Leslie Parrish, Actress in ‘Li’l Abner’ and ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ Dies at 90
She also appeared in 'Three on a Couch,' 'For Love or Money' and 'Batman' before becoming a passionate antiwar activist and conservationist.
She was not on the list.
Leslie Parrish, who starred as the hopelessly in love Daisy Mae in the Paramount Pictures musical Li’l Abner and sported a Queen of Diamonds costume for The Manchurian Candidate, has died. She was 90.
Parrish lived in Washington state and died late last year, Erica Berdan, a daughter of the actress’ second husband, Jonathan Livingston Seagull author Richard Bach, told The Hollywood Reporter. THR only recently learned of her death.
Parrish also starred opposite Vic Morrow (as Dutch Schultz) in Portrait of a Mobster (1961); was one of Thelma Ritter’s daughters (Mitzi Gaynor and Julie Newmar were the others) in For Love or Money (1963), starring Kirk Douglas; and played a Janet Leigh patient who dated Jerry Lewis in Three on a Couch (1966).
In two memorable guest-starring turns on television in 1967, she portrayed USS Enterprise archaeology and anthropology officer Carolyn Palamas on the Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” and was Glacia Glaze, a lovely ice skater and henchwoman in cahoots with Mr. Freeze (Eli Wallach), on Batman.
After Edie Adams starred as Daisy Mae in a Tony-winning turn in the hit Broadway musical comedy based on the Al Capp comic strip, Parrish donned the polka-dot blouse and headed to Dogpatch, USA to star in the 1959 movie version of Li’l Abner opposite Peter Palmer. (Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review said Parrish “fills [the part] out generously.”)
Palmer had played the hillbilly title role in New York, and several others also joined him in the move to Hollywood, including Newmar as Stupefyin’ Jones, Stubby Kaye as Marryin’ Sam and Melvin Frank, who co-wrote the play’s book, as the movie’s director.
In John Frankenheimer’s taut The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Parrish portrayed Jocelyn Jordan, the doomed daughter of a liberal senator (John McGiver), and her costume worn at a party winds up “activating” her boyfriend, sleeper agent Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey). She said it was her favorite role.
Later, Parrish served as an associate producer on Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973), hiring crewmembers — including cinematographer Jack Couffer, an eventual Oscar nominee — and taking care of birds in a room at a Holiday Inn. However, she received credit only as a “researcher” after a reported tiff with writer-director Hall Bartlett.
In 1981, she married Bach, the spiritual author of the best-selling novella on which the movie was based. She served as his inspiration for two subsequent books, The Bridge Across Forever and One, before they divorced in 1999.
Parrish was born Marjorie Hellen on March 18, 1935, in Melrose, Massachusetts. Raised in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania, she studied piano before moving to New York in 1953. She then got a job as a model for the Conover Agency and sat for hours in front of NBC technicians working on a new-fangled invention, color TV.
Signed by Fox in 1954, she appeared in 1955 films including A Man Called Peter, Fred Astaire‘s Daddy Long Legs and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing before moving to MGM and gigs in The Opposite Sex (1956) and Man on Fire (1957).
She was billed as Leslie Parrish for the first time on Li’l Abner after Frank told her that “no one will remember a girl with two first names.”
In her first appearance on Batman, she played a Hollywood starlet named Dawn Robbins who is kidnapped by The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) during the first season in 1966.
The actress also kept busy in the ’60s as she appeared on Bat Masterson, Acapulco, 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, The Red Skelton Hour, The Wild Wild West, The Big Valley and Mannix and films including Sex and the Single Girl (1964), The Money Jungle (1967), The Candy Man (1969) and The Devil’s 8 (1969).
Meanwhile, Parrish was becoming a fervent antiwar activist. On June 23, 1967, after leaving the set of Star Trek, she and thousands of other demonstrators participated in a peace march in Century City with President Johnson in town for a Democratic Party fundraiser. More than 50 people were arrested and many more injured in a clash with police.
“An actress deals in emotions and therefore should be aware of the anguish and suffering going on around her,” she said in 1968.
A biography on her website notes she also helped create an organization called STOP! (Speakers and Talent Organized for Peace); produced rock concerts and other events to raise money for the peace movement; protested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; campaigned for Tom Bradley in his first two runs for Los Angeles mayor in 1969 and ’73; and was instrumental in the launch of KVST-TV, an L.A. forerunner of C-SPAN that was briefly on the air in the ’70s.
She also was married to singer/lyricist Ric Marlow (“A Taste of Honey”) from 1955-61.
In 1981, Bach declared bankruptcy and relinquished rights to royalties from his books to the government, but Parrish gathered “every penny she had,” she told People magazine in 1992, and bought back his copyrights.
The pair also donated conservation easements in a series of transactions over the years that now protect 168 acres of forest land and wildlife habitat in Washington on the Spring Hill Wildlife Sanctuary on Orcas Island’s Mount Woolard. (The sanctuary has acknowledged her death.)
“It’s a dream come true and one of the best things I’ve done in my life,” she said of her donation. “You don’t have to have children to enjoy the idea of preserving land for future generations. It’s what I’m most proud of, and it will surely, more than any other work I’ve ever done, be the accomplishment that outlasts me.”
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