Full Name Donna Higgins Name Dee Hartford Occupation Actress Role Television actress | Years active 1952–1976 Siblings Eden Hartford Movies Fanfare for a Death Scene | |
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Similar People Eden Hartford, Howard Hawks, Slim Keith, Athole Shearer, Don Matheson | ||
Dee Hartford (born Donna Higgins, April 21, 1928) is a retired American television actress. She was married to Howard Hawks from 1953 to 1959. Her sister was actress Eden Hartford.
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Early years
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Hartford is the daughter of Edgar Higgins and Beatrice Thomas Higgins. She attended East High School in Salt Lake City and LDS Business College before becoming a model.
Career
Hartford was a model and actress when she married director Howard Hawks. She initially achieved fame in the late 1940s as a model for Vogue magazine.
Her screen debut was in A Girl in Every Port (1952), directed by Chester Erskine.
She married Hawks in 1953 and did no acting during the six years they were together. They divorced in 1959, though she had an uncredited role in his 1965 film Red Line 7000. In 1964-1965 she made three guest appearances on Perry Mason; as Leslie Ross in "The Case of the Accosted Accountant," as Lois Gray in "The Case of the Missing Button," and she played Rhonda Coleridge in "The Case of the Baffling Bug." In 1964, she also appeared in "The Bewitchin' Pool", the last original broadcast episode of The Twilight Zone. Hartford also guest starred in Gunsmoke, Burke's Law, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Batman (two episodes), Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants and Lost in Space (three episodes). She appeared as the android Verda in the 1966 Lost in Space episode "The Android Machine" and in a sequel, "Revolt of the Androids".
Personal life
Hartford married Hawks on February 20, 1953, at his home in Hollywood, California. She is a Mormon.
