# Sherry Jackson

Sherry D. Jackson (born February 15, 1942) is an American retired actress and former child star.

## Early life

Jackson was born on February 15, 1942, in Wendell, Idaho. Her mother, Maurita, provided drama, singing, and dancing lessons for Sherry and her two brothers, Curtis L. Jackson, Jr., and Gary L. Jackson, beginning in their formative years. Her father, Curtis L. Jackson, Sr., died when she was 6, and Maurita moved the family from Wendell to Los Angeles, California.
By one account Maurita, who had been told while still in Idaho that her children should be in films, was referred to a theatrical agent by a tour bus driver whom they met in Los Angeles. According to another, she was referred by the friend of an agent who saw Sherry eating ice cream on the Sunset Strip. Apocryphal perhaps, but within the year Sherry had her first screen test, for The Snake Pit with Olivia de Havilland, and by the age of seven appeared in her first feature film, the 1949 musical You're My Everything, which starred Anne Baxter and Dan Dailey.
In 1950, young Sherry became friends with actor Steve Cochran while working with him on The Lion and the Horse. Steve introduced his friend, writer Montgomery Pittman, to Sherry's widowed mother. A romance developed, and Pittman married Maurita Jackson in a small ceremony on June 4, 1952, in Torrance, California, with Sherry as flower girl and younger brother Gary as ring-bearer; Cochran himself was Pittman's best man. In 1955 Cochran hired Pittman to write his next film, Come Next Spring, the first that Cochran produced himself. Sherry played the part of Cochran's mute daughter Annie Ballot, a role Pittman wrote specifically for his step-daughter.
During the course of appearing in several of the Ma and Pa Kettle movies during the 1950s as Susie Kettle, one of the titular couple's numerous children, Jackson also appeared in The Breaking Point, which starred John Garfield in his penultimate film role. In 1952 she portrayed the emotionally volatile visionary and ascetic Jacinta Marto in The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima and the following year played John Wayne's daughter in the football-themed Trouble Along the Way.

## Make Room for Daddy

Jackson played the older daughter Terry Williams on The Danny Thomas Show (known as Make Room for Daddy during the first three seasons) from 1953 to 1958. During the course of her five years on the series, she established a strong bond with her on-screen mother, Jean Hagen, but Hagen left the series after the third season in 1956.
Worn out from the relentless pace of the production, Jackson left the program at the beginning of season six, once her five-year contract expired. To allow the writers to finish the character off, actress Penny Parker appeared in the role for fourteen episodes of season seven, in which the character gets married and moves away. Jackson's impact on the Danny Thomas viewing audience was such that, on February 8, 1960, she received a star for "Television" at 6324 Hollywood Blvd. on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jackson did return as Terry for the premiere episode of the new series Make Room for Granddaddy in 1970.

## Later roles

Over the next few years, Jackson broadened her range of acting roles by guest starring in television series, appearing as a hit woman on 77 Sunset Strip, a freed Apache captive who yearns to return to the reservation on The Tall Man, an alcoholic on Mr. Novak, a woman accused of murder on Perry Mason, and an unstable mother-to-be on Wagon Train. Sherry also appeared as a first season guest on The Rifleman episode “The Sister” playing the part of a horse riding sibling of two doting brothers. She played a gunslinger's promiscuous young bride in the Western series Maverick episode entitled "Red Dog" with Roger Moore, Lee Van Cleef and John Carradine. After a 1965 appearance on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., she then made guest appearances on Lost in Space ("The Space Croppers", reuniting with her Danny Thomas co-star, Angela Cartwright), My Three Sons, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Wild Wild West ("The Night of the Vicious Valentine" and "The Night of the Gruesome Games", as two different characters), Batman, and the original Star Trek ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?").
When Blake Edwards remade the television series Peter Gunn as a feature film entitled Gunn (1967), Jackson was filmed in a nude scene that appeared only in the international version, not the U.S. release. Stills of the nude scene appeared in the August 1967 issue of Playboy magazine, in a pictorial entitled "Make Room For Sherry". The movie has not been released on VHS or DVD.
In 1968 Jackson co-starred in The Mini-Skirt Mob as a member of an all-female motorcycle gang, and appeared in the 1973 film Cotter opposite Don Murray and Carol Lynley. In subsequent years she appeared in TV movies such as Wild Women (1970), Hitchhike! (1974), The Girl on the Late, Late Show (1974), Returning Home (1975), Enigma (1977), The Curse of the Moon Child (1977) and Casino (1980).
In the 1970s through early 1980s she made guest appearances on TV shows Love, American Style, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch, The Blue Knight, Switch, The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, The Incredible Hulk, Fantasy Island, Vega$, Alice, Charlie's Angels and CHiPs.

## Personal life

Jackson dated Lance Reventlow while he was estranged from his wife Jill St. John.
In 1967, she began a five-year relationship with business executive and horse breeder Fletcher R. Jones. On November 7, 1972, Jones was killed in a plane crash eight miles east of Santa Ynez Airport in Santa Barbara County, California. Five months after Jones's death, Jackson filed a palimony suit against his estate, asking for more than $1 million (equivalent to $6.9 million in 2023), with her attorneys stating that Jones had promised to provide her with at least $25,000 a year for the rest of her life.
Jackson has a star for broadcast television on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6324 Hollywood Boulevard.

## Filmography
### Film

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1950 | Covered Wagon Raid | Susie Davis | |
| 1950 | The Breaking Point | Amy Morgan | |
| 1951 | When I Grow Up | Ruthie Reed | |
| 1951 | Lorna Doone | Young Annie Ridd | |
| 1951 | Hello God | Little Italian Girl | |
| 1952 | The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima | Jacinta Marto | |
| 1952 | The Lion and the Horse | Jenny | |
| 1952 | This Woman is Dangerous | Susan Halleck | |
| 1953 | Trouble Along the Way | Carole Williams | |
| 1956 | Come Next Spring | Annie | |
| 1960 | The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mary Jane Wilkes | |
| 1965 | Wild on the Beach | Lee Sullivan | (Lippert Productions Ltd., 20th Century Fox) |
| 1967 | Gunn | Samantha | (Geoffrey Productions, Paramount Pictures) |
| 1968 | The Mini-Skirt Mob | Connie | |
| 1969 | The Monitors | Mona | (Commonwealth United Entertainment) |
| 1973 | Cotter | Shasta | |
| 1977 | Bare Knuckles | Jennifer Randall | |
| 1978 | Stingray | Abigail Bratowski | |

### Television

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1949–1951 | Fireside Theatre | Little Girl | 2 episodes |
| 1951–1952 | The Range Rider | Susan Harper / Virginia Lee | 2 episodes |
| 1951–1952 | The Gene Autry Show | Bonnie Ford / Frankie Scott | 2 episodes |
| 1952 | The Roy Rogers Show | Lucy Collins | Episode: "Unwilling Outlaw" |
| 1953–1958 | The Danny Thomas Show | Terry Williams | 133 episodes |
| 1953 | The Ford Television Theatre | Terry Pelham | Episode: "All's Fair in Love" |
| 1953 | Lux Video Theatre | Ruthie Hammond | Episode: "Look, He's Proposing!" |
| 1953 | Private Secretary | | Episode: "Child Labor" |
| 1954 | Shower of Stars | Terry Williams | Episode: "Entertainment on Wheels" |
| 1954 | Mystery is My Business | | Episode: "Woman in the Chair" |
| 1956 | The Charles Farrell Show | Julie | Episode: "Charlie's Secret Love" |
| 1957–1961 | Maverick | Erma Curran / Annie Haines | 2 episodes |
| 1958 | The Rifleman | Rebecca Snipe | Episode: "The Sister" |
| 1959–1960 | 77 Sunset Strip | Ophir / Shirley Bent / Ella / Chris Benson / Carrie | 5 episodes |
| 1960 | The Swamp Fox | Melanie Culpin | 2 episodes |
| 1960 | The Millionaire | Susan Johnson | Episode: "Millionaire Susan Johnson" |
| 1960 | The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis | Mignonne McCurdy | Episode: "The Prettiest Collateral in Town" |
| 1960 | Surfside 6 | Jill Murray | Episode: "High Tide" |
| 1960 | Riverboat | Inez Cox | Episode: "The Water of Gorgeous Springs" |
| 1961 | Bringing Up Buddy | Janie | Episode: "Buddy and Janie" |
| 1961 | The Tall Man | Sally Bartlett | Episode: "Apache Daughter" |
| 1962 | The New Breed | Ellen Talltree | Episode: "Care is No Cure" |
| 1962 | The Twilight Zone | Comfort Gatewood | Episode: "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" |
| 1962 | Hawaiian Eye | Joan Carmichael | Episode: "A Scent of Whales" |
| 1962 | Gunsmoke | Aggie / Lacey Parcher | 2 episodes |
| 1963 | Vacation Playhouse | Alice Watson | Episode: "Come a-Runnin" |
| 1963 | Mr. Novak | Cathy Ferguson | Episode: "The Risk" |
| 1963 | Perry Mason | Madeline Randall | Episode: "The Case of the Festive Felon" |
| 1964 | The Lieutenant | Maggie Shea | Episode: "Gone the Sun" |
| 1964 | Wagon Train | Geneva Balfour | Episode: "The Geneva Balfour Story" |
| 1965 | Rawhide | Mar | Episode: "Moment in the Sun" |
| 1965 | Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. | Geraldine | Episode: "Sergeant Carter Gets a Dear John Letter" |
| 1965 | The Virginian | Lois Colter | Episode: "Show Me a Hero" |
| 1966 | Branded | Nell Beckwith | Episode: "Barbed Wire" |
| 1966 | Lost in Space | Effra | Episode: "The Space Croppers" |
| 1966 | My Three Sons | Linda June Mitchell | Episode: "The Wheels" |
| 1966 | Batman | Pauline | 2 episodes |
| 1966 | Death Valley Days | Katherine Turner | Episode: "Lady of the Plains" |
| 1966 | Star Trek | Andrea | S1:E7, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" |
| 1967–1968 | The Wild Wild West | Lola Cortez / Michele LeMaster | 2 episodes |
| 1970 | The Interns | Jeri Spencer | Episode: "The Quality of Mercy" |
| 1970 | Make Room for Granddaddy | Terry Williams | Episode: "Make Room for Grandson" |
| 1970 | The Immortal | Sherry Hiller | Episode: "Sylvia" |
| 1970 | Wild Women | Nancy Belacourt | TV movie |
| 1971 | Love, American Style | Blanche | Segment: "Love and the Waitress" |
| 1974 | Hitchhike! | Stefanie | TV movie |
| 1974 | The Girl on the Late, Late Show | Pat Clauson | TV movie |
| 1974 | Chase | Shirley | Episode: "$35 Will Fly You to the Moon" |
| 1975 | Returning Home | Marie Derry | ABC Movie of the Week |
| 1975 | Barbary Coast | Sherry | Episode: "Crazy Cats" |
| 1975 | Mobile One | Leslie Willis | Episode: "The Pawn" |
| 1975 | The Rockford Files | Jennifer Sandstrom | Episode: "The Real Easy Red Dog" |
| 1975 | Matt Helm | Elena Bosworth | Episode: "Double Jeopardy" |
| 1976 | Starsky & Hutch | Denise Girard | Episode: "Bounty Hunter" |
| 1976 | The Blue Knight | Mrs. Bonner | Episode: "The Rose and the Gun" |
| 1976 | Switch | Jennie Rosenthal | Episode: "The 100,000 Ruble Rumble" |
| 1977 | The Streets of San Francisco | Jackie Allen / Joy Adams / September Dawn | Episode: "One Last Trick" |
| 1977 | Enigma | Kate Valentine | TV movie |
| 1978 | Barnaby Jones | Erica Hughes | 2 episodes |
| 1978 | The Incredible Hulk | Dr. Diane Joseph | Episode: "Earthquakes Happen" |
| 1979 | Fantasy Island | Monica Jensen | Episode: "Cowboy/Substitute Wife" |
| 1979 | Vega$ | Denise | Episode: "The Usurper" |
| 1980 | Alice | Toni Morelli | Episode: "Good Buddy Flo" |
| 1980 | Charlie's Angels | Tina Fuller | Episode: "Homes $weet Homes" |
| 1980 | CHiPs | Diane | Episode: "The Strippers" |
| 1980 | Casino | Jennifer | TV movie |