Debra Paget

She may have hailed from Denver, but actress Debra Paget had the sensual, exotic demeanor of an Arabian Nights princess -- which indeed she played on a few occasions. Signed by 20th Century Fox in 1949, the fresh-out-of-high-school Paget made her cinematic mark in the role of James Stewart's ill-fated Native American wife in Broken Arrow (1950). Most of her subsequent roles were merely decorative, though she was a more than adequate Cosette in the 1952 version of Les Miserables. In 1959, Paget was cast in Fritz Lang's sumptuous international production Journey to the Lost City, gaining extensive publicity coverage for her blood pressure-raising belly dance. After two failed marriages, one to director Budd Boetticher (for whom she had acted in 1955's Seven Men From Now), Debra Paget wed a wealthy Chinese-American oil executive in 1964, the same year that she retired from films. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide