Debra Paget

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

Early life
Paget was born in Denver, Colorado, one of five children born to Margaret Allen (née Gibson), a former actress (one source says, "ex-burlesque queen"), and Frank Henry Griffin, a painter.  The family moved from Denver to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s to be close to the developing 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, girlfriend of the character played by Richard Conte, in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak for 20th Century Fox.  

Fox liked her and signed her to a long-term contract.  She had small roles in Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949). 

Broken Arrow
Her 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 for Family Theater.  During those same years, she read parts in four episodes of Lux Radio Theater, 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 sizeable 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 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 was topped only by that for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. 

Paget had a good supporting role in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), a big hit.  She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler from Natchez (1954) and played another Native American in White Feather (1955), playing the sister of Jeffrey Hunter and lover of Robert Wagner. 

Fox loaned Paget and Hunter to Allied Artists to appear in Seven Angry Men (1955).  At MGM, when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956), the studio borrowed Paget to 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 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; Paget and Richard Egan were billed above Presley, but it was the 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 to play Cornel Wilde's love interest in Omar Khayyam (1957).  She was the juvenile lead in From the Earth to the Moon (1958). 

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 role as Shalimar/Taura of Princess of the Nile.  Like the Egyptian epic, the film is remembered chiefly for her energetic dance scenes. 

In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBC Western television series, Riverboat, 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.  Russell Johnson appears in this episode as Darius. 

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. 

AIP
Her final two films were for Roger Corman 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 Burke's Law, starring Gene Barry.  She retired from entertainment in 1965, after marrying a wealthy oil executive, by whom she had one son, her only child. 

Later Career
Paget became a born-again Christian.  She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget, on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord.  She occasionally appears 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." 

Personal life

During production of Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became smitten with Paget, who in 1997 claimed the singer even proposed marriage.  At the time, however, the media reported that she was romantically linked with Howard Hughes and nothing came of this.  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 prominent director, in Tijuana, Mexico.  They separated after just 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961. 

Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Ling C. Kung 孔令傑 on April 19, 1962.  Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive, son of Confucius descendant H. H. Kung and Soong Ai-ling and nephew of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.  This third marriage produced a son, Gregory (Kung Teh-chi) (Kong Deji) (孔德基), but ended in divorce in 1980. 

Filmography

Feature films

Radio plays

Family Theater
 1950-11-29 "The Clown" – Debra Paget, Stephen Dunn
 1952-01-23 "The Thinking Machine" – Donald O'Connor, Debra Paget
 1953-02-11 "The Indispensable Man" – Lisa Gaye, Robert Stack, Debra Paget
 1953-12-09 "The Legend of High Chin Bob" – Debra Paget, Walter Brennan
 1955-07-27 "Fairy Tale" – Debra Paget, Jack Haley
 1956-11-07 "Integrity" – Debra Paget, Cesar Romero

Lux Radio Theatre
1951-01-22 "Broken Arrow" – Burt Lancaster, Debra Paget
1952-09-22 "I'll Never Forget You" – Tyrone Power, Debra Paget, Michael Pate
1952-12-22 "Les Misérables" – Ronald Colman, Debra Paget, Robert Newton
1953-04-20 "Deadline USA" – Dan Dailey, Debra Paget, William Conrad

Stars over Hollywood
1953-02-21 "The Wonderful Miss Prinn" – Debra Paget

References

Further reading

External links

 dancing with a cobra in The Indian Tomb

Category:1933 births
Category:American film actresses
Category:American radio actresses
Category:American television actresses
Category:Living people
Category:Actresses from Denver
Category:Western (genre) film actresses
Category:20th-century American actresses
Category:Actresses from Los Angeles
Category:20th Century Fox contract players