Susan Denberg

Susan Denberg is a German-born Austrian former chorus dancer, model, and actress who played Magda Kovacs in the first season episode . She filmed her scenes between Monday and Friday at Desilu Stage 9 and Stage 10.
Denberg was born Dietlinde Zechner in Bad Polzin, Nazi Germany, which became part of Poland after the end of World War II. She subsequently moved with her family to Klagenfurt, Austria when she was one year old. She grew up in Klagenfurt and moved to London, England at the age of eighteen, where she worked as an au pair girl before becoming a chorus dancer for the group The Bluebells. She traveled with The Bluebells to Paris, France and Las Vegas, Nevada, where she met singer Tony Scotti at a party thrown by Elvis Presley. She and Scotti married in 1965 but broke up after only a few months, and officially divorced three years later.
She left The Bluebells to pursue an acting career and moved to Los Angeles, California. In 1965, Denberg landed a featured role as a German girl on . Her fellow Original Series guest star Frank Overton was a regular on this series and Mark Russell appeared in the same episode. She also made a guest appearance in the sitcom The Wackiest Ship in the Army, alongside Rudy Solari.
The following year, Denberg made her feature film debut with a supporting role in (1966). Star Trek regular George Takei and Original Series guest actors Richard Derr, Warren Stevens, Peter Marko, and Tony Young also had roles in this film, which was directed by Robert Gist. While working on this film, Warner Bros. held a contest to find Susan a new screen name, offering a $500 award to whoever came up with the best one, but all of the entries were ultimately rejected.
In early 1966, Denberg studied at an acting workshop at Desilu which led to her being cast in Star Trek. Two months after filming her role in , she was featured Playmate of the Month for Playboy magazine's August 1966 issue. In her profile, Denberg stated that she had ambitions to become an actress. Denberg was later one of the finalists for the title of 1967's Playmate of the Year, though the title ultimately went to Lisa Baker. She occasionally performed striptease acts at celebrity parties, including one thrown by Frank Sinatra, which met with the host's disapproval.
Denberg's most famous acting role outside of Star Trek was in (1967), opposite . However, her voice in the film was dubbed as her Austrian accent was considered too strong.
Denberg couldn't find any more acting jobs after Frankenstein Created Woman and became disillusioned with her life of casual sex and drugs in Hollywood, and returned to Austria where she fell into further alcohol and drug abuse. She had been treated at a neurological hospital in Klagenfurt after becoming mentally unstable and trying to commit suicide as a result of using the drug LSD. Her story was picked up by the Austrian press and had been featured in articles warning the youth about the dangers of drugs. Over the years, rumors surfaced that she had died of a drug overdose in the late 1960s, but these have proven to be false.
After the birth of her son, Wolfgang in 1971, Denberg worked as a topless waitress at an adult cinema in Vienna, and later as a nude dancer at nightclubs in Vienna and Switzerland. In 1974, she again tried to commit suicide and was institutionalized for a short while. She retired from nude dancing in 1976 after the birth of her daughter, Margarethe.
Denberg currently lives in her hometown of Klagenfurt, under her real name, Dietlinde Zechner.
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Category:Performers
Category:TOS performers