# Debra Paget

Debra Paget (born Debralee Griffin; August 19, 1933) is an American retired actress and entertainer. She is perhaps best known for her performances in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments (1956) and in Elvis Presley's film debut, Love Me Tender (1956), as well as for the risqué (for the time) snake dance scene in The Indian Tomb (1959).

## Early life

Paget was born in Denver, Colorado, one of five children of Margaret Allen (née Gibson), a former actress (one source says "ex-burlesque queen") and Frank Henry Griffin, a painter. The family moved to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s to be close to the film industry. Paget was enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School when she was 11. Margaret was determined that Debra and her siblings would also make their careers in show business. Three of Paget's siblings, Marcia (Teala Loring), Leslie (Lisa Gaye), and Frank (Ruell Shayne), entered show business.
Paget had her first professional job at age 8, and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

## Career
### 20th Century-Fox

Paget's first notable film role was as Teena Riconti in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak for 20th Century Fox studios, where the young 14 year-old actress played the girlfriend of a hoodlum played by 38 year-old Richard Conte.
Fox liked her and signed her to a long-term contract. She had small roles in several subsequent motion pictures in the next year in: Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949).

### Broken Arrow

Paget's first vehicle for Fox was the successful Broken Arrow with James Stewart. At the age of 16, Paget played a Native American maiden, Sonseeahray ("morningstar"), who falls in love with Stewart's character. Stewart was 42 at the time.
From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original radio plays dramatized and performed for the nationwide audience on live radio broadcasts for the Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts in four episodes broadcast performing various recently released and upcoming theatrical feature movies on the ''Lux Radio Theatre'' program, sharing the microphone with such actors as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Stack. The latter set included dramatizations of two of her feature films.
Paget had a sizable role in Fourteen Hours (1951) and was reunited with Broken Arrow director Delmer Daves and star Jeff Chandler in Bird of Paradise (1951), playing a role similar to Broken Arrow.
Paget was the second female lead in Anne of the Indies (1951). She was third billed in Belles on Their Toes (1952) and second billed in Les Misérables (1952), playing Cosette.
Paget was Robert Wagner's love interest in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) and Prince Valiant (1954). In 1953, wearing a blonde wig, she auditioned along with Anita Ekberg and Irish McCalla, among others, for the starring role in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which went to McCalla.

### Princess of the Nile

Fox finally gave Paget top billing with the swashbuckler and historical fiction epic, Princess of the Nile (1954), co-starring Jeffrey Hunter. The film was not a notable success at the box office. However, during the year after Princess of the Nile was released, the fan mail Paget received at 20th Century-Fox studios was topped only by that for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.
Paget had a substantial supporting role in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), starring Victor Mature, the Biblical / New Testament / Roman Empire sequel to the earlier ''The Robe'', (1953), starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons and Victor Mature. Like the first film, it was a massive commercial success. She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler from Natchez (1954) and played another Native American in the next year's White Feather (1955), playing the sister of Jeffrey Hunter's character, and lover of Robert Wagner's character.
Fox loaned Paget and Hunter to Allied Artists to appear in Seven Angry Men (1955). At MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) , when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956), that studio borrowed Paget to substitute and play her role, another Native American.

### The Ten Commandments

Paramount Pictures borrowed her from 20th Century Fox for the part of Lilia, the water girl, in Cecil B. DeMille's (1881-1959), biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956), her most successful film. She had to wear brown contact lenses to hide her blue eyes; she said that "If it hadn't been for the lenses I wouldn't have gotten the part". However, she also said that the lenses were "awful to work in because the klieg lights heat[ed] them up".
The film was a huge success, as was Paget's Fox western, Love Me Tender (1956) alongside Elvis Presley; (1935-1977), Paget and Richard Egan (1921-1987), were billed above Presley, but it was the explosion of the newly discovered rock 'n roll singer's popularity and charisma that made the film so successful.
The River's Edge (1957) was the last film she made for Fox.

### Post-Fox

After that, Paget's career began to decline. She went to Paramount Pictures to play Cornel Wilde's love interest in Omar Khayyam (1957). She was the juvenile lead in From the Earth to the Moon (1958), based on the famous Jules Verne science fiction 1865 novel of near a century earlier. A talented dancer and singer, Paget also had a successful occasional nightclub act at the famous Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

### Europe

In 1958, she traveled to Germany to headline the cast of Fritz Lang's two-film adventure saga, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (1959), a role that recalled her character in Princess of the Nile.
In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBC Western television seriesRiverboat, (1959-1961), starring Darren McGavin. In the story line, Dan Simpson, played by Eddie Albert, attempts to open a general store despite a raid from pirates who stole $20,000 in merchandise. Actor Russell Johnson appears in this episode as Darius. In the first episode of the third season of NBC's Wagon Train in September 1959, she played a Mexican revolutionary who, with a gang of rebels, hijacks an eastbound stagecoach from California carrying the Wagon Train crew back east to St. Louis, in order to smuggle weapons across the border to help a revolt against dictator Porfirio Díaz.
In 1960, she appeared as Laura Ashley in the episode "Incident of the Garden of Eden" on CBS's Western series, Rawhide. That same year, she had played an author, Agnes St. John, the only surviving witness to a brutal stagecoach robbery in another CBS Western, Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant in the title role. In 1962, she returned to Rawhide to play the part of Azuela in the episode "Hostage Child" along with James Coburn.
Paget appeared in Cleopatra's Daughter (1960) shot in Italy, Why Must I Die? (1960) for American International Pictures, Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961), and Rome 1585 (1961) again in Italy.

### American International Pictures (AIP)

Her final two films were for producer / director Roger Corman (1926-2024), at American International Pictures: Tales of Terror (1963) and The Haunted Palace (1963).
She did television work throughout her career. Her last performance in this medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's legal drama of Burke's Law, (1963-1966), starring Gene Barry (1919-2009). She finally retired from entertainment roles in film and television in 1965, after marrying a wealthy oil executive, by whom she later had one son, her only child.

### Later career

Paget became a born-again evangelical Christian. She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget, on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a conservative / fundamentalist Christian cable television network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appeared on TBN as a guest.
In 1987, the Motion Picture and Television Fund presented Paget with its Golden Boot Award, which is awarded to those actors, writers, directors, and stunt crew who "have contributed so much to the development and preservation of the western tradition in film and television."
Independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport paid tribute to her in his 2016 documentary essay, Debra Paget, For Example.

## Personal life

During production of Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became smitten with Paget, who in 1997 said that he had proposed marriage. At the time, however, the media reported that she was once romantically linked with famous aerospace industrialist / aviator and billionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976), but nothing came of this infatuation. A 1956 article quoted Paget's comments about Hughes:
   I was in love with Howard for two years, and I don't care who knows it... I was never alone with him in the whole two years. Mother was always with us... I haven't seen Howard for a long time now, because I'm a one-man woman, and I've got to have a one-woman man... But I'll always remember Howard with fondness.
Paget married actor and singer David Street on January 14, 1958, but she obtained a divorce on April 11, 1958.
On March 27, 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a director, in Tijuana, Mexico. They separated after 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.
Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Louis Ling-Chieh Kung (孔令傑) on April 19, 1962. Kung, a descendant of Confucius, was a Chinese-American oil industry executive. His parents were banker and politician H. H. Kung and businesswoman Soong Ai-ling. His maternal aunts were Soong Mei-ling, wife of Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady of the Republic of China, and political figure Soong Ching-ling. Paget and Kung had one son, Gregory Teh-chi Kung. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1980.

## Filmography
### Feature films

| Year | Title | Role |
| 1948 | Cry of the City | Teena Riconti |
| 1949 | Mother Is a Freshman | Linda |
| 1949 | It Happens Every Spring | Alice |
| 1949 | House of Strangers | Maria Domenico |
| 1950 | Broken Arrow | Sonseeahray |
| 1950 | Fourteen Hours | Ruth |
| 1951 | Bird of Paradise | Kalua |
| 1951 | Anne of the Indies | Molly LaRochelle |
| 1952 | Belles on Their Toes | Martha Gilbreth |
| 1952 | Les Misérables | Cosette |
| 1952 | Stars and Stripes Forever | Lily Becker |
| 1954 | Prince Valiant | Ilene |
| 1954 | Princess of the Nile | Princess Shalimar/Taura |
| 1954 | Demetrius and the Gladiators | Lucia |
| 1954 | The Gambler from Natchez | Melanie Barbee |
| 1955 | White Feather | Appearing Day |
| 1955 | Seven Angry Men | Elizabeth Clark |
| 1956 | The Last Hunt | Indian girl |
| 1956 | The Ten Commandments | Lilia |
| 1956 | Love Me Tender | Cathy Reno |
| 1957 | The River's Edge | Margaret Cameron |
| 1957 | Omar Khayyam | Sharain |
| 1957 | From the Earth to the Moon | Virginia Nicholl |
| 1959 | The Tiger of Eschnapur | Seetha |
| 1959 | The Indian Tomb | Seetha |
| 1960 | Cleopatra's Daughter | Shila |
| 1960 | Why Must I Die? | Dottie Manson |
| 1961 | Most Dangerous Man Alive (shot in 1958) | Linda Marlow |
| 1961 | Rome 1585 | Esmeralda |
| 1962 | Tales of Terror (segment: "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar") | Helene Valdemar |
| 1963 | The Haunted Palace | Ann Ward |

### Radio plays broadcast
#### Family Theater

* November 29, 1950 - "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
* January 23, 1952 - "The Thinking Machine" – Donald O'Connor, Debra Paget
* February 11, 1953 - "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Robert Stack, Debra Paget
* December 9, 1953 - "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
* July 27, 1955 - "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
* November 7, 1956 - "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero

#### Lux Radio Theatre

* January 22, 1951 - "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Debra Paget
* September 22, 1952 -"I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Michael Pate
* December 22, 1952 - "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Robert Newton
* April 20, 1953 - "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad

#### Stars over Hollywood

* February 21, 1953 - "The Wonderful Miss Prinn" – Debra Paget