Debra Paget

Paget was born in Denver, Colorado, one of five children born to Margaret Allen (née Gibson), a former Actress (one source says, "ex-burlesque queen"), and Frank Henry Griffin, a Painter. The family moved from Denver to Los Angeles, California, in the 1930s to be close to the developing film industry. Paget was enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School when she was 11. Margaret was determined that Debra and her siblings would also make their careers in show Business. Three of Paget's siblings, Marcia (Teala Loring), Leslie (Lisa Gaye), and Frank (Ruell Shayne), entered show Business.

Paget had her first professional job at age 8, and acquired some stage experience at 13 when she acted in a 1946 production of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Paget's first notable film role was as Teena Riconti, girlfriend of the character played by Richard Conte, in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak for 20th Century Fox.

Fox liked her and signed her to a long-term contract. She had small roles in Mother Is a Freshman (1949), It Happens Every Spring (1949) and House of Strangers (1949).

From 1950 to 1956, she took part in six original radio plays for Family Theater. During those same years, she read parts in four episodes of Lux Radio Theater, sharing the microphone with such actors as Burt Lancaster, Tyrone Power, Cesar Romero, Ronald Colman, and Robert Stack. The latter set included dramatizations of two of her feature films.

Paget was the second female lead in Anne of the Indies (1951). She was third billed in Belles on Their Toes (1952) and second billed in Les Misérables (1952), playing Cosette.

Paget was Robert Wagner's love interest in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) and Prince Valiant (1954). In 1953, wearing a blonde wig, she auditioned along with Anita Ekberg and Irish McCalla, among others, for the starring role in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which went to McCalla.

Page had a good role in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), a big hit. She was Dale Robertson's love interest in The Gambler from Natchez (1954) and played another Native American in White Feather (1955), playing the sister of Jeffrey Hunter and lover of Robert Wagner.

Fox leaned Paget and Hunter to Allied Artists to appear in Seven Angry Men (1955). Then when Anne Bancroft was injured during filming The Last Hunt (1956) at MGM, the studio borrowed Paget to play her part, another native American.

During production of Love Me Tender (1956), Elvis Presley became smitten with Paget, who in 1997 claimed the singer even proposed marriage. At the time, however, the media reported that she was romantically linked with Howard Hughes and nothing came of this. A 1956 article quoted Paget's comments about Hughes:

After that, Paget's career began to decline. She went to Paramount to play Cornel Wilde's love interest in Omar Khayyam (1957). She was the Juvenile lead in From the Earth to the Moon (1958).

Paget married actor and singer David Street on January 14, 1958, but she obtained a divorce on April 11, 1958. On March 27, 1960, she married Budd Boetticher, a prominent Director, in Tijuana, Mexico. They separated after just 22 days, and their divorce became official in 1961.

In 1959, Paget appeared as Lela Russell in the episode "The Unwilling" of the NBC Western television series, Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin. In the story line, Dan Simpson, played by Eddie Albert, attempts to open a general store despite a raid from pirates who stole $20,000 in merchandise. Russell Johnson appears in this episode as Darius.

Paget appeared in Cleopatra's Daughter (1960) shot in Italy, Why Must I Die? (1960) for American International Pictures, Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961) and Rome 1585 (1961) again in Italy.

Paget left the entertainment industry in 1964 after marrying Ling C. Kung 孔令傑 on April 19, 1962. Kung was a Chinese-American oil industry executive, son of Confucius descendant H. H. Kung and Soong Ai-ling and nephew of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. This third marriage produced a son, Gregory (Kung Teh-chi) (Kong Deji) (孔德基), but ended in divorce in 1980.

Her final two films were for Roger Corman at American International Pictures: Tales of Terror (1963) and The Haunted Palace (1963).

She did television work throughout her career. Her last performance in this medium came in a December 1965 episode of ABC's Burke's Law, starring Gene Barry. She retired from entertainment in 1965, after marrying a wealthy oil executive, by whom she had one son, her only child.

In 1987, the Motion Picture and Television Fund presented Paget with its Golden Boot Award, which is awarded to those actors, Writers, Directors, and stunt crew who "have contributed so much to the development and preservation of the western tradition in film and television."

Paget became a born-again Christian. She hosted her own show, An Interlude with Debra Paget, on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian network, in the early 1990s, and also was involved in Praise the Lord. She occasionally appears on TBN as a guest.