Remembering Faith Domergue

If you've never seen Faith Domergue recoiling in horror from the advances of a bug-eyed monster or creepy interplanetary visitor, you just didn't watch enough 1950s sci-fi movies.

Always popular with the fellas: Faith Domergue in This Island Earth.

Born on this date in 1924, the beautiful actress was originally slated for bigger things in movies. Billionaire Howard Hughes met her in the 1940s, when she was a fresh new discovery at Warner Brothers, and bought out her contract at considerable expense. Much time and money went into the film that was supposed to establish her as a leading lady, but Vendetta (1950) was not a success. By the mid-1950s, Domergue still had enough name value to top the cast list of lower-budgeted films, and 1955 audiences saw the triptych that made her forever a scream queen: This Island Earth, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and Cult of the Cobra (the latter offering her a chance to do the menacing, for a change). Her career solid but unspectacular, she continued to act into the 1970s, and passed away in Santa Barbara on April 4, 1999.

For an interesting, in-depth interview with this intriguing actress, check out Tom Weaver's book I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror Filmmakers.