PEGGIE CASTLE

(1927-1973. Born Peggy Blair, Appalachia, Virginia)

Sylph-like, green-eyed bottle-blonde with a cool, composed manner, perfect for noir and westerns alike. Her better roles suggested a reservoir of emotional intelligence largely untapped by B-movie casting agents, the full extent of her talent ultimately denied exposure.   

A model in her mid-teens, she studied acting when her family moved to LA. Joined the cast of a radio soap, Today’s Children, until swooped on by a Hollywood talent scout, legend has it, while eating lunch in Beverly Hills. Signed to a seven-year contract by Universal-International.

It was not the happiest of experiences – bit parts, endless raunchy photo-shoots (voted Miss Cheesecake in 1949 by the Southern California Restaurant Association), glamour turns in two-bit costume adventures. “I used to watch wonderful parts go to outsiders while a lot of us [contract players] gathered dust,” she later complained.

I, the Jury

First meaty role was that of a scheming psychoanalyst in I, the Jury (1952), the first adaptation of a Mickey Spillane novel. If anyone remembers the film at all, it is for Castle’s silky seductress, not Biff (Bang! Pow!) Elliot’s callow efforts as Mike Hammer. Continued playing “the girl everybody hates”, in her words, in Phil Karlson’s pugnacious 99 River Street (1953). Still on the mean side of the street, she appeared in another Spillane movie, The Long Wait (1954), taking knocks for thuggish hero Anthony Quinn. In Finger Man (1955), she was terrific as a mobster’s acolyte, a warm heart in a shop-worn shell.

With Frank Lovejoy in Finger Man

A regular in B-westerns, mostly in decorative roles, she enjoyed unusual prominence in Two-Gun Lady (1955), as an avenging sharpshooter, and Roger Corman’s The Oklahoma Woman (1956), packing pistols, a whip and an indomitable attitude as a saloon madam-cum-criminal instigator.

Film career entered its death throes with the prophetically titled Beginning of the End (1957), a sci-fi flick about giant grasshoppers. Nor did Back from the Dead (1957) resurrect her fortunes, even though she glides sensuously through a tepid plot about a woman possessed by the spirit of her husband’s first wife. Thereafter drifted into television work, notably a three-year run on Lawman (1959-62), opposite John Russell.

Married four times. In her early days at Universal she had a relationship with the volatile Audie Murphy – Tony Curtis wrote that Murphy manhandled him on one occasion for allegedly bad-mouthing Castle.

Dissatisfied with her lot, she retired from acting in the mid Sixties. Her end was a particularly sad one – consumed by alcoholism, personal loss (her mother and fourth husband died within months of each other) and loneliness, she died, apparently after a drinking bout, aged just 45, the cause identified as cirrhosis of the liver.

Enduringly popular among a certain class of cinephile, perhaps because, as she opined, “Nobody likes nice women on the screen. Nice women are dull.”

Five standout roles

As Charlotte Manning in I, the Jury, she lends sophistication to a typically thick-eared Spillane plot, stringing along bull-headed private eye Mike Hammer as he hunts for a killer. First-timer Biff Elliot looks like a rabbit in the headlights in her presence.

As John Payne’s scolding wife in 99 River Street, she channels the frustration (and fears) of a woman married to a “pug” – a short-tempered boxer fallen on hard times. Driven into the arms of a criminal, she pays dearly for her betrayal. Castle makes her motivations explicable, even sympathetic.

As Gladys Baker in Finger Man, she is a reluctant underworld go-between, fixing up Frank Lovejoy’s titular stoolie with racketeer Forrest Tucker. Granted the best lines in a pedestrian screenplay, she trails regrets like a cloud of cheap perfume while yearning for a new life: “I know I’m no bargain. I’ve been around, plenty… Sometimes, I get the feeling there isn’t any more time…”

As Kate Masters in Two-Gun Lady, she puts an elegant spin on a standard Fifties motif – avenging gunfighter who can’t quite hang up her guns. It’s a contrived scenario but she makes it credible. If only the script gave her character her due.

As the title character in The Oklahoma Woman, she is forceful yet feminine, resplendent in black, a whip-cracking malefactor who maintains her villainous composure even when spattered with mud by a baying crowd. Kevin Grant

I, the Jury