Actress Mara Corday, 95, died on Feb. 9. Corday was most famous for her sci-fi films Tarantula, The Giant Claw, and The Black Scorpion. But she was also busy in such 1950s-60s films and TV shows as Drums Across the River, Francis Joins the WACS, Man Without a Star, The Quiet Gun, Peter Gunn, Laramie, and Wanted: Dead or Alive. She married actor Richard Long in 1957, two years after the death of his first wife, actress Suzan Ball. Corday told interviewer Mike Fitzgerald, “I thought when we married we would make a great show biz team but Richard didn’t want me in the business. I was supposed to play the lead opposite Fred MacMurray in The Oregon Trail but Richard turned it down—without my knowledge or consent! I was to do another Audie Murphy picture and I overheard Richard telling my agent I would not do it. We had a big fight. ‘How dare you turn down my work!’ Richard Long was an enigma. I divorced him 10 times the first year of our marriage, getting a lawyer and everything, and 13 times the second year. He’d plead—literally on his hands and knees, ‘Please forgive me, I don’t know why I did it, give me another chance.’ I loved him and I am still in love with him, 22 years after his death.”
