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(1935– ). American actress.
As for why that may be true, that is a discussion that
must be continued at another time—because all of this, after all, is
supposed to be functioning as an introduction to a discussion of the career
of Lee Meriwether, another tale of missed opportunities. When I first
saw her in the brilliant and underrated film The
4D Man, Meriwether was truly a revelation: she was beautiful,
she could act, and she could project intelligence on the screen.
She was, in short, an excellent leading lady for science fiction
films, even though no one appeared to realize that, leading to later involvements
with the genre which were either inconsequential or peripheral. Asked
to serve as solid support or as an emergency replacement, she never fulfilled
the potential displayed in her first major film role.
A summary of her later adventures: she appeared in the
curious daytime soap opera Clear Horizon,
focused on the personal problems of American astronauts and their wives;
in the film Batman, she
was poorly cast as the Catwoman, too classy a broad to project the slutty
sexuality that Julie NEWMAR effortlessly brought
to the role; in two Batman episodes as the henchperson of an overacting Victor
BUONO, she was inevitably upstaged; she was wasted in a recurring role
as a laboratory-bound engineer in Irwin ALLEN's
The Time Tunnel—since
she would have been a far more interesting time traveler than James Darren
or Robert Colbert; she performed adequately as a politely murderous hologram
in the Star Trek episode,
"That Which Survives"; and, during the fourth season of Mission: Impossible (1969-70), when the fired
Barbara BAIN's contract prevented the hiring
of a permanent replacement, Meriwether played a female agent in four episodes.
But the producers did not choose her as Bain's successor, and despite
other guest appearances, no one thought to put her at the forefront of
a science fiction series.
So, she was left to find her greatest success far afield
of science fiction, as Buddy Ebsen's daughter in the long-running detective
series Barnaby Jones. Again,
however, her talents were badly underestimated: even though the series
was doing perfectly well focusing on her and Ebsen, the producers brought
in Mark Shera after three seasons to add some youthful male energy and
pushed Meriwether a bit toward the sidelines. After the series ended,
her career lost any sense of direction, as she unwisely took on Yvonne
de Carlo's old role in an unsuccessful revival of The
Munsters and performed as a stooge for the likes of Space Ghost
and Duckman. The last I heard of her, she was performing on stage in the
Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The
King and I, still whistling a happy tune instead of brooding
about missed opportunities. |
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