A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of June
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June 16, 1924 was the birthdate of Faith Marie Domergue, the American television and film actress.
While just a sophomore at high school, Ann Marie Domergue signed a contract with Warner Brothers and made her first on-screen appearance as a walk-on in the 1941 “Blues in the Night”. After graduating high school in 1942, Domergue pursued her career in acting; but after sustaining injuries in a near fatal automobile accident, she put her plans on hold. While recuperating, she attended a Howard Hughes yacht party.
Howard Hughes, emanored with her, bought her contract from Warner Brothers and signed her to a three picture deal with RKO Pictures. She was cast as the lead in the 1950 thriller “Vendetta”. The film had a four year troubled production period and, after its release in 1950, was dismissed as a trivial, slow paced period piece. After the film release, Domergue separated from Hughes and freelanced as an actor.
Domergue played a femme fatale in the 1950 film noir “Where Danger Lives”, opposite Robert Mitchum and Claude Rains. Signing a contract with Universal Pictures in 1953, she appeared opposite Audie Murphy in the western adventure “The Duel at Silver Creek”. In 1955, she appeared in another western, “Santa Fe Passage” playing Aurelie Saint Clair, an ammunition retailer on a wagon train, opposite John Payne and Rod Cameron.
Domergue then appeared in a series of science fiction films which earned her the reputation as an early “scream queen”, the films’ damsel in distress. The first was the “Cult of the Cobra” released in 1955 where airmen discover a cult of snake worshippers. Faith Domergue played the female lead role of the cult leader who transforms herself into a deadly cobra.
The next role was in the now famous sci-fi movie “It Came from Beneath the Sea” produced by Columbia Pictures. This 1954 film about a giant octopus was a major commercial success, grossing almost two million dollars at the box office and later becoming a cult classic. She played marine biologist Lesley Joyce who helped destroy the creature with an atomic torpedo. The following year, Domergue starred in the first color sci-fi film “This Island Earth”, which received praise for its writing and inventive special effects.
By the late 1960s, Domergue was appearing mainly in low-budget “B” horror movies and European productions. She relocated to Europe permanently in 1968, moving from Rome to Geneva, Switzerland, and Marbella, Spain. Her final film credit was for the 1974 “The House of Seven Corpses”, an independent horror film shot in Salt Lake City. Faith Domergue spent her later years in retirement in Palo Alto, California. She died on April 4, 1999, of unspecified cancer at the age of 74.