Jeanne Laverne Carmen

 Jeanne Laverne Carmen (August 4, 1930 – December 20, 2007)

As a teen, she moved to New York City and landed a job as a dancer in Burlesque, with Bert Lahr. Later, she became a model, appearing as a pin-up girl in several men's magazines, including Wink, Titter, and Beauty Parade. She was a trick-shot golfer, appearing with and managed by Jack Redmond. She toured country clubs and county fairs with Redmond and her then husband Sandy Scott. In her 20s, while on tour and traveling to Florida, she met Johnny Rosselli, the Chicago Outfit's liaison in Los Angeles, who drove her, without her husband, to Las Vegas. The pair, now intimate, stayed at the Desert Inn, where they scammed rich victims who bet unsuccessfully against her winning games on the casino's golf course. Rosselli introduced her to Frank Sinatra, who took her from Las Vegas to Hollywood In Hollywood, she appeared in B-movies such as Guns Don't Argue and The Monster of Piedras Blancas. She played both brassy platinum-blondes and (with her natural dark hair) sultry Spanish women. Carmen's good looks, hourglass figure, and green eyes quickly landed her on the big screen in 1956 playing a feisty Spanish senorita named Serelda in the film The Three Outlaws, a Western based on the same events as the later Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and co-starring Neville Brand and Alan Hale, Jr as Butch and Sundance.

She was cast by producer/director Howard W. Koch as an Indian girl in War Drums with Lex Barker of Tarzan fame. Koch took a liking to Carmen and cast her in Untamed Youth (1957), his next film for Warner Bros, co-starring Rockabilly legend Eddie Cochran, which inspired Cochran to cover the song "Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie" for her. She also appeared in the Three Stooges short A Merry Mix Up, playing Joe Besser's girlfriend Mary. In 1998, Carmen was the subject of a TV episode titled "Jeanne Carmen: Queen of the B-Movies" on the series E! True Hollywood Story. The show stated that Carmen maintained a "dangerously close friendship with Marilyn Monroe and The Kennedys" and that after the death of Monroe, Carmen was told to leave town by Johnny Rosselli who was working for Chicago Mob Boss Sam Giancana. Believing her life was in danger, she fled to Scottsdale, Arizona, where she lived incognito for more than a decade. On December 20, 2007, aged 77, Jeanne Carmen died from lymphoma at her home in Irvine, California, where she had resided since 1978. She is interred at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona Del Mar, California.