Carol Lynley, Star of ‘Blue Denim’ and ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ Dies at 77 – The New York Times

Carol Lynley, a child mannequin who went on to an intense movie acting career mirroring the country’s transformation from the modest Eisenhower expertise into the sexually frank 1960s, died on Tuesday at her dwelling in Los Angeles. She used to be 77.

The reason used to be a coronary heart attack, primarily based on Trent Dolan, a buddy.

Ms. Lynley could per chance per chance be most attention-grabbing remembered as the naïve, relaxed-spoken adolescent who turns into pregnant by her equally huge-eyed boyfriend, performed by Brandon De Wilde, within the 1959 movie “Blue Denim.” It used to be a job she had originated on Broadway the year sooner than, when she used to be 16.

Ms. Lynley made no lower than half of a dozen high-profile Hollywood movies over the subsequent eight years, however by the time she used to be in her mid-20s her superstar had extinct and she used to be by no technique solidly within the public explore all over again.

Silent, she did invent a famous if immediate comeback in 1972, when she became up wearing hot pants and plod-plod boots within the recount movie “The Poseidon Trudge,” singing (or no lower than lip-syncing) the Oscar-successful tune “The Morning After.”

Her career could per chance had been, no lower than partly, a victim of melancholy advertising and marketing. Within the gradual 1950s and early ’60s, Hollywood’s publicity machine had three blond teenage actresses to advertise. In a case of vulgar characterize segmentation, Sandra Dee used to be promoted as the pampered prosperous lady, Tuesday Weld as the unfavorable lady and Ms. Lynley as the genuine lady — studious, sensitive, healthful and factual quite prim.

This worked well enough with the characters she performed in her debut movie, the Disney drama “The Gentle within the Woodland” (1958), jam in pre-Innovative The united states; in “Blue Denim”; and in “Hound-Dog Man” (1959), in which she starred reverse the teenage idol Fabian. However starting when she used to be 19, Ms. Lynley became to portrayals of more vivid characters, adore the exiguous-city creator Allison MacKenzie, who has an affair with her publisher, in “Return to Peyton Space” (1961), a disappointing sequel. That movie used to be followed by a intercourse comedy, “Beneath the Yum Yum Tree” (1963), with Jack Lemmon and Dean Jones, and by the drama “The Cardinal” (1963), in which she performed both Tom Tryon’s wayward sister and her character’s daughter.

She used to be 23 when she posed discreetly nude in Playboy magazine and performed the title role in “Harlow” (1965), a biographical movie relating to the 1930s veil superstar and intercourse symbol Jean Harlow. That identical year, she received some obvious opinions as a distraught young mom in Otto Preminger’s “Bunny Lake Is Lacking,” however neither critics nor fans replied to her within the identical device as they had during her teenage years.

From the 1970s onward, Ms. Lynley worked largely in tv, doing visitor appearances on various shows (she used to be within the normal tv movie “Story Island” and in no lower than 10 episodes of the series that it spawned, moreover to the tv movie that later grew to change into the Darren McGavin series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”) and in low-profile movies, about a of the straight-to-video vary.

Carole Ann Jones used to be born in Fresh York Metropolis on Feb. 13, 1942. A baby of divorce, she began modeling below the name Carolyn Lee. When she went into acting — acting on golden-age-of-tv series adore “Goodyear Television Playhouse” and “The Alcoa Hour” — that name already belonged to 1 other member of the Actors’ Equity union (as did the name Carolyn Jones), so she invented the sound-alike name Carol Lynley.

In April 1957 she appeared on the quilt of Life magazine, identified as “Carol Lynley, 15, Busy Profession Lady.” She used to be indeed busy, making her Broadway debut in Graham Greene’s drama “The Potting Shed.” For that role, as a demise man’s talkative niece who reveals a family secret, she received a Theater World Award, given yearly for an illustrious debut performance.

Ms. Lynley returned to Broadway once, in 1975, changing Sandy Dennis in Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy “Absurd Particular person Singular.”

Her later projects included “Vic” (2006), a 30-minute short about an older actor, directed by Myth Stallone, a son of Sylvester Stallone; and “A Gentle within the Woodland” (2002), playing the grandmother in a family-oriented story with no connection to Ms. Lynley’s first movie, which had nearly precisely the identical title.

Ms. Lynley used to be married from 1960 to 1964 to Michael Selsman, a movie-industry publicist, and they had a daughter, Jill, who survives her. She additionally had an extended on-all over again, off-all over again relationship with the tv host David Frost.

In 2000, in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Lynley talked about center-old actresses’ challenge to find roles however predicted a comeback for herself in aged age. “I don’t mean to sound immodest, however I’m a truly proficient actress, and I in actual fact bask in my head screwed on apt,” she acknowledged. “I’m no longer going to drug clinics, I look genuine, and I’ve got all my marbles. So I in actual fact judge I’ll be succor.”