Leigh Snowden

Snowden's career took off after a Jack Benny Christmas show broadcast from the San Diego Naval Base, where her walk across the stage prompted cheers from 10,000 sailors, leading 11 studios to contact her and spawning the headline "Sailors' Whistles Blow Blonde into Film Studio." She signed with Universal Pictures for its film school, studying voice and acting alongside Mara Corday, Pat Crowley, Clint Eastwood, James Garner, and John Saxon. Her film credits include All That Heaven Allows, The Square Jungle, The Creature Walks Among Us, Outside the Law, I've Lived Before, Hot Rod Rumble, and finally The Comancheros (1961). She also appeared on television in This Is Alice (1958) and Tightrope (1960).

In 1956, she met accordionist Dick Contino at a party hosted by Tony Curtis, and they married three months later. Contino's Catholic family initially objected because of her divorce, but they attended the civil ceremony in a Beverly Hills hotel. Together they had three children, and Snowden left acting after their first child was born, though she sometimes sang in his nightclub acts. She returned briefly for a 1971 Fresno Community Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, playing Maggie, and admitted to nervousness about appearing in her slip. Leigh Snowden died of cancer on May 16, 1982, in North Hollywood, California, at age 52.