PAMELA TIFFIN

(13 October 1942 - 3 December 2020)

From modelling to movies was the progression the American actress Pamela Tiffin made early on in her career. She grew up in Chicago and then moved to New York where her intended studies were brushed aside for a successful modelling stint. However, when the teenage Pamela visited Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, film producer Hal B. Wallis was taken by her obvious good looks and cast her in Summer and Smoke, a 1961 Tennessee Williams adaptation with Laurence Harvey and Geraldine Page, for which Pamela was nominated for a Golden Globe. In the same year she gained another Golden Globe nomination for Billy Wilder’s comedy One, Two, Three. Pamela Tiffin, who has died aged 78, was obviously on her way up the career ladder and went on to make State Fair (1962), a remake of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical with Pat Boone and Bobby Darin, Come Fly With Me, a comedy about air stewardesses, and other modest movies such as For Those Who Think Young, The Lively Set and The Pleasure Seekers. She was put to better use in John Sturges’ The Hallelujah Trail with Burt Lancaster and Lee Remick, in Harper (aka The Moving Target) with Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall, and for Viva Max! with Peter Ustinov. On moving to Italy in 1967, she graced a number of forgettable Italian comedies and did some television work that brought her acting career to a halt in 1974, apart from an Italian TV series in 1989. She had returned to New York with her second husband, the philosopher Edmondo Danon. They have two daughters, Echo and Aurora. Her first husband was the magazine editor Clay Felker whom she divorced in 1969.

MICHAEL DARVELL