Debra Paget

Debra Paget
File:Debra Paget 1958.jpg Paget in 1958
Born	Debralee Griffin (1933-08-19) August 19, 1933 Denver, Colorado, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1948-1965
Spouse(s)	David Street (m. 1958; div. 1958) Budd Boetticher (m. 1960; div. 1961) Louis C. Kung (m. 1964; div. 1980)
Children	Gregory Kung

Debra Paget (born Debralee Griffin; August 19, 1933) is an American actress and entertainer. She is perhaps best known for her performances in Cecil B. DeMille's epic movie, The Ten Commandments (1956), as well as Love Me Tender (1956), the film debut of Elvis Presley.

Early life

Paget was born in Denver, Colorado, one of five children born to Margaret Allen (née Gibson), a former actress (one source says, "ex-burlesque queen"), and Frank Henry Griffin, a painter. The family moved from Denver to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s to be close to the developing film industry. Debra was enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School when she was 11. Margaret was determined that Debra and her siblings would also make their careers in show business. Three of Paget's siblings, Marcia (Teala Loring), Leslie (Lisa Gaye), and Frank (Ruell Shayne), entered show business.

Paget had her first professional job at age 8, and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Career

File:Debra Paget in Cry of the City trailer.jpg

Paget in the trailer for Cry of the City (1948)

Paget's first notable film role was as Teena Riconti, girlfriend of the character played by Richard Conte, in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak. Fresh out of high school in 1949, she acted in three other films before being signed by 20th Century-Fox. Her first vehicle for Fox was the successful Broken Arrow with James Stewart. Paget played an Native American maiden, Sonseeahray ("morningstar"), who gives up her life to save Stewart's character.

From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original radio plays for Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts in four episodes of Lux Radio Theater, sharing the microphone with such actors as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Stack. The latter set included dramatizations of two of her feature films.

In 1953, wearing a blonde wig, she auditioned along with, among others, Anita Ekberg and Irish McCalla, for the starring role in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which went to McCalla.

In 1955, she broke the exclusivity clause of her contract. She played another Native American girl, Princess Appearing Day, in White Feather (1955) along with Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter and later at MGM replaced Anne Bancroft in The Last Hunt (1956).

The Hollywood studio system dominated American feature film production in the first half of the 20th century. Under it, an actor would sign an exclusive contract to make films for a major studio, such as Fox. The system worked well at first for Paget as her early Fox films did well, so the studio bolstered her film career. During the year after Princess of the Nile was released, the fan mail Paget received at 20th Century-Fox was topped only by that for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.

With John Derek in the trailer for The Ten Commandments (1956)

During this time, Fox lent her to Paramount for the part of Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), her most successful film. She had to wear brown contact lenses to hide her blue eyes; she said that, "If it hadn't been for the lenses I wouldn't have gotten the part." However, she also said that the lenses were "awful to work in because the Kleig lights heat them up."

The River's Edge (1957) was the last film she made for Fox. After that, her career began to decline. She was typically cast in exotic roles such as South Sea Island maidens or middle-east harem girls. In 1959, she traveled to Germany to join the cast of Fritz Lang's two-film adventure saga (called in America Journey to the Lost City) in a role that recalled her role as Shalimar/Taura of Princess of the Nile. Like the Egyptian epic, Lost City is remembered chiefly for her energetic dance scenes.

In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBC western television series, Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin. In the story line, Dan Simpson, played by Eddie Albert, attempts to open a general store despite a raid from pirates who stole $20,000 in merchandise. Russell Johnson appears in this episode as Darius.

In 1960, she appeared as Laura Ashley in the episode "Incident of the Garden of Eden" on CBS's western series, Rawhide. That same year she had played an author, Agnes St. John, the only surviving witness to a brutal stagecoach robbery in another CBS western, Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant in the title role. In 1962, she returned to Rawhide to play the part of Azuela in the episode "Hostage Child" along with James Coburn.

Paget appeared in a pair of films shot in Italy. Her final feature film was The Haunted Palace, a 1963 horror movie directed by Roger Corman for American International Pictures. She did television work throughout her career. Her last performance in this medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's Burke's Law, starring Gene Barry. She retired from entertainment in 1965, after marrying a wealthy oil executive, by whom she had one son, her only child.

Paget became a born-again Christian. She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appears on TBN as a guest.

In 1987, the Motion Picture & Television Fund presented Paget with its Golden Boot Award, which is awarded to those actors, writers, directors and stunt crew who "have contributed so much to the development and preservation of the western tradition in film and television."

Personal life

During production of Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became smitten with Paget, who in 1997 claimed the singer even proposed marriage. At the time, however, the media reported that she was romantically linked with Howard Hughes and nothing came of this. A 1956 article quoted Paget's comments about Hughes:

I was in love with Howard for two years, and I don't care who knows it... I was never alone with him in the whole two years. Mother was always with us... I haven't seen Howard for a long time now, because I'm a one-man woman, and I've got to have a one-woman man... But I'll always remember Howard with fondness.

Paget married actor and singer David Street on January 14, 1958, but she obtained a divorce on April 11, 1958. On March 27, 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a prominent director, in Tijuana, Mexico. They separated after just 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.

Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Ling C. Kung on April 19, 1962. Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive and nephew of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. This third marriage produced a son, Gregory, but ended in divorce in 1980.

Acting roles

Feature films

Year	Title	Director	Role
1948	Cry of the City	Robert Siodmak	Teena Riconti
1949	Mother Is a Freshman	Lloyd Bacon	Linda
1949	It Happens Every Spring	Lloyd Bacon	Alice
1949	House of Strangers	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	Maria Domenico
1950	Broken Arrow	Delmer Daves	Sonseeahray
1950	Fourteen Hours	Henry Hathaway	Ruth
1951	Bird of Paradise	Delmer Daves	Kalua
1951	Anne of the Indies	Jacques Torneur	Molly LaRochelle
1952	Belles on Their Toes	Henry Levin	Martha Gilbreth
1952	Les Misérables	Lewis Milestone	Cosette
1952	Stars and Stripes Forever	Henry Koster	Lily Becker
1954	Prince Valiant	Henry Hathaway	Ilene
1954	Princess of the Nile	Harmon Jones	Princess Shalimar/Taura
1954	Demetrius and the Gladiators	Delmer Daves	Lucia
1954	The Gambler from Natchez	Henry Levin	Melanie Barbee
1955	White Feather	Robert D. Webb	Appearing Day
1955	Seven Angry Men	Charles Marquis Warren	Elizabeth Clark
1956	The Last Hunt	Richard Brooks	Indian girl
1956	The Ten Commandments	Cecil B. DeMille	Lilia
1956	Love Me Tender	Robert D. Webb	Cathy Reno
1957	The River's Edge	Allan Dwan	Margaret Cameron
1957	Omar Khayyam	William Dieterle	Sharain
1958	From the Earth to the Moon	Byron Haskin	Virginia Nicholl
1959	The Tiger of Eschnapur	Fritz Lang	Seetha
1959	The Indian Tomb	Fritz Lang	Seetha
1960	Cleopatra's Daughter	Fernando Cerchio	Shila
1960	Why Must I Die?	Roy Del Ruth	Dottie Manson
1961	Most Dangerous Man Alive	Allan Dwan	Linda Marlow
1961	Rome, 1585	Mario Bonnard	Esmeralda
1962	Tales of Terror (segment: "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar")	Roger Corman	Helene Valdemar
1963	The Haunted Palace	Roger Corman	Ann Ward

Radio plays

Family Theater

• 1950-11-29 "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
• 1952-01-23 "The Thinking Machine" – Donald O'Connor, Debra Paget
• 1953-02-11 "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Robert Stack, Debra Paget
• 1953-12-09 "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
• 1955-07-27 "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
• 1956-11-07 "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero

Lux Radio Theatre

• 1951-01-22 "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Deborah Paget
• 1952-09-22 "I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Michael Pate
• 1952-12-22 "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Robert Newton
• 1953-04-20 "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad

Stars over Hollywood

• 1953-02-21 "The Wonderful Miss Prinn" – Debra Paget

External links

• Debra Paget at the Internet Movie Database
• Debra Paget at AllMovie
• Debra Paget on YouTube dancing with a cobra in The Indian Tomb