Mari Blanchard

American actress Mari Blanchard trained from childhood for a dancing career, but a bout with polio put an end to those dreams. Undaunted, she became an advertising model, then entered films in 1950 after attracting attention in a bubble-bath pose. Possessed of a striking but somewhat synthetic beauty, Mari was most effectively cast as tarts, homewreckers, and other assorted villainesses. Her most prolific work was in tongue-in-cheek exotic roles, such as the Queen of Venus in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) and the Arabian princess in Son of Sindbad (1955). In 1960, Mari appeared as hotel-owner Kate O'Hara in the shortlived TV series Klondike, but was dropped from the project when it switched formats in 1961 and was retitled Acapulco. Mari Blanchard's last screen appearance was in 1963, where she was billed twenty-fourth as the likeable town madam in John Wayne's McClintock (she is but one of many townsfolk who refuses to shelter Maureen O'Hara when Big John sets out to give O'Hara a public spanking). After a long bout with cancer, Mari Blanchard died at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in 1970. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide