Susan Oliver Biography

Susan Oliver (February 13, 1932 - May 10, 1990) was an American actress, television director and aviator.

Early life and family

Susan Oliver was born Charlotte Gercke, the daughter of George Gercke, journalist, and Ruth Hale Oliver, an astrology practitioner, in New York City in 1932. Her father was a political reporter and journalist for the New York World. Her parents divorced when she was still a child. In June 1949, Oliver joined her mother in Southern California, where Ruth was in the process of becoming a well known Hollywood astrologer. Oliver made a decision to embark upon a career as an actress and chose the stage name Susan Oliver.

Career

Early years

By September 1949 and using her new name, Oliver returned to the East Coast to begin drama studies at Swarthmore College, followed by professional training at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. After working in summer stock, regional theater and in unbilled bits in daytime and primetime TV shows and commercials, she made her first major television appearance playing a supporting role in the July 31, 1955 episode of the live drama series Goodyear TV Playhouse, and quickly progressed to leading parts in other shows.

Oliver did numerous TV shows in 1957 and appeared on stage. She began the year with an ingenue part, as the daughter of an 18th-century Manhattan family, in her first Broadway play, Small War on Murray Hill, a Robert E. Sherwood comedy. That same year, Oliver replaced Mary Ure as the female lead in the Broadway production of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger.

The play's short run was immediately followed by larger roles in live TV plays on Kaiser Aluminum Hour, The United States Steel Hour and Matinee Theater. Oliver then went to Hollywood, where she appeared in the November 14, 1957 episode of Climax!, one of the few live drama series based on the West Coast, as well as in a number of filmed shows, including one of the first episodes of NBC's Wagon Train, Father Knows Best, The Americans, and Johnny Staccato.

In July 1957, Oliver was chosen for the title role in her first motion picture, The Green-Eyed Blonde, a low-budget independent melodrama scripted by Dalton Trumbo (under a pseudonym) and released by Warner Bros. in December on the bottom half of a double bill. It is the only motion picture on which Oliver received top billing.

In mid-1958, Oliver began rehearsals for a co starring role in Patate, her second Broadway play. Its seven performance run was even shorter than that of Small War on Murray Hill, but won Oliver a Theatre World Award for "Outstanding Breakout Performance"; it was her last Broadway appearance.

Television and films

On April 6, 1960, the 28-year-old Oliver played a spoiled young runaway, Maggie Hamilton, in "The Maggie Hamilton Story" on NBC's Wagon Train. Flint McCullough, played by Robert Horton, searches for her so the wagon train can proceed on schedule. On November 9, 1960, she was cast as the lead guest star in "The Cathy Eckhart Story" on Wagon Train, with husband-and-wife actors John Larch and Vivi Janiss as Ben and Sarah Harness.

Oliver was cast in the 1960 episode of The Deputy as the long-lost daughter of star Henry Fonda's late girl friend, and appeared in Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre episode "Knife Of Hate" as Susan Pittman. In 1961, Oliver played the part of Laurie Evans in the episode "Incident of His Brother's Keeper" on CBS's Rawhide and in 1963, she played Judy Hall in the episode "Incident at Spider Rock."also in 1962 Oliver appeared as Jeanie in the television series Laramie in the episode "Shadows in the Dust".

Oliver was cast in three episodes each of Adventures in Paradise, Twilight Zone, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, The Naked City, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Burke's Law, The Fugitive, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Spy, The Virginian, and The Name of the Game. She made one appearance on The Andy Griffith Show and ABC's family western series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.

Her most challenging role during this time was as the ambitious wife of doomed country music legend Hank Williams (George Hamilton) in Your Cheatin' Heart (1964). The same year she also starred opposite Jerry Lewis in The Disorderly Orderly, and also appeared in The Man from U.N.C.L.E (1965) and The Love-Ins (1967) with Richard Todd.

Oliver appeared in television films including Carter's Army. Oliver had a continuing role as Ann Howard on ABC's prime-time serial Peyton Place in 1966.

Oliver played the female lead character Vina in "The Cage" (1964), which was the first pilot of Gene Roddenberry's new show, Star Trek. Two years later, Oliver's performance was re-used in the first season, two-part episode "The Menagerie" (1966). The framing device was needed because of significant format and cast changes, in particular Jeffrey Hunter played Captain Christopher Pike in the pilot episode. For a famous fantasy sequence in which her character appeared as an "Orion slave girl", she was covered in green makeup all over her body. A still of her with green skin was frequently seen in the end credits of the show, and became an iconic image of Star Trek, so much so that a 2014 documentary about Susan Oliver's life was titled The Green Girl.

From 1975 to 1976 Oliver was a regular cast member of the soap opera Days of Our Lives and received her only Emmy nomination (for "Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress") in the three-hour, October 25, 1976, NBC made-for-TV movie Amelia Earhart. In addition to television roles Oliver also had roles in several theatrical features including The Gene Krupa Story (1959), BUtterfield 8 (1960), and The Caretakers (1963).

Directing and later years

By the late 1970s with acting assignments becoming scarcer, Oliver turned to directing. She was one of the original 19 women admitted to the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women (AFI DWW) "who, upon her early death, left a good chunk of funding for the DWW." In 1977, she wrote and directed Cowboysan, her AFI DWW short film which presents the fantasy scenario of a Japanese actor and actress playing leads in an American western. Oliver directed two TV episodes, the October 25, 1982, installment of M*A*S*H and the December 4, 1983, entry of one of its sequel series, Trapper John, M.D..

In Oliver's last fully active years, she also appeared in the February 21, 1985, episode of Magnum, P.I., two episodes of Murder, She Wrote (March 31 and December 1), the February 12, 1987, episode of Simon & Simon and the January 10, 1988, episode of the NBC domestic drama Our House. She made her last onscreen appearance in the November 6, 1988 episode of the syndicated horror anthology Freddy's Nightmares. During her career in Hollywood, Oliver appeared in more than one hundred television programs.

Aviator and author

Oliver experienced an event in February 1959 that belied her later aviation accomplishments. She was a passenger aboard Pan Am Flight 115, a Boeing 707 on a transatlantic flight from Paris to New York City when it dropped from to . It was February 3, 1959, the same day Buddy Holly died in an airplane crash. These events caused her to avoid flying for the next year, even turning down job offers (with the exception of auditioning for Butterfield 8) if they were so short notice she could only travel by air. She eventually underwent hypnosis to overcome her fear of flying.

In July 1964, Hal Fishman introduced her to personal flying when he took her on an evening flight over Los Angeles in a Cessna 172. The experience motivated her to return the next day to the Santa Monica Airport to begin training for a Private Pilot certificate. In 1966, while preparing for her own transatlantic flight, she was a passenger in a Piper J-3 Cub when the pilot ran into wires while "show-boating"; the airplane flipped and crashed. She and the pilot escaped injury.

In 1967, piloting her own Aero Commander 200, she became the fourth woman to fly a single-engine aircraft solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the second to do it from New York City. Although she was attempting to fly to Moscow, her odyssey ended in Denmark after the government of the Soviet Union denied her permission to enter its air space. She wrote about her aviation exploits and philosophy of life in an autobiography published in 1983.

In 1968, she was contacted by Learjet to see if she was interested in getting a type rating in one of their jets with the intent to set record flights for them. She earned the rating and even flew some charters (having by that time acquired a commercial pilot certificate in single and multiengine land airplanes), but did not fly any record flights in their jets.

In 1970, Oliver co-piloted a Piper Comanche to victory in the 2760-mile transcontinental race known as the "Powder Puff Derby", which resulted in her being named Pilot of the Year. The pilot was Margaret Mead (not the famous anthropologist), an experienced pilot who had flown in several derbies with different co-pilots. In 1972, her training for a glider rating was chronicled for an episode of the television series The American Sportsman and the segment aired in March 1973.

According to the FAA Registry, the glider rating was issued to Oliver on July 21, 1972. It was her last rating. The Registry shows her to have earned commercial pilot ratings for airplane single engine land, airplane multiengine land, instrument airplane, and private privileges for glider. Her last aviation medical exam was in May 1976; therefore, she could not legally pilot any aircraft except gliders after May 1978, marking the end of her piloting of powered aircraft.

Death

Oliver died from lung cancer on May 10, 1990, at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Selected TV and filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	The Green-Eyed Blonde	Phyllis ("Greeneyes")
1957	The Kaiser Aluminum Hour	Kay	Episode: "So Short a Season"
1957	Crossroads	Connie Willis	Episode: "9:30 Action"
1958	Father Knows Best	Cousin Millie	Episode: "Country Cousin"
1958	Kraft Television Theatre	Pamela	Episode: "The Woman at High Hollow"
1958	Suspicion	Rosemary Russell	Episode: "The Woman Turned to Salt"
1959	Trackdown	Rebecca Ford	Episode: "Blind Alley"
1959	Alcoa Theatre	Bernice Davis	Episode: "The Long House on Avenue A"
1959	The Gene Krupa Story	Dorissa Dinell
1960	Butterfield 8	Norma
1960	Wanted: Dead or alive	Bess	Episode: "The Pariah"
1960	The Untouchables	Roxie Plumber	Episode: "The Organization"
1960	Bonanza	Leta Malvet	Episode: "The Outcast"
1960	Wagon Train	Maggie Hamilton	Episode: "The Maggie Hamilton Story"
1960	The Twilight Zone	Teenya	Episode: "People Are Alike All Over"
1960	Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre	Susan Pittman	Episode: "Knife of Hate"
1961	The Aquanauts	Laura West	Episode: "Stormy Weather"
1961	Rawhide	Laurie Evans	Episode: "Incident of His Brother's Keeper"
1961	The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet	Lori	Episode: "Rick, the Milkman"
1961	Route 66	Joan Maslow	Episode: "Welcome to Amity"
1961	Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre	Hannah Smith	Episode: "Image of a Drawn Sword"
1961	Thriller	Edith Landers	Episode: "Choose a Victim"
1962	Route 66	Claire/Chris	Episode: "Between Hello and Goodbye"
1962	Laramie	Jean Lavelle	Episode: "Shadows in the Dust"
1962	Cain's Hundred	Kitty	Episode: "The Cost of Living"
1962	The Alfred Hitchcock Hour	Annabel Delaney	Episode: "Annabel"
1963	Rawhide	Judy Hall	Episode: "Incident at Spider Rock"
1963	77 Sunset Strip	Kristine Seaver	Episode: "Your Fortune for a Penny"
1963	The Caretakers	Nurse Cathy Clark
1963	The Fugitive	Karen	Episode: "Never Wave Goodbye"
1963	Route 66	Willow	Episode: "Fifty Miles from Home"
1964	Guns of Diablo	Maria
1964	Your Cheatin' Heart	Audrey Williams
1964	The Disorderly Orderly	Susan Andrews
1964	Destry	Rebecca Fairhaven	Episode: "One Hundred Bibles"
1964	The Andy Griffith Show	Jan McNair	Episode: "Prisoner of Love" Season 4 Episode 18
1964	Looking For Love	Jan
1964	Star Trek	Vina	Pilot Episode: "The Cage" Episode: "The Menagerie" (Parts 1 & 2) S1: E12 & E13 respectively (1966) (re-used footage from the pilot)
1965	Seaway	Sue Murray	Episode: "The Sparrows"
1965	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	Ursula Alice Baldwin	Episode: "The Bow-Wow Affair"
1966	A Man Called Shenandoah	Virginia Harvey	Episode: "Rope's End"
1966	Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.	Julie Myers	Episode: "A Date with Miss Camp Henderson"
1966	My Three Sons	Jerry Harper	Episode: "The Awkward Age"
1966	Peyton Place	Ann Howard	48 episodes
1967	"T.H.E. Cat	Lori Neil	Episode: "Twenty One And Out"
1967	The Love-Ins	Patricia Cross
1967	The Wild Wild West	Triste	Episode: "The Night Dr. Loveless Died"
1967	The Invaders	Stacy Cahill	Episode: "The Ivy Curtain"
1968	A Man Called Gannon	Matty
1968	The Invaders	Joan Seeley	Episode: "Inquisition"
1969	Mannix	Linda Jordan	Episode: "The Odds Against Donald Jordan"
1969	The Big Valley	Kate Wilson	Episode: "Alias Nellie Handley"
1969	Change of Mind	Margaret Rowe
1969	The Monitors	Barbara Cole
1970	Carter's Army	Anna Renvic
1971	Company of Killers	Thelma Dwyer
1971	Do You Take This Stranger?	Mildred Crandall
1971	Dan August	Leona Serling	Episode: "Prognosis: Homicide"
1971	Sarge	Fran	Episode: "An Accident Waiting to Happen"
1971	Alias Smith and Jones	Miss Blanche Graham	Episode: "Journey from San Juan"
1972	Medical Center	Ruth	Episode: "Vision of Doom"
1972	Gunsmoke	Sarah Elkins	Episode: "Eleven Dollars"
1973	The American Sportsman	Herself	Segment: "Soaring at El Mirage"
1973	Cannon	Jill Thorson	Episode: "Moving Target"
1973	Circle of Fear	Ellen Pritchard	Episode: "Spare Parts"
1973	Love Story	Virginia Madison	Episode: "The Youngest Lovers"
1974	Ginger in the Morning	Sugar
1974	Police Story	Rina Prescott	Episode: "World Full of Hurt"
1974	Petrocelli	Eleanor Warren	Episode: "Edge of Evil"
1976	Amelia Earhart	Netta Snook "Snookie"
1977	The Streets of San Francisco	Gracie Boggs	Episode: "Hang Tough"
1977	Nido de Viudas	Isabel	US title: Widow's Nest
1980	Hardly Working	Claire Trent
1982	Tomorrow's Child	Marilyn Hurst	Television movie
1982	M*A*S*H		Director, 1 episode
1983	Trapper John, M.D.		Director, 1 episode
1982	International Airport	Mary Van Leuven	Television movie
1985	Magnum, P.I.	Laurie Crane	Episode: "Let Me Hear the Music"
1986	Murder, She Wrote	Louise	Episode: "Jessica Behind Bars"
1988	Our House	Olga Zelnikova	Episode: "Balance of Power"
1988	Freddy's Nightmares	The Maid / Future Judy Miller	Episode: "Judy Miller, Come on Down"

Documentary

• The Green Girl (2014, biographical documentary film directed by George Pappy)

See also

• Manumit School

Further reading