// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Kim Darby's cat join a band? Because it wanted to be the purr-cussionist.
Kim Darby | |
|---|---|
 Darby as a guest-star on Marcus Welby, M.D. and Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law in 1974 | |
| Born | Deborah Zerby July 8, 1947 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1962–present |
| Known for | |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby; July 8, 1947)[1][2] is an American actress and teacher. Her breakout role was as Mattie Ross in the 1969 Western film True Grit, earning her a BAFTA Award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. The same year, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her performance in counterculture comedy Generation (1969).
Darby has appeared in over 80 films and television series. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Between 1992 and 2009, she taught acting in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles.[3]
Early life
[edit]Darby was born Deborah Zerby on July 8, 1947 in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of professional dancers Inga (née Wiere) and Jon Zerby (known professionally as the "Dancing Zerbys" or "Dancing Zerbies"). Her father nicknamed her "Derby", saying "I thought Derby Zerby would be a great stage name".[4] Her mother was a Hungarian immigrant from Budapest.[5]
Darby was raised in North Hollywood and attended Van Nuys High School.[6] She performed as a singer and dancer under the name "Derby Zerby".[7] Believing that she could not "hope for serious important roles in films with a name like "Derby Zerby", she renamed herself "Kim", because it was the name of a popular girl in her high school whom she admired, and "Darby", as a variation of "Derby".[8] While still a teenager, Darby studied acting under Tony Barr.[6]
Career
[edit]Film
[edit]
Darby began acting at age 15; her first appearance was as a dancer in the feature film version of Bye Bye Birdie (1963), about a rock and roll music singing and guitar-playing star (modeled on the real-life career of Elvis Presley). Her television work included the Western TV series Gunsmoke of 1955–1975 (in the 1967 episodes "The Lure" and "Vengeance") and another long-running Western, Bonanza of 1959–1973 (in its 1967 episode "The Sure Thing"); and as a young girl approaching adulthood on an all-child planet in the 1966–67 first-season episode, "Miri", of the original Star Trek TV series of 1966–1969.[9]
Among her many feature film roles, she is best known for her portrayal of Mattie Ross in the Western classic True Grit (1969), when she was 21 years old. Co-starring with John Wayne and Glen Campbell, she played a precocious, unusually confident 14-year-old Arkansas frontier girl pursuing the murderer who killed her beloved father. Set in the mid-1870s, the film was adapted from a popular Western novel published in 1968 by Charles Portis. It was hugely successful and reached number one at the box office in the US.[10]
In 1970, Darby appeared in The Strawberry Statement[11] and Norwood. She co-starred with Henry Winkler in The One and Only in 1978,[12] and appeared in 1985's Better Off Dead, an absurdist comedy. A decade later, she played Laurie Strode's adoptive mother in the slasher film Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), a sequel to Halloween (1978).[9]
Television roles
[edit]
Darby's 1960s television roles included two appearances on the NBC series Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus, including an appearance as Julie Dean in "To Lodge and Dislodge" (1963). She was cast as Heather Heatherton in the Wagon Train episode "The Story of Hector Heatherton" (1964) and as Judy Wheeler in "The Silent Dissuaders" (1965).
Darby also appeared about this time on The Eleventh Hour, The Fugitive, The Donna Reed Show, Ironside, and in the first season of Star Trek as the title character in the episode "Miri."[9]
Darby was cast in an episode of the NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show ("'Tis Better Have Loved and Lost", 1965), and as Angel in the two-part Gunsmoke episode "Vengeance." She appeared in the episode "Faire Ladies of France" (1967) of the NBC western series The Road West starring Barry Sullivan and a Bonanza episode "A Sure Thing" (1967) as Trudy Loughlin, guest starring Tom Tully as Burt Loughlin, her father.[9] She appeared in another episode of Gunsmoke, "The Lure" (1967) as Carrie Neely.
She was cast in the 1972 movie, The People, which reunited her with William Shatner from her Star Trek appearance.[13] She played the unhinged Virginia Calderwood in the first television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976.[9]
Darby had the central role of Sally Farnham in the made-for-TV chiller Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973). Some of her subsequent television roles included guest appearances on Crazy Like a Fox, Thriller, Family, The Love Boat, The Streets of San Francisco, Riptide, and Becker.[9]
Darby admitted her career declined after the 1970s, partly due to her dependency on amphetamines at the time.[14]
In 1990, she began to teach acting in the Los Angeles area and was an instructor in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1992 to 2009.[3] Darby also appeared in the 1999 The X-Files episode "Sein und Zeit" as a woman who confessed to the murder of her son, a boy who disappeared under circumstances similar to those being investigated by the lead characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.[9]
In 2014, she played Stacia Clairborne, a partially blind witness to a crime, in the episode "Prologue" of the show Perception.
Personal life
[edit]Darby has been married three times, including to William Tennant.[15] In 1968, she married James Stacy, with whom she had one daughter, Heather.[12] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1969.[16][17] In 1970, she married James Westmoreland; the marriage ended in divorce after less than two months. Both of her husbands named James died only 5 days apart, on September 9 and September 14, in 2016.[15][18][19][20][21][22]
Filmography
[edit]Film
[edit]| Year | Title | Role | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1963 | Bye Bye Birdie | Teenager | Uncredited | |
| 1965 | Bus Riley's Back in Town | Gussie | [23] | |
| The Restless Ones | April | [23] | ||
| 1967 | The Karate Killers | Sandy True | ||
| 1968 | Flesh and Blood | Faye | Television film | |
| 1969 | Generation | Doris Bolton Owen | [23] | |
| True Grit | Mattie Ross | [23] | ||
| 1970 | The Strawberry Statement | Linda | [23] | |
| Norwood | Rita Lee Chipman | [23] | ||
| 1971 | A Glimpse of Tiger | Unfinished film | ||
| Red Sky at Morning | [23] | |||
| The Grissom Gang | Barbara Blandish | [23] | ||
| 1972 | The People | Melodye Amerson | Television film | |
| 1973 | Don't Be Afraid of the Dark | Sally Farnham | ||
| 1974 | The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd | Ruby Hardgrave | ||
| This Is the West That Was | Calamity Jane | |||
| 1978 | The One and Only | Mary Crawford | [23] | |
| 1979 | Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers | Sweetiepie | Television film | |
| 1980 | Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb | Lucy Tibbets | ||
| 1982 | The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams | Kate Bradey | ||
| 1983 | Summer Girl | Mary Shelburne | ||
| 1985 | First Steps | Sherry Petrofsky | ||
| Embassy | Sue Davidson | |||
| Better Off Dead | Jenny Meyer | [23] | ||
| 1987 | Teen Wolf Too | Professor Brooks | [23] | |
| 1995 | Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers | Debra Strode | [23] | |
| 1999 | The Last Best Sunday | Mrs. Summers | ||
| 2000 | Newsbreak | Frances Johnson | ||
| 2001| | Mockingbird Don't Sing | Louise Standon | ||
| 2004 | You Are So Going to Hell! | Louise | ||
| 2007 | Dead Letters | Barbs | ||
| 2017 | The Evil Within | Mildy Torres | ||
Television
[edit]| Year | Title | Role | Notes | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1965 | Mr. Novak | |||
| 1964 | Dr. Kildare | Patsy | Episode: "A Nickel's Worth of Prayer" | |
| Wagon Train | Heather Heatherton | Episode: "The Hector Heatherton Story" | ||
| 1966 | Run for Your Life | Episode: "Hang Down Your Head and Laugh" | ||
| 1966 | The Fugitive | Episodes: “An Apple A Day”; "Joshua's Kingdom" | ||
| Star Trek: The Original Series | Miri | Episode: "Miri" | [9] | |
| 1967 | The Man from U.N.C.L.E. | Sandy | Episode: "The Five Daughters Affair" | [9] |
| Ironside | Pilot for the NBC series of the same name | |||
| Bonanza | Episode: "The Sure Thing" | |||
| Gunsmoke | Carrie Neely | Episode: "The Lure" | ||
| Angel | Episodes: "Vengeance, Part 1" and "Vengeance, Part 2" | |||
| 1972 | The Streets of San Francisco | Pilot for the TV series of the same name | ||
| 1973 | Circle of Fear | Episode: "Dark Vengeance" | ||
| Love Story | Episode: "Joie" | |||
| 1974 | Police Story | Episodes: "Captain Hook", "Wyatt Earp Syndrome" | ||
| 1975 | Thriller | Helen | Episode: "Good Salary - Prospects - Free Coffin" | |
| 1976 | Rich Man, Poor Man | Virginia Calderwood | Miniseries | |
| 1977 | The Oregon Trail | Mary Anne Moorhead | Episode: "Return of the Baby" | |
| 1978 | Family | Lily Barker | Episode: "Princess in the Tower" | |
| 1979 | The Last Convertible | Miniseries | ||
| 1979 | The Love Boat | Wendy | Episodes: "Alas, Poor Dwyer/After the War/Itsy Bitsy/Ticket to Ride/Disco Baby" (Parts 1 and 2) | |
| 1982 | Sarah Curtis | Episode: "The Tomorrow Lady / Father, Dear Father / Still Life" | [9] | |
| Fantasy Island | Episode: "The Challenge / A Genie Named Joe" | |||
| 1984 | The Facts of Life | Doris Garrett | Episode: "Joint Custody" | |
| Murder, She Wrote | Laurie | Episode: "We're Off to Kill the Wizard" | [9] | |
| E/R | Mrs. Johnson | Episode: "Only a Nurse" | ||
| The Mississippi | Episode: "Abigail" | |||
| 1985 | Scarecrow & Mrs. King | Episode: "Over the Limit" | ||
| 1986 | Crazy Like a Fox | Jenny Fenwick | Episode: "A Fox at the Races" | |
| Riptide | Nice Beverly | Episode: "A Matter of Policy" | ||
| 1995 | Murder, She Wrote | 'Wee' Joan Kemp | Episode: "Film Flam" | [9] |
| 1999 | The X-Files | Episode: "Sein und Zeit" | [9] | |
| Becker | Episode: "Point of Contact" | [9] | ||
| 2014 | Perception | Episode: "Prologue" | ||
References
[edit]- ↑ "Kim Darby". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2022.
- ↑ "UPI Almanac for Tuesday, July 8, 2014". United Press International. Archived from the original on December 28, 2014.
- 1 2 "Original Mattie Ross talks eating disorder". ABC7 News. ABC, Inc. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
- ↑ Sackett, Susan (1995). Hollywood Sings!: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Academy Award-nominated Songs. Billboard Books. p. 200. ISBN 9780823076239.
- ↑ "The Zest of Jon Zerby". Daily News of Los Angeles. July 16, 1997.
- 1 2 Warga, Wayne (October 5, 1969). "Kim Darby's 'True Grit'". Los Angeles Times. pp. 24–25 – via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ Adrian Room (2010). Dictionary of Pseudonyms. McFarland. p. 132. ISBN 9780786457632.
- ↑ Miller, Edwin (June 1969). "A New Name... A New Life (Kim Darby)" (PDF). Seventeen – via Kim Darby's website.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 "Kim Darby". TV Guide. Archived from the original on February 5, 2010. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
- ↑ "50 Top-Grossing Films". Variety. September 3, 1969. p. 13.
- ↑ Sterritt, David. "The Strawberry Statement (1970)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
- 1 2 Ebert, Roger (February 7, 1978). "Kim Darby: The One and Only | Interviews". Chicago Sun-Times – via RogerEbert.com.
- ↑ "The People (1972 USA, TV)". Modcinema.com. Retrieved September 14, 2018.
- ↑ Sam Tweedle (January 20, 2011). "Truth and Grit: A Conversation with Kim Darby". Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
- 1 2 "Truth and Grit: A Conversation with Kim Darby - Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict". Popcultureaddict.com. Archived from the original on June 3, 2015. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
- ↑ "Kim Darby". tcmdb. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ↑ Wise, Trudy (July 1970). "He Was Like a Stranger to Me". Motion Picture Magazine. asjcollection.com. Archived from the original on November 9, 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ↑ Barnes, Mike (September 21, 2016). "James Westmoreland, Forced by His Agent to Ditch His Stage Name, Dies at 80". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ↑ "Biography". Jim Westmoreland. August 25, 2011. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ↑ "James Westmoreland Obituary (1935 - 2016) The Times-Picayune". obits.nola.com. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- ↑ Fox, Kirk (September 21, 2016). "James Westmoreland (1935 - 2016)". Legacy.com. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Kim Darby Filmography". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on January 3, 2026.
External links
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