The problem with watching old movies or TV shows is that if you see anyone you become interested in, it’s often hard to learn much about them.
Take a TV series like Wagon Train, for instance. One of the great TV westerns, the series ran from 1957 to 1965—long before the Internet, social networking, and other modern means of learning about any actor below A or B list.
Take Maggie Pierce. Adorable and captivating, she appeared on four episodes of Wagon Train, including one, in 1959, in which she was a member of a group of young girls traveling West with Bette Davis. But she was a central character in the series’ 1960 episode "The Shad Bennington Story," said Bennington being a medicine show quack delightfully played by David Wayne, recognizable to mid-‘60s TV fans as Batman villain The Mad Hatter.
As Jennifer "Jenny" Robertson, she’s a young, late teen girl who falls in love with Bennington, evoking the look of Shannen Doherty without the ‘tude. But look her up on the Web and you’ll find next to nothing.
Nothing at all on Wikipedia; only her credits on IMDB.com—though you also learn there, via STARmeter, that she is ranked No. 210 of 1,283 of the most popular people born in Detroit. Noteworthy among her films is Tales Of Terror, Roger Corman's 1962 horror film starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.
But Maggie Pierce was probably best known as Jerry Van Dyke’s wife in the mid-‘60s NBC fantasy sitcom My Mother The Car, which TVparty.com calls “one of the worst television series of all time” (premise: the Van Dyke character’s mother was reincarnated as a used station wagon, and wont’ let him alone), though “probably worth it to the network as fodder for Tonight Show punchlines for the next three decades.”
But Pierce, the site also says, “was particularly good as the wife, and anything with Ann Sothern [the mother, the car] can't be ALL bad!”
Luckily, there are a few glamour pics of Pierce when you google her, which lead you to a Web site, glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com, which proves invaluable. The site, which features data on scores of similarly obscure glamour girls, documents that Pierce, who was born in Detroit on Oct. 24, 1939, was the daughter of an auto company executive; she trained as a nurse in New York at Bellevue Hospital for three years, then quit to become a model, and attended drama school for 18 months.
In 1956, show business columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Pierce lost out in the “Rheingold Girl” contest, but won a bigger prize in millionaire realtor Henry Epstein. Spotted by talent scouts in a TV commercial, she signed a contract with MGM in 1959, and was linked romantically with Texas financier Bob Neal—who dumped her for Debbie Reynolds.
After welcoming talent agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar back from Europe, Pierce is seen with Troy Donahue, attends George Hamilton’s 20th birthday party with music producer/arranger Buddy Bregman, and hooks up with Sam Young, Jr., whose “wealthy Texan father” is a Hilton hotels board member. Taking over Cathy Crosby’s apartment lease, she is one of the 1959 Hollywood Deb stars—others including Carol Douglas, Yvette Mimieux and Shirley Knight--presented by Bob Hope on his NBC-TV show.
Girl gets around. Still in ’59, she’s photographed with Wisconsin football Badgers Bob Zeman and Jerry Stalcup. Before reporting for a 1960 TV role, she flies to Egypt to see the sights that will soon be submerged by the construction of the Aswan Dam. She dates Jane Fonda’s boyfriend Sandy Whitelaw, accompanies actor Mark Damon at the Palm Springs charity premiere of The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and is seen at The Luau with Bruce Kessler before reuniting with former fiancé Neal, then pairing with Wesley Ruggles, Jr.
In 1961, legendary gossip columnist Walter Winchell writes that Pierce "jets from the Coast twice a month to make sure Alan Grant doesn't get lost," then says that she and Hope Lange's brother David "act very much like the average Elopemental Case." Columnist Harrison Carroll sees her at The Crescendo in a party with Glenn Ford, David Lange, and Joanna Moore.
Meanwhile, writer Richard Matheson says she was terrible while filming Tales Of Terror, and while she’s seen in 1963 with David Lange, in 1967 she marries real estate "trillionaire" Jerry Minskoff in Las Vegas, then gives birth to her first daughter in New York. But now news on Pierce gets really scarce: In 1977, she and her husband are spotted dining at Trader Vic's with Lynn Redgrave and her husband. Two years later she's quoted saying smoking might have some bad effects, but after a few puffs, boring people disappear.
Minskoff dies in 1994. The last Pierce entry at glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com shows her living in New York as of 2005. An email seeking contact information sent out-of-the-blue to Edward J. Minskoff, head of institutional real estate company Edward J. Minskoff Equities and the nephew of Jerome (Jerry) Minskoff, brings a quick response: Maggie Pierce, too, is deceased.
Sure enough, the embarrassed viewer who fell in love with Maggie Pierce via "The Shad Bennington Story" had overlooked her date of death, April 5, 2010, opposite her date of birth at IMDB.com. She died in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and tops the STARmeter list of nine most popular people who died there.
As Wagon Train has been available only recently through DVDs, Netflix and rebroadcasting on the Encore Westerns cable channel, she never knew how she moved the viewer, who, unknowing, went out of his way to tell her.
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