Debra Paget

Debra Paget
with John Derek from the trailer for The Ten Commandments (1956)
Born	Debralee Griffin August 19, 1933 (1933-08-19) (age 78) Denver, Colorado, USA
Years active	1948–1965
Spouse	David Street (1958–1958) (divorced) Budd Boetticher (1960–1961) (divorced) Louis C. Kung (1964–1980) (divorced) 1 child

Debra Paget (born August 19, 1933) is an American actress and entertainer who rose to prominence in the 1950s and early 1960s in a variety of feature films including Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments and Love Me Tender, the film début of Elvis Presley.

Early life and career

Paget was born in Denver, Colorado as Debralee Griffin to show-business parents Frank H. and Margaret Griffin. She took the stage name "Paget" from two of her ancestors, Lord and Lady Paget of England.^{[citation needed]} The family moved from Denver to Los Angeles in the 1930s to be close to the developing film industry. Her mother, actress Margaret Griffin, was determined that Debra and her siblings would also make their careers in show business. This ambition was realized: Paget's sisters Judith ("Teala Loring") and Lezlie ("Lisa Gaye"), and her brother Frank ("Ruell Shayne") all entered the business as either cast or crew.^[1]

Paget had her first professional job at age 8,^[1] and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. In the period 1950-1956 she also took part in six original radio plays for Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts in four episodes of Lux Radio Theater, sharing the microphone with such actors as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Stack. The latter set included dramatizations of two of her feature films.

Paget's first notable film role was as "Teena Riconti", girlfriend of the character played by Richard Conte, in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak. Fresh out of high school in 1949, she acted in three other films before being signed by 20th Century-Fox. Her first vehicle under Fox was 1950's successful film, Broken Arrow with James Stewart. Paget played an Indian maiden, Sonseeahray ("Morningstar"), who gives up her life to save Stewart's character.

Paget again played an Indian Princess 'Appearing Day' in White Feather (1955) along with Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter and later at MGM replaced Anne Bancroft as the Indian girl in The Last Hunt with Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger. In 1953 Paget, wearing a blonde wig, auditioned with Anita Ekberg, Irish McCalla and a fourth unknown actress for the starring role in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She went on to starring roles in a variety of films, appearing along with such major stars as Richard Basehart, Michael Rennie, Cornel Wilde, Raymond Massey, Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anthony Quinn, Edward G. Robinson, Elvis Presley, Joseph Cotten, Robert Wagner and Donald Crisp.

Leaving the studio system

The Hollywood studio system dominated American feature film production in the first half of the 20th century. Under it, an actor would sign an exclusive contract to make films for a major studio, such as Fox. An actor would be slated for a specific number of films and could count on appearing with some of the top stars of the day in films produced with at least reasonable competence. Thus, actors just starting out could be sure of getting experience and exposure.

It was a system that worked well, at first, for Paget; she had beauty and talent, and her early Fox films did well, so the studio bolstered her film career. During the year after Princess of the Nile was released, the fan mail Paget received at 20th Century-Fox was topped only by that for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.^[2] However, by the mid-1950s, it was clear to Fox executives that she could not carry a film on her own.

But it was during this time that she appeared in what would become her signature role—Lilia the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille's monumental production of The Ten Commandments - Fox lent her to Paramount. Also in 1955, she broke the exclusivity clause of her contract; White Feather (1955) was not a Fox film. The studio dropped her contract and 1957's The River's Edge was the last film she made for Fox. During this period she tried out for the title role in the 1955 TV series Sheena: Queen of the Jungle but lost out to Irish McCalla.^[3]

After that, Paget's career began to decline. She was typically cast in "exotic" roles such as South Sea Island maidens or middle-eastern harem girls. She travelled to Germany in 1959 to join the cast of Fritz Lang's two-film adventure saga (called in America Journey to the Lost City) in a role that recalled her Shalimar/Taura of Princess of the Nile. Like the Egyptian epic, "Lost City" is remembered chiefly for her energetic dance scenes. She acted in a pair of films shot in Italy. Her final feature film was The Haunted Palace, a 1963 horror film directed by Roger Corman for American International Pictures.

Paget had done television work, both comedy and drama, throughout her career. Her last performance in this medium came in a December 1965 episode of Burke's Law. She retired from entertainment in 1965, after marrying a wealthy Chinese-American oil executive.

Paget turned to Christianity. She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She comes out of retirement occasionally to appear on TBN as a guest.^[1] Currently, she lives in Houston, Texas, where her sisters Meg and Lezlie Gae (stage name: Lisa Gaye) also reside.

In 1987, the Motion Picture & Television Fund presented Paget with its Golden Boot Award. This award is presented to actors, writers, directors and stunt crew who "have contributed so much to the development and preservation of the western tradition in film and television."^[4]

Marriages and other relationships

In 1958, Paget was married for four months to actor and singer David Street; the marriage was annulled. In 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a prominent director. They separated after just 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961. (In his later years, Boetticher ascribed the failure of this marriage to the daunting difficulties he encountered when he went to Mexico to make a film about the life of his friend, legendary bullfighter Carlos Arruza.) Paget left the entertainment field in 1964 after marrying Louis C. Kung, a Chinese-American nephew of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, who was successful in the oil industry. This third marriage produced a son, Greg. Kung and Paget divorced in 1980.

Acting roles

Feature films

Year	Title	Director	Role
1948	Cry of the City	Robert Siodmak	Teena Riconti
1949	Mother Is a Freshman	Lloyd Bacon	Linda
1949	It Happens Every Spring	Lloyd Bacon	Alice
1949	House of Strangers	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	Maria Domenico
1950	Broken Arrow	Delmer Daves	Sonseeahray
1950	Fourteen Hours	Henry Hathaway	Ruth
1951	Bird of Paradise	Delmer Daves	Kalua
1951	Anne of the Indies	Jacques Torneur	Molly LaRochelle
1952	Belles on Their Toes	Henry Levin	Martha Gilbreth
1952	Les Misérables	Lewis Milestone	Cosette
1952	Stars and Stripes Forever	Henry Koster	Lily Becker
1954	Prince Valiant	Henry Hathaway	Ilene
1954	Princess of the Nile	Harmon Jones	Princess Shalimar/Taura
1954	Demetrius and the Gladiators	Delmer Daves	Lucia
1954	The Gambler from Natchez	Henry Levin	Melanie Barbee
1955	White Feather	Robert D. Webb	Appearing Day
1955	Seven Angry Men	Charles Marquis Warren	Elizabeth Clark
1956	The Last Hunt	Richard Brooks	Indian girl
1956	The Ten Commandments	Cecil B. DeMille	Lilia
1956	Love Me Tender	Robert D. Webb	Cathy Reno
1957	The River's Edge	Allan Dwan	Margaret Cameron
1957	Omar Khayyam	William Dieterle	Sharain
1958	From the Earth to the Moon	Byron Haskin	Virginia Nicholl
1959	The Tiger of Eschnapur	Fritz Lang	Seetha
1959	The Indian Tomb	Fritz Lang	Seetha
1960	Cleopatra's Daughter	Fernando Cherchio	Shila
1960	Why Must I Die?	Roy Del Ruth	Dottie Manson
1961	Most Dangerous Man Alive	Allan Dwan	Linda Marlow
1961	Rome, 1585	Mario Bonnard	Esmeralda
1962	Tales of Terror (segment: "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar")	Roger Corman	Helene Valdemar
1962	The Haunted Palace	Roger Corman	Ann Ward

TV appearances

• THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR (Season 5, Episode 9) – Herself
  Original Air Date: 28 November 1954
• THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR (Season 5, Episode 20) – Herself
  Original Air Date: 13 March 1955
• The 20th Century-Fox Hour: "Gun in His Hand" (dir. Lewis Allen) – "Mary Conners"
  4 April 1956 (Season 1, Episode 13)
• The Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956 (as herself, in a skit with Elvis Presley)
• CLIMAX!: "The Man Who Lost His Head" – "Maria"
  Original Air Date: 26 July 1956 (Season 2, Episode 40)
• CLIMAX!: "Carnival at Midnight" – "Natalie"
  Original Air Date: 3 January 1957 (Season 3, Episode 12)
• Premiere Performance (1957 series) Alternated as host with Jeffrey Hunter
• CIMARRON CITY: "The Beauty and the Sorrow" – "Margaret"
  Original Air Date: 7 February 1959 (Season 1, Episode 18)
• WAGON TRAIN: "The Marie Dupree Story" – "Marie Dupree"
  Original Air Date: 19 March 1958 (Season 1, Episode 25)
• WAGON TRAIN: "The Stagecoach Story" – "Angela DeVarga"
  Original Air Date: 30 September 1959 (Season 3, Episode 1)
• RIVERBOAT: "The Unwilling" – "Lela Candida"
  Original Air Date: 11 October 1959 (Season 1, Episode 5)
• THE MAN AND THE CHALLENGE: "Invisible Force" – "Liza Dantes"
  Original Air Date: 17 October 1959 (Season 1, Episode 6)
• THE DUPONT SHOW WITH JUNE ALLYSON: "No Place to Hide" – "Eve Barnes"
  Original Air Date: 21 December 1959 (Season 1, Episode 13)
• JOHNNY RINGO: "East is East" – "Agnes St. John"
  Original Air Date: 7 January 1960 (Season 1, Episode 14)
• THE MILLIONAIRE: "Millionaire Mara Robinson" – "Mara Robinson"
  Original Air Date: 26 April 1960 (Season 6, Episode 31)
• TALES OF WELLS FARGO: "Man of Another Breed" – "Kate Timmons"
  Original Air Date: 2 December 1961 (Season 6, Episode 10)
• RAWHIDE: "Incident in the Garden of Eden" (1960) – "Laura Ashley"
  Original Air Date: 17 June 1960 (Season 2, Episode 31)
• RAWHIDE: "The Hostage Child" (1962) – " Estuella Briscoe"
  Original Air Date: 9 March 1962 (Season 4, Episode 22)
• BURKE'S LAW: "Who Killed Eleanora Davis?" – "Juliet"
  Original Air Date: 20 December 1963 (Season 1, Episode 13)
• BURKE'S LAW: "Who Killed Wimbledon Hastings?" – "Helen Harper"
  Original Air Date: 3 February 1965 (Season 2, Episode 20)

Radio plays

Family Theater

• 1950-11-29 "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
• 1952-01-23 "The Thinking Machine" – Donald O'Connor, Debra Paget
• 1953-02-11 "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Robert Stack, Debra Paget
• 1953-12-09 "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
• 1955-07-27 "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
• 1956-11-07 "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero^[5]

Lux Radio Theater

• 1951-01-22 "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Deborah Paget
• 1952-09-22 "I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Michael Pate
• 1952-12-22 "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Robert Newton
• 1953-04-20 "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad^[6]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "When You Wish Upon a Star, or It's a Star-Spangled Life: Family Cast"
2. ^ Elvis' Women
3. ^ IMDB page on Sheena: Queen of the Jungle
4. ^ Golden Boot Awards
5. ^ Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Family Theater
6. ^ Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Lux Radio Theater

Further reading

• Kinchlow, Ben, "Praise the Lord", TBN Newsletter (USA), 2001, Vol. 28, Issue 9
• Wandworth, James, "Ready for love", Motion Picture and Television Magazine (USA), July 1953, Vol. 85, Issue 6, pp. 38–39 & 73-74
• Weaver, Tom, "First Maid in the Moon", Starlog (USA), April 1998, Issue 249, pp. 63–67
• Weaver, Tom, "Working in the B's", Classic Images (USA), September 2002, Issue 327, pp. 65–68

External links

• Debra Paget at the Internet Movie Database
• Debra Paget at Yahoo! Movies
• Debra Paget at AllRovi

Persondata
Name	Paget, Debra
Alternative names	Griffin, Debralee
Short description	Actor
Date of birth	1933-8-19
Place of birth	Denver, Colorado
Date of death
Place of death