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Debra Paget (born Debralee Griffin; August 19, 1933) is a retired American actress and entertainer. She is perhaps best known for her performances in Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Ten Commandments (1956) and in Elvis Presley's film debut, Love Me Tender (1956), as well as for the risqué (for the time) snake dance scene in The Indian Tomb (1959).
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.
Fox liked her and signed her to a long-term contract. She had small roles in several subsequent motion pictures in the next year in: Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949).
From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original radio plays dramatized and performed for the nationwide audience on live radio broadcasts for the Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts in four episodes broadcast performing various recently released and upcoming theatrical feature movies on the ''Lux Radio Theatre'' program, 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 sizable 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.
Paget had a substantial supporting role in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), starring Victor Mature, the Biblical / New Testament / Roman Empire sequel to the earlier ''The Robe'', (1953), starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons and Victor Mature. Like the first film, it was a massive commercial success. She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler from Natchez (1954) and played another Native American in the next year's White Feather (1955), playing the sister of Jeffrey Hunter's character, and lover of Robert Wagner's character.
Fox loaned Paget and Hunter to Allied Artists to appear in Seven Angry Men (1955). At MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) , when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956), that studio borrowed Paget to substitute and play her role, another Native American.
The film was a huge success, as was Paget's Fox western, Love Me Tender (1956) alongside Elvis Presley; (1935-1977), Paget and Richard Egan (1921-1987), were billed above Presley, but it was the explosion of the newly discovered rock 'n roll singer's popularity and charisma that made the film so successful.
The River's Edge (1957) was the last film she made for Fox.
In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBC Western television series Riverboat, (1959-1961), 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. Actor Russell Johnson appears in this episode as Darius. In the first episode of the third season of NBC's Wagon Train in September 1959, she played a Mexican revolutionary who, with a gang of rebels, hijacks an eastbound stagecoach from California carrying the Wagon Train crew back east to St. Louis, in order to smuggle weapons across the border to help a revolt against dictator Porfirio Díaz.
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) filmed in Italy, Why Must I Die? (1960) for American International Pictures, Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961), and Rome 1585 (1961) again in Italy.
She did television work throughout her career. Her last performance in this medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's legal drama of Burke's Law, (1963-1966), starring Gene Barry (1919-2009). She finally retired from entertainment roles in film and television in 1965, after marrying a wealthy oil executive, by whom she later had one son, her only child.
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."
Independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport paid tribute to her in his 2016 documentary essay, Debra Paget, For Example.
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 director Budd Boetticher in Tijuana, Mexico. They separated after 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.
Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Louis Ling-Chieh Kung () on April 19, 1962. Kung, a descendant of Confucius, was a Chinese-American oil industry executive. His parents were banker and politician H. H. Kung and businesswoman Soong Ai-ling. His maternal aunts were Soong Mei-ling, wife of Chiang Kai-shek and First Lady of the Republic of China, and political figure Soong Ching-ling. Paget and Kung had one son, Gregory Teh-chi Kung. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1980.
Later career
Paget became a born-again evangelical Christian. She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget, on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a conservative, fundamentalist Christian cable television network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appeared on TBN as a guest.
Personal life
During production of Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became smitten with Paget, who in 1997 said that he had proposed marriage. At the time the media reported that she was once romantically linked with Howard Hughes, but nothing came of this infatuation. 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.
Filmography
Feature films
Teena Riconti Linda Alice Maria Domenico Sonseeahray Ruth Kalua Molly LaRochelle Martha Gilbreth Cosette Lily Becker Ilene Princess Shalimar/Taura Lucia Melanie Barbee Appearing Day Elizabeth Clark Indian girl Lilia Cathy Reno Margaret Cameron Sharain Virginia Nicholl Seetha Seetha Shila Dottie Manson Linda Marlow Esmeralda Helene Valdemar Ann Ward
Radio plays broadcast
Family Theater
Lux Radio Theatre
Stars over Hollywood
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1933 Births, Living People, 20th-century American Actresses, 20th Century Studios Contract Players, Actresses From Denver, Actresses From Los Angeles, American Christians, American Film Actresses, American Radio Actresses, American Television Actresses, Trinity Broadcasting Network People, Western Film Actresses
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