Karen Steele

At 56 years old, Karen Steele has this physical status:

Karen Steele (born on March 20, 1931 – March 12, 1988) was an American actress and actress with more than 60 roles in film and television.

Virginia in Marty, as Mrs Lane in Ride Lonesome, and Eve McHuron in the Star Trek episode "Mudd's Women" include her most popular roles.

Early life

Steele was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Percy Davis Steele, a Bostonian of English descent and a career Marine who was appointed deputy administrator of the Marshall Islands in 1956. Ruth Covey Merritt, a Californian of French and Danish origins, was born in 1966. Steele's childhood in the Hawaiian Islands brought her into contact with the Japanese and Hawaiian languages as well as English.

Steele's leg was cut into coral segments by a surfing crash at 13 years old. She later developed osteomyelitis in the leg, so severe that amputation was considered seriously until a doctor brought to Hawaii from Hong Kong reversed the disease. The leg had to be rebuilt with wires and metal, but after 22 operations, she started recovering to walk.

Steele attended the University of Hawaii and spent a year at Rollins College in Florida. Since then, she began working as a model and cover girl.

Personal life

Dr. Maurice Boyd Ruland, a psychiatrist at the Mohave Mental Health Clinic, remained in Golden Valley, Arizona, in later life. They were married until she died of cancer at the Kingman Regional Medical Center in Kingman, Arizona, at age 56.

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Career

Steele's first acting job was on the radio program Let George Do It. She subsequently appeared in the films The Clown (in an uncredited role, 1953) and Man Crazy (also 1953) as Marge. The following year, she landed the role of Millie Darrow in "So False and So Fair" on the television anthology Studio 57, but a supporting role in Marty (1955) was her highest profile film role. She played Virginia and got the part because director Delbert Mann had confused her with an actress from New York whom he and writer Paddy Chayefsky had intended to play it.

In 1957, she guest starred on the TV program Maverick, as Molly Gleason in the episode "Point Blank" opposite James Garner and Mike Connors. In 1958, she played the titular role in the episode "Madame Faro" of NBC's Jefferson Drum, another western series.

Steele made two guest appearances on CBS's Perry Mason, as Doris Stephanek in "The Case of the Haunted Husband" (1958) and as murder victim Carina Wileen in "The Case of the Fatal Fetish" (1965). She appeared as Mae Dailey in the 1961 episode "Big Time Blues" on the ABC/Warner Brothers drama, The Roaring 20s. Earlier, she was cast in a guest-starring role in another ABC/WB series, The Alaskans starring Roger Moore.

In 1962, she portrayed the part of Dolly LeMoyne in the episode "The Woman Trap" on CBS's Rawhide starring Clint Eastwood. Her character in "Survival of the Fattest", a 1965 episode of NBC's Get Smart, was named Mary 'Jack' Armstrong, said to be "the strongest female enemy agent in the world". This is a reference to Jack Armstrong, the clean-cut fictional hero of Jack Armstrong the All American Boy, an adventure series broadcast on radio from 1933 to 1951. She appeared in an early episode of Star Trek ("Mudd's Women", 1966). Like many actresses, as she got older, she turned to television commercials for income. She also became involved in charitable causes and community service. In early 1970, she went on a handshake tour of service hospitals in the South Pacific, rather than accept a series that would have paid her $78,000. As a result, she lost her agent.

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