Madlyn Rhue

 ( 1935 Births ) 

Despite being reliant on a wheelchair, Rhue managed to resume her entertainment career and was praised by media outlets for not allowing her health issues to disrupt her career. She played intermittent roles that did not require her to walk or stand, sometimes incorporating the wheelchair as part of the character. For example, she played a wheelchair-using ballistics expert on the CBS police-based legal drama, Houston Knights. She also played a judge role in the scripted court show, Trial by Jury, lasting only the 1989–90 television season. She performed the role in a wheelchair, unseen to viewers as she presided from the judge's bench. Her part as a female judge was uncharacteristic for court shows, the genre dominated by men performing the judge role to that point. She also performed a recurring role in Murder, She Wrote, said to be her last television role. Angela Lansbury created a role for her when she heard that Rhue was at risk of losing her health insurance because she could no longer work enough hours.

Contrary to rumors, her illness apparently had nothing to do with her not reprising the Star Trek role of Lt. Marla McGivers in the film (1982). At the time of the film's production start in late 1981, Rhue was still mobile and appearing in television roles, but hiding her diagnosis for fear of it impacting her career. Director Nicholas Meyer stated that he wrote McGivers out of his drafts of the film (with a line referencing the character's death) in order to give the Khan character additional motivation for seeking vengeance.

In 1991, in her last movie, she played a wheelchair-using character in the made for television thriller A Mother's Justice.