Randy Stuart

Biography

The daughter of husband-and-wife vaudevillians, Randy Stuart was born in southeastern Iola, Kansas and traveled throughout the South and Midwest with her itinerant parents before making her own stage debut with them at the ripe old age of three. The family eventually settled in California where Randy attended college, acted in school plays and caught the eye of Hollywood talent scouts; she enacted a scene from the play "The Women" in a screen test which impressed 20th Century-Fox executives enough to put her under contract. She made her film debut with an uncredited part in The Foxes of Harrow (1947) starring Maureen O'Hara and Rex Harrison. In 1950, the blonde, smoky-voiced actress made a brief impression as the calculating telephone roommate of Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter) in the classic backstage film All About Eve (1950). She then moved up front and center as the distaff part of a husband-and-wife spy team in Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) which also starred Alan Hale Jr.. Randy later was given her best-remembered role in the cult sci-fier The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) as Louise Carey, the concerned wife of tiny Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams. The next year she was cast as Nancy Dawson in the western film Man from God's Country (1958) opposite George Montgomery which was followed by a guest-star appearance in Montgomery's short-lived television western television series Cimarron City (1958). She also had a one-season (1959-60) regular role on the western series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955). After this she would remain focused on 60s' TV, wherein she sporadically appeared in a number of popular series, mostly crime dramas and westerns, such as "Bonanza," "Maverick," "Peter Gunn," "Cheyenne" and "77 Sunset Strip." Retiring by the mid 60s, she was spotted only a couple of times after that. In the series "Dragnet" she appeared a couple of times as co-star Harry Morgan's wife) and she made a single appearance in a mid 70s "Marcus Welby" episode. She died in 1996 at age 71.