Mara Corday, model and star of 1950s sci-fi movies, has died aged 95.
She was born Marilyn Joan Watts in Santa Monica, California, in 1930. Her father Emerson held many jobs, from auditor to chauffeur; while her mother Shirley was a stenographer. As a teenager, she worked as an usherette at the Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles; and at seventeen, she was hired as a showgirl by producer Earl Carroll.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these locations were also visited by another young woman who would later find fame in Hollywood. In 1945, Norma Jeane Dougherty’s first wedding reception had been held at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard; and three years later, under her new name of Marilyn Monroe, she went to the Mayan Theatre with photographer Bruno Bernard to study burlesque dancers, in preparation for her first lead role in Ladies of the Chorus.
“I used to say to my mother, ‘I don’t have to go to school because I will marry a movie star,’” Corday told the LA Times in 1980. “My mother got fed up. She saw an ad, ‘Looking for New Faces,’ and my mother took me to the tryouts at Earl Carroll’s.” She started in the chorus line, but was soon performing skits with comedian Pinky Lee. Her own name change came at this time, combining the nickname ‘Mara’ with the Corday perfume brand for an exotic flair.
After Carroll died in 1948, Mara danced in Las Vegas nightclubs. By 1950 she was back in Los Angeles, appearing in a production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, where Monroe was photographed by Ed Clark in the same year for a scrapped LIFE shoot. Briefly blonde, Mara was one of six actresses portraying Lorelei Lee. (It’s unknown if Marilyn saw the show, but she visited the Broadway production in 1951 before securing her breakthrough role in Twentieth Century-Fox’s 1953 adaptation.)
Mara followed the starlet’s familiar path by modelling for girlie magazines, and would grace the cover of Hit! in 1951, with Monroe featured inside. In 1953, Eye named Corday as a ‘sensational new rival’ to Marilyn, as she recreated Monroe’s infamous nude calendar pose in a strapless gold bikini. Her popularity led to a contract at Universal, and an uncredited appearance as ‘Girl on the Balcony’ in Son of Ali Baba (1952), which made a star of leading man Tony Curtis. They worked together again in So This is Paris (1954.)
After another bit part alongside comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in Money From Home (1953), Mara joined the cast of Playgirl (1954), a film noir starring Shelley Winters and Richard Long, a former juvenile lead from the Ma and Pa Kettle series. He was then married to 21-year-old actress Suzan Ball, who died of cancer less than a year later.
By 1955 Mara was second only to Monroe as the US Armed Forces’ favourite pin-up, according to the Boston Globe. In an interview for Picturegoer – with a cover shoot by Bruno Bernard – she admitted having ‘just missed being another Marilyn.’ In 1956, they were both featured on the cover of a Danish news weekly, Around the World.
A supporting role in King Vidor’s acclaimed Man Without a Star (1955) led to her being second-billed in another Western, The Man From Bitter Ridge, starring Lex Barker, the musclebound star of Tarzan movies whom she had once dated. She then co-starred with fellow bombshell Jane Russell – the brunette from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – in Foxfire. Mara went on to make several more Westerns, including Raw Edge (1956), with Rory Calhoun; plus A Day of Fury, Naked Gun, and Quiet Gun (1957.)
But sci-fi shockers were Universal’s lifeblood, and Mara reluctantly found her niche in a string of ‘monster movies,’ starting with Tarantula! in 1955. The film depicts a professor experimenting with gigantism to create a super-nutrient in the Arizona desert. When an enormous tarantula escapes from the laboratory to terrorise a nearby town, Mara (a ‘lady scientist’) and a local doctor are called in to assist. “The whole world is after him,” Mara told gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. “He’s a pretty unhappy spider, I can tell you.”
Despite her on-screen heroics Mara found the experience gruelling, and called upon her stand-in for a scene in which she had to pick up a mouse or rat. For her next role, in the TV anthology series Matinee Theatre, she was billed under her real name, Marilyn Watts. But the ‘scream queen’ die was cast, and in 1957 she starred in The Giant Claw, Undersea Girl, and The Black Scorpion. While filming in Mexico she found a coral snake in her hotel room, and her screams brought a bellboy to the rescue. “After working with scorpions all day,” she admitted, “I’m in no condition to combat snakes at night.”
She longed to play different parts – “even a murder mystery would have been nice” – but by 1957, she had more personal matters in mind, as she had married her erstwhile co-star, Richard Long, in Las Vegas. Then in 1958 she was Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Month, sharing the honours as ‘Miss October’ with blonde starlet Pat Sheehan.
Six years after Marilyn Monroe’s nude calendar scandal, sex was going mainstream on newsstands if not the silver screen – Universal had refused her plea to wear a negligee for the ending of Tarantula! However, she drew the line at full-frontal nudity: “If you show that, what’s left, what do you do for an encore?”
Her marriage was tempestuous from the outset, and in 1961, Richard Long was jailed for beating her while drunk, but she withdrew her complaint. “I divorced him 10 times the first year of our marriage, getting a lawyer and everything,” she recalled, “and 13 times the second year …” She added, “He’d plead literally on his hands and knees, ‘Please forgive me, I don’t know why I did it, give me another chance.’”
After a final movie outing in Girls on the Loose (1958), Mara played occasional guest spots in popular TV shows like Peter Gunn and Laramie. Although Tarantula was reissued in 1962, she left the spotlight to raise their three children, while Long’s career surged on the small screen with leading roles in 77 Sunset Strip and The Big Valley.
“Once I got married, I just sort of put blinders on and concentrated on my children,” Mara said. “That was the most important thing in my life, my family.” However, she later learned that her husband had refused roles on her behalf – including The Oregon Trail (1959), with Nina Shipman taking her place opposite Fred McMurray.
Richard Long died in 1974, aged 47, having suffered from cardiac problems for many years. Widowed with a young family to support, Mara decided to resume her acting career. In 1976, she appeared in an episode of Joe Forrester, a TV police drama starring Lloyd Bridges.
Her big-screen return came courtesy of Clint Eastwood – “the most loyal human being in this business” – who directed and starred in The Gauntlet (1977), giving Mara a small role as a prison matron. They had met over years earlier at Universal, when newcomer Eastwood played an uncredited bit part in Tarantula!
“He put her in movies because she didn’t have health insurance, and he also thought she was a good actress,” Mara’s daughter explained. “He’d say, ‘Why aren’t you working?’”
In Magnum Force (1983), Corday played a waitress in the diner where police inspector ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan (Eastwood) orders his morning coffee. One day, he arrives while four gunmen are holding the staff and customers hostage. Knowing he never takes sugar, Mara pours copious amounts of sugar into his drink as a silent warning – but he ignores her and continues reading his newspaper.
After leaving, Eastwood spits out the coffee and returns to complain. Confronted by the gunmen, he shoots three – and when the fourth holds a gun to Corday’s head, he utters the immortal line: ‘Go ahead, make my day.’
Mara went on to appear in two more Eastwood movies, Pink Cadillac (1989), and The Rookie (1990.) Even in later years she lost none of her spark. While in hospital in her late eighties, a doctor asked which medications she was taking. “I’m not on any medication,” she said. “The only thing I take every night is two martinis.”
Mara Corday died of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease on February 9, 2025, at her home in Valencia, California. Known to friends and family by her legal name, Marilyn Long, she is survived by two of her children, Valerie and Gregory Long. Her eldest son, Carey Long, died in 2008.
The Marilyn Report 