enough to appear in a small Los Angeles production of William Saroyan's 'The Time of Your Life', where she was seen by Paul Kohner, one of Hollywood's top agents. This led to a bit part as a showgirl in the film Two Tickets to Broadway (James V. Kern, 1951) starring Tony Martin. Producer Hal Wallis saw Mara's photo in a magazine and screen-tested her and she joined his small stable of actors in 1953. She appeared as a waitress in the Wallis-produced Dean Martin / Jerry Lewis 3-D comedy Money From Home (George Marshall, 1953) at Paramount. Because Wallis' company was dissolved 6 months later, Mara's agent then took the screen test to Universal-International which had in place a 'talent program' offering a wide array of training in the dramatic arts.
With UIP, Corday was given small roles in various B movies and television series. In 1954 on the set of Playgirl (Joseph Pevney, 1954), starring Shelley Winters, she met actor Richard Long. Following the death of Long's wife, the two began dating and they married in 1957. Mara Corday appeared as a pin-up girl in numerous men's magazines during the 1950s. Having posed years earlier for an Esquire Magazine layout which was not used, the photographer sold the photos to Playboy Magazine and Mara thereby became the Playmate of the October 1958 issue of Playboy.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 506. Photo: International Press.
German collectors card by Druckerei Hanns Uhrig, Frankfurt a. M. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.
Spanish postcard, no. 39.
Iconic sequence
Mara Corday's roles were small until 1955. Universal saw that Corday enjoyed a strong following and received a lot of fan mail, so the studio cast her in her first starring role with Lex Barker in the Western The Man from Bitter Ridge (Jack Arnold, 1955). The two co-stars had a romance, which lasted only until he married Lana Turner. Then she was cast opposite John Agar in the Sci-Fi film Tarantula (Jack Arnold, 1955) as the demure, intelligent scientist's assistant. In Tarantula, a spider escapes from an isolated Arizona desert laboratory experimenting with giantism. In a brief period of time the spider grows to the size of a house, then an office building. Soon livestock and then people begin disappearing.
The B-film grossed more money for the studio than any other that year, and Mara was given the 'star' treatment. Radio and TV interviews, personal appearance tours and photo layouts all followed. In the long run, Tarantula (Jack Arnold, 1955) proved to be a cult success. At the set of the film, she met actor Clint Eastwood with whom she would remain lifelong friends.
She also appeared in the Kirk Douglas feature Man Without a Star (1955), directed by King Vidor. She was getting bigger and better roles in films aimed at mainstream audiences, including the Western A Day of Fury (Harmon Jones, 1956). In 1956, she had a recurring role in the ABC television series Combat Sergeant. From 1959 to early 1961, Corday worked exclusively doing guest spots on various television series. When MCA took control of Universal-International, they completely phased out the contract-player system. All but a few select male stars received termination notices. Mara went free-lancing.
Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "In The Giant Claw (Fred F. Sears, 1957), which suffered from ludicrous special effects, she was the best thing to look at in the movie, even for filmgoers under age 13; and in The Black Scorpion (Edward Ludwig, 1957), she even supplied her wardrobe, and looked nothing less than stunning in virtually all of her scenes, and got to act the role of a full-blooded heroine, complete with acts of bravery of her own." Mara Corday then gave up her career to devote her time to raising a family. During her seventeen-year tumultuous marriage to Richard Long, she had three children, actress Valerie Long, Carey Long and Gregory Long. During the first year of the marriage, she had threatened to divorce her husband ten times, even going so far as hiring an attorney
A few years after her husband's death in 1974, Corday's friend Clint Eastwood offered her a chance to return to filmmaking with a supporting role in his film The Gauntlet (1977). She had a brief but significant role in Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood, 1983), where she played the waitress dumping sugar into Harry Callahan's coffee in that film's iconic 'Go ahead, make my day' sequence. She acted with Eastwood again in Pink Cadillac (Buddy Van Horn, 1989) as well as in her last film, The Rookie (Clint Eastwood, 1990). Corday has been working on various film-related writing projects and has also been delighted to discover that she has still many fans for her three cult films, Tarantula (1955), The Giant Claw (1957), and The Black Scorpion (1957).
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit. (Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), no. 3128. Photo: Universal International.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, no. 559. Photo: Universal International.
British postcard in the Celebrity Autograph Series by Celebrity Publishers, London, no. 220. Photo: Universal-International. Publicity still for Man Without a Star (King Vidor, 1955).
Spanish postcard, no. 210.
Sources: MaraCorday.com, Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Tom Weaver (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia and IMDb.
This post was last updated on 24 October 2023.
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