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Wikipedia / Kim Darby

Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby; July 8, 1947) 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.

Early life

Darby was born Deborah Zerby 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". Her mother was a Hungarian immigrant from Budapest.

She performed as a singer and dancer under the name "Derby Zerby". 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".

Career

Film

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.

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.

In 1970, Darby appeared in The Strawberry Statement and Norwood. She co-starred with Henry Winkler in The One and Only in 1978, and appeared in 1985's Better Off Dead, an absurdist comedy. A decade later, she played Laurie Strode's adoptive mother in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).

Television roles

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."

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. 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. She played the unhinged Virginia Calderwood in the first television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976.

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.

Darby admitted her career declined after the 1970s, partly due to her dependency on amphetamines at the time.

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. 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.

In 2014, she played Stacia Clairborne, a partially blind witness to a crime, in the episode "Prologue" of the show Perception.

Personal life

Darby has been married three times, including to William Tennant. In 1968, she married James Stacy, with whom she had one child. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1969. 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.

Filmography

Film

Television

References