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Allison Hayes was a Pisces,
but she was no cold fish. She was born
Mary Jane Hayes on March 3, 1930 in
Charleston, West Virginia. At the age of
19 she represented Washington DC in the
Miss America pageant. The visibility the
contest provided felt good and the
celebrity it created prompted her
appearance in several DC area television
shows. A couple years later the lovely
young redhead packed up her bags and
headed west to seek fame and stardom in
Hollywood. As fate and determination
would have it, her wishes would at least
partially come true.
By 1954 the young starlet
had changed her name to Allison Hayes and
promptly signed a contract with Universal
Pictures. Her time with the studio didnt
last terribly long, but it definitely
opened the door and the roles started
coming. Her fantastic shape and redheaded
gorgeousness got her lots of celluloid
window dressing credits. Some of her
early film appearances include Chicago
Syndicate (1955), Sign
of the Pagan (1954),
So This Is Paris
(1954), Francis Joins the
WACS with Mamie Van
Doren and Zazu Pitts (!) (1954), The
Purple Mask (1955), The
Prodigal with Lana Turner
(1955), Count Three and
Pray (1955), Double
Jeopardy (1955), and
Mohawk
(1956), etc.
Later in 1956 Allison would
take her first journey into the world of
low budget horror. At Sunset Studios she
played a shapely and gorgeous witch named
Livia in Roger Cormans The
Undead. Despite its
hokey premise today youve got to
love any film that features a Witches
Sabbath and co stars Richard Devon as
Satan. It also starred Richard Garland,
Dorothy Neumann, Pamela Duncan, Dick
Miller, and Billy Barty (as Livias
familiar!). Allison followed this bit of
witchcraft/bitchcraft with another bad
girl of black magic performance. In
The Disembodied
(1957) she starred as Tonda, the no-good
floozy at the center of this tale of
voodoo and supernatural adultery. Naughty
Tonda How naughty you ask
well,
she wears skimpy costumes and dances to
drums! Anyway, Tonda casts a vile spell
on her much older husband and has her
mascara-ed sights set on another man
Paul Burke (Yup, as in The
Valley of the Dolls).
As you may guess by that premise
Allison gets her own karmic comeuppance,
meeting a tragic end in the movie by
being (ahem) impaled. Next up our
low-budget low-cut B&W vixen was cast
in the role of Mona in Zombies
of Mora Tau (1957). The
deliciously clad Allison once more plays
a wife with eyes for another man and if
youve ever seen a movie, any movie,
you can probably guess what will happen
to a very bad girl on a zombie island!
You guessed it! Horror of horrors --
zombified in a negligee!!! With this
credit tucked deep in her ample cleavage
Allison promptly leapt into The
Unearthly (1957) for
Republic Pictures. Due for a change of
pace, Allison plays (gasp!) a good girl
a good girl named Grace no less
in this fright fest! This mad
scientist treat (he experiments with
glands and has freaks locked in his
basement) stars John Carradine as the mad
scientist (naturally) and Tor Johnson as
his looney assistant Lobo. Rounding out
the campy cast were Myron Healey, and
Sally Todd.
Just when it seemed she
could never outdo herself Allison went
and did just that!
Allisons next role was
to become her most famous. Most
moviegoers will remember (or at least
recognize) Allison Hayes as the gigantic
Nancy Archer in the campy feminist epic
Attack of the 50 ft. Woman
(1958). Sure its about a woman
grown to mammoth proportions after
exposure to a UFO. However, even more
interesting is that this is one of the
first films where the woman puts her foot
down (literally) over the issue of
spousal abuse. Its hard not to
thrill/chuckle as Allison stomps about
town in a bathing suit (and a delicious
rage) looking for that no good husband of
hers (William Hudson) who is making time
with the town tramp former Playboy
playmate Yvette Vickers (as Honey
Parker). My favorite moment is probably
when she crushes the nightclub. Now thats
entertainment!
Where can you go after a
role like that? Sadly, the only way is
down. Allison only made two more horror
movies. First off was The
Hypnotic Eye in 1960 with
Merry Anders, Jacques Bergerac, and
Marcia Henderson. In the movie Allison
steals the show (granted, its petty
theft!) as Justine (assistant to the evil
hypnotist Bergerac) by ripping off her
FACE and spouting the line You
like my face? Then you may have it. How is that for sassy! Allisons
final horror venture came in 1963 with
her mostly boring role as Donna a
lab assistant - in the mostly boring
horror-snorer The Crawling
Hand with Kent Taylor and
Peter Breck. In this flick the severed
hand of an astronaut killed when a
spaceship returns to earth goes on a
killing spree. Yikes! The real injustice
in this movie is that Allison is
relegated to a nothing role, even worse
she is clad boring bosom covering
clothes. What were they thinking?
Two years later Allison made
her final film appearance with a small
role in the Elvis Presley movie Tickle
Me (1965) as a concert
patron who drunkenly lunges and grabs for
Elvis while he is performing. Very sad.
She not only did movies, but
some TV as well. Some of this charismatic
actresses television credits
include roles on Gomer Pyle
USMC, Bat
Masterson, The
Untouchables, and Rawhide
to name a few. Allison also took great
pride in guest starring numerous times on
the original Perry Mason
series. She was a close friend of Raymond
Burr.
Allison died in 1977, just a
few days shy of her 47th birthday. She had been taking a doctor
prescribed calcium supplement for years
not knowing that it contained extremely
high levels of lead. As a result of the
dangerously elevated lead content she
eventually developed leukemia. Allison
battled the deadly disease for a long and
painful 13 years using only
alternative methods of treatment. The
illness forced movielands favorite
giantess into early retirement and kept
her house bound much of the time. Allison
Hayes is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in
Culver City.
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