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Sharon Elizabeth Hugueny (February 29, 1944 – July 3, 1996) was an American actress who had a brief film and television career during the 1960s, appearing in 19 TV episodes and four feature films. The last gave her a co-starring role alongside Peter Fonda in 1964 as one of the title characters in The Young Lovers. Other than a single TV guest shot, she had been away from the cameras for nearly a decade, when an attempted return to filmmaking was cut short by a crippling automobile accident in 1977.
Her TV acting debut came on May 4, 1960, a little over two months after the contract signing, in the episode "Shadow of the Blade", broadcast near the end of the first season of the detective series Hawaiian Eye, which gave her top billing among the guest cast. Her second appearance was May 24, as Indian maiden Running Deer in "Attack", an episode of the Western, Colt .45. In June and July, she was on location in the tobacco fields of Connecticut, in Hartford, and at the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, alongside the cast and crew of Parrish, with filming completed on July 24.
On October 14, she was seen in "The Wide Screen Caper" episode of 77 Sunset Strip, playing an up-and-coming starlet named Sprite Simpson, and a month later, portrayed Native American girl Chantay", the title character in the November 13 segment of the western series Lawman. Her last 1960 TV appearance was as Irish lass Deidre Fogarty whose sympathies lay with "The Bold Fenian Men", the December 18 episode of Maverick. At about the same time, a brief news item publicized that "Sixteen-year-old Sharon Hugueny who makes her film debut with Troy Donahue in Warners' "Parrish," has already written her autobiography—a by-line piece which will be published in the January issue of the General Motors Corporation magazine.
In 1961, Hugueny appeared in another four episodes and a major feature film, then divorced Evans in November and returned to Hollywood.
Her first series episode, "A Touch of Velvet", was broadcast January 11, in the middle of Hawaiian Eye's second season, as she portrayed blind girl Ellie Collins, who helps one of the show's detectives catch a killer, exonerating a suspect whom she marries at the end. On March 3, she was in the "Tiger by the Tail" installment of 77 Sunset Strip, playing Sari, the daughter of a visiting Middle Eastern prince. Her last 1961 episodes, April 16 and 23, were in a two-part story on Maverick, "The Devil's Necklace", cast her as Indian girl Tawny, who falls in love with Bart Maverick.
Shortly after the wedding, Evans decided to give up his acting career and returned to New York so that he could be near his mother and to help manage the women's fashion house Evan-Picone. Referring to Hugueny as "my child bride", he recounts a panic attack she suffered on Manhattan's Lexington Avenue and her call to his office from a phone booth, "Childlike, 'I don't know where I am'." He writes "What had I been thinking, bringing this child to New York? It was like setting a Persian cat loose in the Amazon." Describing her as a "fragile flower", he explained that he "couldn't stand by and watch her be hurt anymore. It was unfair to her. Listening like a child, she understood." A "quickie divorce" in Mexico ended the marriage in November, but it would not be until June 1964 that the final property settlement was signed, and until July, when the divorce became final on the grounds that Evans "was never home".
The first of her 1962 shows was a third appearance on 77 Sunset Strip, in the episode "Twice Dead", which cast her as the daughter of Margaret Hayes and did not provide her character with a love interest. Two months later, her third appearance on Hawaiian Eye, in the episode "Rx Cricket", which focused on Connie Stevens' title character, left Hugueny competing for attention among a number of other guest stars. Finally, the pilot for The Gallant Men, directed in March by Robert Altman and broadcast on October 5, after her departure from the studio, gave her a couple of brief atmospheric scenes as Rosa.
The next time she was seen on-screen occurred on May 20, 1964 in "The Mismatch Maker" episode of The Farmer's Daughter. She played Maria Cortez, the daughter a South American ambassador, who develops a crush on the show's congressman, played by William Windom, with the sensible title character Katie (Inger Stevens), diplomatically resolving the situation by introducing her to another congressman's handsome son (Yale Summers). At the end of the year, with release of her fourth and final feature film, The Young Lovers, she received second billing, after Peter Fonda. Producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr., in his sole outing as a director, conducted a seven-month search to find the appropriate young lead opposite Fonda, with the proviso that in addition to having "training and dedication", she must be "an actress, not a starlet". The highly dramatic story of two unmarried college students, Eddie and Pam, faced with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy provided numerous opportunities for heated confrontations and provocative (for 1964) contemplation of abortion. A number of critics commended Hugueny on her acting skills, but few had more than tepid words for the film.
Only 20 years old at the time of the film's release, Hugueny was approaching the end of her career. Her only work in 1965 was "This Town for Sale", the November 15 episode of Run for Your Life, and in 1966, as college student Eliza in "The Ten Letterman" episode of Hank. In February, gossip columns reported that she was dating 34-year-old Night of the Iguana actor James "Skip" Ward.
Five months into her marriage, she was seen in a one-minute guest shot on the September 18, 1968 episode of Peyton Place, playing Donna Franklin, a glamorous and sophisticated mystery woman. The character did not appear again other than for a fleeting, unbilled, sighting in the December 11 episode. In the last days of 1974, the year of her divorce/widowhood, she made one final appearance in front of the cameras, as a guest star in "Choice of Victims" on Mannix.
Less than two years later, on April 16, 1976, Hugueny (at age 32) married Gordon Cornell Layne, the 45-year-old writer and founder of Mid America Pictures.
The following year, deciding to return to acting, she acquired new management and was en route to sign performing contracts when she was badly injured by a police vehicle engaged in a high-speed pursuit. Attended by her husband at their home in Lake Arrowhead, California, she partially recovered and lived for 19 more years until succumbing to cancer at age 52.
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