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Mari Blanchard
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California native Mari Blanchard was a beautiful blonde actress who almost exclusively appeared in B movies. She was born on April 13, 1927 in Long Beach, California, USA. She died on May 10, 1970 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA of cancer.
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Born in April 1927 (some sources cite 1932 as her date of birth), California native Mari Blanchard was a beautiful blonde actress who almost exclusively appeared in B movies. In 1950, Blanchard was discovered by a producer who had seen her in a bubble bath ad. In the late 1940s, Blanchard had been a successful print model and film extra, and her beautiful features made her a natural for films.
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American actress Mari Blanchard trained from childhood for a dancing career, but a bout with polio put an end to those dreams. Undaunted, she became an advertising model, then entered films in 1950 after attracting attention in a bubble-bath pose. Possessed of a striking but somewhat synthetic beauty, Mari was most effectively cast as tarts, homewreckers, and other assorted villainesses. Her most prolific work was in tongue-in-cheek exotic roles, such as the Queen of Venus in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) and the Arabian princess in Son of Sindbad (1955). In 1960, Mari appeared as hotel-owner Kate O'Hara in the shortlived TV series Klondike, but was dropped from the project when it switched formats in 1961 and was retitled Acapulco. Mari Blanchard's last screen appearance was in 1963, where she was billed twenty-fourth as the likeable town madam in John Wayne's McClintock (she is but one of many townsfolk who refuses to shelter Maureen O'Hara when Big John sets out to give O'Hara a public spanking).
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Mari Blanchard plays Joanie Daniel who at first appears to be a a scheming spider with a secret. When Stan Fabien (Frank Lovejoy) falls head over heels for Joanie, he makes one big mistake and it involves a fortune in stolen gold buried in Germany during World War II. But there’s more to it than that! Will it land Stan in Joanie’s web?
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Blanchard soon found success as an actress as well. From 1951 to 1952, she took small roles in a number of films at MGM, RKO, and Paramount, until she was signed by Universal-International in 1952. Her first film at the studio was Back at the Front (1952; with Tom Ewell and Harvey Lembeck). Throughout her film career, Blanchard excelled at playing bad girls and ladies of ill-repute. She concentrated her efforts primarily in comedies and westerns but acted in a variety of film genres. One of her most memorable roles was as the venusian queen Allura in the 1953 comedy Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.
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Travelling by train to Casper, Wyoming, to meet Pinkerton agent Ryan, Slade's train is held up for the gold shipment by the Wild Bunch, a notorious gang, and lady outlaw Texas Rose (Mari Blanchard) takes his prized gun. On the train he befriends drunk cowboy Johnny Turner.
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