Mara Corday

Marilyn Joan Watts was born in Santa Monica, California on January 3, 1930.^[2] Wanting a career in films, she came to Hollywood while still in her teens and found work as a showgirl at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard.^[3] Her physical beauty brought jobs as a photographer's model that led to a bit part as a showgirl in the 1951 film Two Tickets to Broadway.^[4]

One of Corday's first professional jobs was as a dancer in the Earl Carroll Revue in Hollywood.^[5] Accompanied by her mother, Corday auditioned when she was 15 years old. During the 2½ years that she was in the show, she advanced "from showgirl to actress in the sketches".^[6] This was also when she adopted the stage name Mara Corday, because it made her seem more exotic. The name Mara came from a bongo player who called her Marita when Corday was working as an usher at the Mayan Theater; the name Corday was lifted from a bottle of perfume.^[7]

Corday signed with Universal-International Pictures (UI) as a contract player, where she was given small roles in various B-movies and television series. In 1954, while on the set of Playgirl, she met actor and future husband Richard Long.^[8]

Her acting roles were small until 1955, when she was cast opposite John Agar and Leo G. Carroll in the successful science-fiction film Tarantula,^[9][10] which has Clint Eastwood in a very brief role as a jet fighter pilot. She had two other co-starring roles in the genre, The Black Scorpion and The Giant Claw (both 1957), as well as in a number of Western films, including Man Without a Star, A Day of Fury and Raw Edge. Film critic Leonard Maltin said Corday had "more acting ability than she was permitted to exhibit".^{[citation needed]}

A few years after her husband's death in 1974, Corday's old friend Eastwood offered her a chance to return to films with a role in his 1977 film The Gauntlet. She also had a brief but significant role in Sudden Impact (1983), where she played the waitress who dumped sugar into the coffee of Det. Harry Callahan in that film's iconic "Go ahead, make my day" sequence.^[11] She acted with Eastwood again in his 1989 film Pink Cadillac, as well as in her last film, 1990's The Rookie.

Corday appeared as a pinup girl in numerous men's magazines during the 1950s and was the Playmate of the October 1958 issue of Playboy, along with model Pat Sheehan.^[12][13][14]

In 1956, Corday had a recurring role in the ABC television series Combat Sergeant.^[15] From 1959 to early 1961, Corday worked exclusively doing guest spots on various television series, such as Peter Gunn in the episode, “Keep Smiling”. She also guest starred with Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive in April 1960.

Following the 1955 death of Suzan Ball, the first wife of actor Richard Long, Corday began dating Long, and they married in 1957.^[2] Through Long's sister Barbara, Corday was a sister-in-law of actor Marshall Thompson.^[5]

In the early 1960s, Corday gave up her career to devote herself to raising a family. Widowed in 1974, she had two sons and one daughter with Long, during their 17-year marriage.^[5][2]

Corday had also been a friend of actor Clint Eastwood, whom she met while working for Universal Pictures.^[11]

Corday died from arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease at her home in Valencia, California, on February 9, 2025, at the age of 95.^{[16][17][18][19]}

• List of people in Playboy 1953–1959