
Wende Wagner
1941 - 1997While living in Coronado, California, with her family, Billy Wilder, then filming Some Like It Hot, saw Wagner swimming and offered her a screen test. Her parents forbade it until she completed her senior year at Coronado High School. Some Like It Hot was filmed at the Hotel del Coronado as well as on the Coronado beaches. After graduating, she visited Wilder and did a screen test, but turned down a role in The Apartment.
Wagner travelled the world as a fashion model, then made her television debut in an episode of Wagon Train in 1959. While living in the Bahamas she became an underwater stunt double in the series Sea Hunt and The Aquanauts.She also doubled for Joanne Dru in underwater sequences in the 1960 film September Storm. Wagner appeared on What's My Line in December 1960 as a "Stunt skindiver for television films". She married fellow underwater expert Courtney Brown whom she had met while working on the shows.
In addition to her scuba diving and swimming she was also a surfer.
After having a daughter named Tiffany, she divorced Brown and became contracted to 20th Century Fox. Her film career included roles in Rio Conchos (1964), Out of Sight (1966), Destination Inner Space (1966), A Covenant with Death (1967), Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969). She married and divorced actor James Mitchum. Wagner was also friends with Sharon Tate with the two sharing an apartment for a while.
In 1965, she appeared on Perry Mason as defendant Anona Gilbert in "The Case of the Feather Cloak." Wagner also made guest appearances in other television shows including Flipper, Lassie, Mannix, and The Rookies. During 1966-67, she had a regular role as Lenore "Casey" Case, the secretary to Britt Reid on The Green Hornet.
Wagner lived in Malibu but lost her home and belongings in a fire. She was active with the Malibu Historical Society.
Rio Conchos
Gordon Douglas
Richard Boone, Stuart Whitman
Two Army officers, an alcoholic ex-Confederate soldier and a womanizing Mexican travel to Mexico on a secret mission to prevent a megalomaniacal ex-Confederate colonel from selling a cache of stolen rifles to a band of murderous Apaches.
Rio Conchos
A Covenant with Death
Lamont Johnson
George Maharis, Earl Holliman
An innocent man is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but as he's about to be hanged he accidentally kills his executioner. He now faces a new trial, presided over by a young and inexperienced judge.
A Covenant with Death
Guns of the Magnificent Seven
Paul Wendkos
George Kennedy, James Whitmore
In this third remake of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's hugely influential The Seven Samurai, the seven gunslingers (George Kennedy, Michael Ansara, Joe Don Baker, Bernie Casey, Monte Markham, Fernando Rey and Reni Santoni) liberate Mexican political prisoners, train them as fighters and assist them in a desperate attack on a Mexican fortress in an attempt to free a revolutionary leader.
Guns of the Magnificent Seven
The Bait
Leonard Horn
Donna Mills, Michael Constantine
Tracy Fleming is a widowed police officer, with a young son, who has risen to the role of plainclothes operative. After six women have been raped and killed, Fleming agrees to go undercover in an effort to make herself a target for the killer. The climax places her in a life-and-death struggle with the killer.
The Bait
Out of Sight
Lennie Weinrib
Jonathan Daly, Norm Grabowski
Teenage beach party/spy spoof/musical comedy about a plot to bomb a music fair. As his boss is on vacation, a superspy's butler must come to the rescue, while being pursued by a trio of gorgeous assassins who're agents of F.L.U.S.H. Features George Barris hotrods, along with the musical talents of Gary Lewis and the Playboys, The Astronauts, The Knickerbockers, Freddy and the Dreamers, and the only film appearance of The Turtles.
Out of Sight
Destination Inner Space
Francis D. Lyon
Scott Brady, Sheree North
A futuristic underwater sea-lab is having problems with a UFO that's parked between them and a nearby deep ocean trench. As they investigate, they attract the unwanted attention of a dangerous creature who puts the scientists and crew in danger.
Destination Inner Space