The blog A Trip Down Memory Lane is celebrating the birthday today of the actress Marie Windsor, who lived from Dec. 11, 1919, to Dec. 10, 2000.
Windsor’s acting career included the B movies Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962) and Swamp Women (1956).
Jack Benny gave Windsor her first big break in Hollywood:
Her first film contract, with Warner Bros. in 1942, resulted from her writing jokes and submitting them to Jack Benny. Windsor said she submitted the gags under the name M.E. Windsor “because I was afraid he might be prejudiced against a woman gag writer”. When Benny finally met Windsor, “he was stunned by her good looks” and had a producer sign her to a contract. After a tenure with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in which the studio “signed her, put her in two small roles and then promptly forgot her”, she signed a seven-year contract in 1948 with The Enterprise Studios.