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Diane McBain is an American actress who was best known for playing an adventurous socialite in the 1960-62 TV series Surfside 6


Diane McBain (born May 18, 1941) is an American actress who, as a Warner Brothers contract player, reached a brief peak of popularity during the early 1960s. She is best known for playing an adventurous socialite in the 1960-62 TV series Surfside 6 and as one of Elvis Presley's leading ladies in 1966's Spinout. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, McBain moved to the Hollywood area at an early age and began her show business career as an adolescent model in print and television advertisements. During her senior year at Glendale High School she was, while appearing in a Los Angeles play, spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout and added to the studio's roster of contract performers who were appearing in an assembly-line-style mass production of TV episodes and theatrical features. Starting with the September 13, 1955 premiere of the hour-long, three-shows-in-one Warner Brothers Presents, the studio's TV arm, Warner Brothers Television, provided ABC with nearly twenty shows, including seven western and four detective series. At the age of seventeen, McBain was immediately put to work, making her TV acting debut in two episodes of Maverick, March 8 with Jack Kelly and November 22, 1959 with James Garner, as well as the October 16 episode of 77 Sunset Strip. Her first director, at the helm of the March 8 installment, "Passage to Fort Doom", was Warners stalwart Paul Henreid, best known as Victor Laszlo in the studio's 1942 Oscar-winner Casablanca. Having received a positive reaction to McBain's initial performances, the studio realized that it had a potential star under contract. The young blonde was beginning to be seen as Warners' possible answer to Carroll Baker, Grace Kelly and even Marilyn Monroe. She was given a prominent ingenue role in her first feature Ice Palace, a top-budget 143-minute generational saga based on the Edna Ferber novel which dramatized the lives and families of the pioneers who settled and developed Alaska between World War I and statehood. McBain, whose character appeared only in the last part of the film, held her own against the three female leads, Martha Hyer, Carolyn Jones and Shirley Knight as well as stars Richard Burton and Robert Ryan. The filmed-on-location Technicolor epic was released on January 2, 1960 to mixed reviews, but McBain's notices were generally favorable.

Gallery for vintage blonde Diane McBain

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