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Kim Darby

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Kim Darby
Darby as a guest-star on Marcus Welby, M.D. and Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law in 1974
Born
Deborah Zerby

(1947-07-08) July 8, 1947 (age 77)
Los Angeles, California
OccupationActress
Years active1962–present
Known for
Spouses
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1968; div. 1969)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1970; div. 1970)​
Children1

Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby; July 8, 1947)[1] is an American actress best known for her roles as Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969) and Jenny Meyer in Better Off Dead (1985).

Early life and film career

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Darby was born Deborah Zerby in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of professional dancers Inga (Wiere) and Jon Zerby (known professionally as the "Dancing Zerbys" or "Dancing Zerbies"). Her father nicknamed her "Derby", saying "I thought Derby Zerby would be a great stage name".[2] Her mother was from Budapest.[3]

She performed as a singer and dancer under the name "Derby Zerby".[4] Believing that she could not "hope for serious important roles in films with a name like "Derby Zerby", she renamed herself "Kim", because it was the name of a popular girl in her high school whom she admired, and "Darby", as a variation of "Derby".[5]

Darby began acting at age 15; her first appearance was as a dancer in the feature film version of the earlier New York City's Broadway theater musicale play Bye Bye Birdie (1963), about a budding rock and roll music phenomenon singing and guitar-playing star, (modeled on the real-life career of famous Elvis Presley (1939-1977), beginning seven years before in 1956, when he gained national fame). Her television work included, the two-decades long-running Western TV series Gunsmoke of 1955-1975, (in the 1967 episodes "The Lure" and "Vengeance"); also another long-running Western, a Sunday evening prime-time staple of Bonanza of 1959-1973, (in its 1967 episode "The Sure Thing"); and as a young girl approaching adulthood on an all-child planet in the 1966-67 first-season episode of "Miri" of the original Star Trek TV series of 1966-1969.[6]

Among her many feature films is the one that she is most famous for in American and Hollywood motion pictures history, is that of co-starring with legendary John Wayne and Glen Campbell, in the Western classic True Grit (first version of 1969), in which she played "Mattie Ross", a precocious, unusually confident 14-year-old Arkansas frontier girl (when she was actually 21 years old), pursuing the murderer who killed her beloved father and his gang into the adjacent lawless frontier of the federal Indian Territory (future Oklahoma), in the mid-1870s. It was based on a popular Western novel, published in 1968, by author Charles Portis (1933-2020), The story saga was later remade as a second film, over 40 years later in 2010, with a slightly varied plot and twist on the epic, starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and introducing little Hailee Steinfeld as young Mattie Ross, (in her film debut).

Later the next year, in the beginning of her second and most successful career decade of the 1970s in The Strawberry Statement (1970);[7] and Norwood (also 1970); then eight years later in The One and Only (1978);[8] followed by Better Off Dead (1985); and a decade later with Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).[6]

Television roles

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Darby's 1960s television roles included two appearances on the NBC series Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus, including an appearance as Julie Dean in "To Lodge and Dislodge" (1963). She was cast as Heather Heatherton in the Wagon Train episode "The Story of Hector Heatherton" (1964) and as Judy Wheeler in "The Silent Dissuaders" (1965).

Darby also appeared about this time on The Eleventh Hour, The Fugitive, The Donna Reed Show, Ironside, and in the first season of Star Trek as the title character in "Miri."[6]

Darby was cast in an episode of the NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show ("'Tis Better Have Loved and Lost", 1965), and as Angel in the two-part Gunsmoke episode "Vengeance." She appeared in the episode "Faire Ladies of France" (1967) of the NBC western series The Road West starring Barry Sullivan and a Bonanza episode "A Sure Thing" (1967) as Trudy Loughlin, guest starring Tom Tully as Burt Loughlin, her father.[6] She appeared in another episode of Gunsmoke, "The Lure" (1967) as Carrie Neely.

She was cast in the 1972 movie, The People, which reunited her with William Shatner from her Star Trek appearance.[9] She played the unhinged Virginia Calderwood in the first television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976.[6]

Darby had the central role of Sally Farnham in the made-for-TV chiller Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973). Some of her subsequent television roles included guest appearances on Crazy Like a Fox, Thriller, Family, The Love Boat, The Streets of San Francisco, Riptide, and Becker.[6]

Darby admitted her career declined after the 1970s, in part because she had a dependency on amphetamines.[10]

In 1990, she began to teach acting in the Los Angeles area and was an instructor in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1992 to 2009.[11] Darby also appeared in the 1999 The X-Files episode "Sein und Zeit" as a woman who confessed to the murder of her son, a boy who disappeared under circumstances similar to those being investigated by the lead characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.[6]

In 2014, she played Stacia Clairborne, a partially blind witness to a crime, in the episode "Prologue" of the show Perception.

Personal life

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Darby has been married four times, including to Jack La Rue, Jr. and William Tennant.[citation needed] In 1968, she married James Stacy, with whom she had one child, Heather Elias, born in 1968.[8] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1969.[12][13] In 1970, she married James Westmoreland; the marriage ended in divorce after less than two months.[14][15][16][17][18][19]

Filmography

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TV appearances

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References

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  1. ^ "Kim Darby". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
  2. ^ Sackett, Susan (1995). Hollywood Sings!: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Academy Award-nominated Songs. Billboard Books. p. 200. ISBN 9780823076239.
  3. ^ "The Zest of Jon Zerby". Daily News of Los Angeles. July 16, 1997.
  4. ^ Adrian Room (2010). Dictionary of Pseudonyms. McFarland. p. 132. ISBN 9780786457632.
  5. ^ Miller, Edwin (June 1969). "A New Name... A New Life (Kim Darby)" (PDF). Seventeen – via Kim Darby's website.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g "Kim Darby". TV Guide. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
  7. ^ Sterritt, David. "The Strawberry Statement (1970)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  8. ^ a b Ebert, Roger (February 7, 1978). "Kim Darby: The One and Only | Interviews". Chicago Sun-Times – via RogerEbert.com.
  9. ^ "The People (1972 USA, TV)". Modcinema.com. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
  10. ^ Sam Tweedle (January 20, 2011). "Truth and Grit: A Conversation with Kim Darby". Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  11. ^ "Original Mattie Ross talks eating disorder". ABC7 News. ABC, Inc. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
  12. ^ Weisberg, Sam (July 16, 2014). "The Mouse That Charmed: An Evening with Kim Darby". Hidden Films. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  13. ^ "Kim Darby". tcmdb. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  14. ^ "Truth and Grit: A Conversation with Kim Darby - Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict". Popcultureaddict.com. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  15. ^ Wise, Trudy (July 1970). "He Was Like a Stranger to Me". Motion Picture Magazine. asjcollection.com. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  16. ^ Barnes, Mike (September 21, 2016). "James Westmoreland, Forced by His Agent to Ditch His Stage Name, Dies at 80". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  17. ^ "Biography". Jim Westmoreland. August 25, 2011. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  18. ^ "James Westmoreland Obituary (1935 - 2016) The Times-Picayune". obits.nola.com. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  19. ^ Fox, Kirk (September 21, 2016). "James Westmoreland (1935 - 2016)". Legacy.com. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
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