Anjanette Comer obit

Anjanette Comer, Actress in ‘The Loved One’ and ‘The Appaloosa,’ Dies at 86

She also starred in 'Quick, Before It Melts,' 'Guns for San Sebastian' and 'The Baby' but made a few career missteps along the way. 

She was not on the list.

Anjanette Comer, the 1960s ingenue who had leading roles in The Loved One, The Appaloosa and The Baby but passed on two major starring opportunities that could have transformed her career, has died. She was 86.

Comer died May 28 at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, according to a death certificate filed with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health that was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. She battled leukemia and had heart issues.

Comer had chances to star opposite Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park and alongside Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, but she declined to work in both landmark 1967 releases, and Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway, respectively, were the ones who would ultimately benefit.

In a 1981 interview with UPI’s Vernon Scott, Comer said she rejected both jobs because she “had this very important relationship with a man, an actor, who didn’t want me to work in movies. At that time I was young and naive.” She added that she “hated her career.”

The green-eyed Comer, who came from a small town in Texas, also didn’t do herself any favors when she backpedaled on starring with Michael Caine in Funeral in Berlin (1966), a sequel to the Harry Palmer spy thriller The Ipcress File. Unknown to producer Harry Saltzman, she left Germany during filming to be with her boyfriend on weekends and was replaced by Eva Renzi.

“I had a reputation for being crazy because I’d walked out on Funeral in Berlin,” Comer said. “And I guess I was crazy. You see, I didn’t build my career slowly like most successful actresses do. After a couple of TV appearances, I became an instant movie star. I didn’t know how to handle it all emotionally.”

Comer was born on Aug. 7, 1939, in Dawson, Texas. She attended Dawson High School, was voted queen of the Corsicana Fair and Rodeo at age 16 and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, where she was spotted by agent Byron Raphael and signed.

She landed on episodes of My Three Sons and The Donna Reed Show in 1962, then guest-starred the next year on Gunsmoke, Ben Casey and the 90-minute ABC drama Arrest and Trial, which landed her a supporting actress Emmy nomination for her performance as a hooker.

Comer appeared on the two-part 1964 episode of the MGM-NBC series Dr. Kildare famous for giving viewers a look at Yvette Mimieux‘s navel, then made her big-screen debut for the studio that year in Delbert Mann’s Quick, Before It Melts, playing a flight attendant in the comedy that starred George Maharis and Robert Morse.

When she was invited to audition for the role of make-up mortician Aimee Thanatogenous in Tony Richardson’s funeral-industry satire The Loved One (1965), she thought, “How ridiculous — me and 49 others. So I didn’t go,” she told TV Guide in 1964.

“Later it was arranged for me to meet Mr. Richardson personally. We talked about the role, and the next day he called to say I had the part.”

She starred with Morse, whose character has come to bury his uncle, in that film, too, and delivered one of the movie’s most famous lines: “What did you have in mind? Inhumement, entombment, inurnment, immurement?  Some people just lately have preferred ensarcophagusment. It’s very individual.”

In his review of The Loved One for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote that “Anjanette Comer does nicely as the honey-voiced, nitwit girl, one of the Whispering Glades’ comforters, with whom the hero inconceivably falls in love.”

She starred as a backstabbing heroine with Marlon Brando and John Saxon in Sidney J. Furie’s The Appaloosa (1966) and played another Mexican woman in Guns for San Sebastian (1968). In between, she appeared with Robert Wagner and Jill St. John in Banning (1967).

Her next films, In Enemy Country (1968), Rabbit, Run (1970) and The Firechasers (1971), co-starring Tony Franciosa, James Caan and Chad Everett, respectively, didn’t create much heat, but her fans were delighted to see her portray an earnest social worker opposite Ruth Roman in the bizarre horror film The Baby (1973).

Marianna Hill, who also starred in The Baby, praised Comer’s work in a 2016 interview with Shaun Chang for his Hill Place blog. “She would tell me, ‘I’m going to create an inner life and this and that for my character,’” she recalled. “I would listen to her and I would create these secret choices for my character [as well].”

Comer’s résumé included the Tony Curtis-starring Lepke (1975), Fire Sale (1977), Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath (1995) and A Bird of the Air (2011) and TV guest-starring stints on Bonanza, Mod Squad, Love, American Style, Mannix, Columbo, Jake and the Fatman, The Blue Knight, Hotel and The Practice.

The romance that led Comer to lose focus on her career in the ’60s never came to anything, but she was married to author, screenwriter and director Robert Klane (Weekend at Bernie’s, Where’s Poppa?, Fire Sale, Thank God It’s Friday) from 1976 until their 1983 divorce.

Survivors include her older sister, Jerra Tillman, who when contacted did not want to comment on Comer’s death.

Comer told UPI’s Scott in that 1981 interview that she was “absolutely certain I will get back to the high point of my career. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. I have to believe that so other people will believe it, too.”

 

Filmography

Film

Year     Title     Role     Notes

1964    Quick, Before It Melts            Tiara Marshall

1965    The Loved One           Aimee Thanatogenous

1966    The Appaloosa            Trini Medena  

1967    Banning           Carol Lindquist          

1968    La Bataille de San Sebastian   Kinita  English Title: Guns for San Sebastian

1968    In Enemy Country      Denise

1970    Rabbit, Run     Ruth Leonard

1971    The Firechasers           Toby Collins   

1972    Blood Feast     Cathy  

1973    The Baby        Ann Gentry    

1975    Lepke  Bernice Meyer

1975    The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery    Arlevia Jessup

1977    Fire Sale          Marion Fikus  

1992    Netherworld    Mrs. Palmer    

1995    The Underneath          Mrs. Chambers           

2003    Screen Door Jesus       Verna Lynn Cunningham       

2011    A Bird of the Air         Mrs. Weber     

Television

Year     Title     Role     Notes

1962    My Three Sons            Janie Stempel  Season 3 Episode 11: ”Heat Wave”

1962    The Donna Reed Show           Barbie  Season 5 Episode 13: "The Winning Ticket"

1963    Gunsmoke       Cara Miles       Season 9 Episode 8: "Carter Caper"

1963    Ben Casey       June     Season 3 Episode 13: "My Love, My Love"

1963    Arrest and Trial           Annabelle Selinsky     Season 1 Episode 12: "Journey into Darkness"

1964    Dr. Kildare      Carol Montgomery      2 episodes

1964    Bonanza          Joan Wingate   Season 5 Episode 22: "Love Me Not"

1964    Combat!          Annette            Season 2 Episode 27: "Weep No More"

1969    The Young Lawyers    Bonnie Baron  Season 1 Episode 0: "The Young Lawyers"

1969–1971      Love, American Style Billie Joe Hollister / Audrey Woods / Chris   3 episodes

1970    Then Came Bronson   Vhea Samos    Season 1 Episode 26: "What's an Ark Without Centaurs?"

1970    The Mod Squad          Billie    Season 3 Episode 1: "The Long Road Home"

1971    The Most Deadly Game          Gretchen          Season 1 Episode 10: "The Classic Burial Position"

1971    Banyon            Diane Jennings            Season 1 Episode 0: "Pilot"

1971    Five Desperate Women           Lucy    TV Movie

1971    The Deadly Hunt        Martha TV Movie

1972    Columbo         Jenifer Welles  Season 2 Episode 1: "Étude in Black"

1972    Mannix            Gina Hunter/Margo Moore     Season 6 Episode 4: "Broken Mirror"

1972–1973      Doctor Simon Locke   Andi / Norma Carlin   2 episodes

1973    Search Anne Ramon   Season 1 Episode 18: "Goddess of Destruction"

1974    Police Story     Constantina     2 episodes

1974    The Wide World of Mystery   Danna Forester            Season 2 Episode 8: "Shadow of Fear"

1974    The Wide World of Mystery   Danna Forester            TV Movie

1974    Night Games   Jenny Kenedisis          TV Movie

1974    Terror on the 40th Floor          Darlene Porter TV Movie

1975    Death Stalk      Pat Trahey       TV Movie

1975    Petrocelli         Mary Thorpe   Season 1 Episode 17: "A Lonely Victim"

1975    Harry O           Grace Duvall   Season 2 Episode 4: "Shades"

1975    S.W.A.T.         Alicia Woodward        Season 2 Episode 11: "Strike Force"

1975    Barbary Coast Mary Louise    Season 1 Episode 11: "The Day Cable Was Hanged"

1975    The Blue Knight         Reba    Season 1 Episode 3: "Odds Against Tomorrow"

1976    Jigsaw John     Mavis Bellamy            Season 1 Episode 1: "Promise to Kill"

1976    McNaughton's Daughter         Andrea Farelli Miniseries (Episode 1: "Love Is a Four-Letter Word")

1976    Baretta Det. Ann Harley          Season 3 Episode 8: "Dear Tony"

1977    Dead of Night Alexis  TV Movie

1980    Barnaby Jones Vivian Harper Season 8 Episode 20: "The Silent Accuser"

1982    The Long Summer of George Adams Venida TV Movie

1986    Mike Hammer Toni Cordell    Season 3 Episode 4: "Mike's Baby"

1988    Hotel   Maggie            Season 5 Episode 12: "Double Take"

1991    Jake and the Fatman    Wanda Lee / Vera Lake           3 episodes

1992    Perry Mason: The Case of the Reckless Romeo         Nora Turner     TV Movie

1995    Streets of Laredo         Beulah Miniseries (2 episodes)

1995    Deadly Family Secrets            Hilda Potter     TV Movie

1999    Profiler            Barbara Henkley         Season 3 Episode 15: "Spree of Love"

1999    The Practice    Sister Christine            Season 3 Episode 19: "Closet Justice"

2002    The Pennsylvania Miners' Story         Sue Unger       TV Movie