She also had a small role as a mourner at Bela Lugosi’s funeral in Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957), a science-fiction horror movie that became a cult classic after being named “the worst film ever made” in Michael and Harry Medved’s book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980). On the big screen Gloria Dea’s one leading role was in the film serial King of the Congo (1952) playing Princess Pha, a native woman who leads the African “Rock People” in their rescue of Captain Drum (Buster Crabbe, a former Tarzan) when he crash-lands his aircraft in a remote area of the jungle.Įlsewhere she was Faradine in Richard Thorpe’s biblical epic The Prodigal (1955), based on the parable of the prodigal son and starring Lana Turner. Any time someone likes something that you do, you feel good, don’t you? Oh yeah.” “You had the audience seated, then floor-to-ceiling glass in the back, and on the other side was the swimming pool,” she said, adding that she most enjoyed being showered with applause. “I did the rumba, because it was difficult to keep setting up all my magic stuff,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, adding that she specialised in a billiard-balls routine and a floating-card trick. Gloria Dea, who has died aged 100, enjoyed a brief but glamorous film career during the golden age of Hollywood she was also the first known magician to perform in Las Vegas, when on she appeared in two shows at El Rancho Vegas, a hotel-casino on what later became the Strip.īetween magic tricks, Gloria Dea (pronounced Day) danced to music performed by the hotel’s house band, including tunes such as the Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields number You Couldn’t Be Cuter.
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