Liz Renay
| Liz Renay | ||
 | ||
| Background information | ||
| Born as: | Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins | |
| Born | Apr 14, 1926 Chandler, Arizona, U.S. | |
| Died | Jan 22, 2007 - age 81 Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. cardiac arrest and gastric bleeding at age 80 | |
| Spouse(s): | [Note 1] | |
| Children: | 2 | |
Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins (✦April 14, 1926 – †January 22, 2007), known professionally as Liz Renay, was an American author and actress who appeared in John Waters' film Desperate Living (1977).
Early life
She was born Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins on April 14, 1926, in Chandler, Arizona, to William Andrew Dobbins (1898–1986) and his wife Ada May (née Phillips; 1904–1982), who were described as being "evangelical parents".
The United States Federal Census from 1940 listed the Dobbins family living in Mesa, Arizona. Renay was recorded as Pearl, age 13. Her father, William, was a 41-year-old lettuce trimmer for a produce shipper. Renay had these siblings: Emily, who was four years older; William E., who was six years younger; Jack, nine years younger; and Dorothy May, 10 years younger.
In 1949, Renay was named Miss Stardust of Arizona and in the contest won "$500 cash, a trip to New York, and a modeling contract in the 1949 contest."
Her childhood was filled of dreams of becoming a star. The production crew for The Sound of Fury came to Phoenix to film and wanted townspeople. A 24-year-old Renay, then known as Pearl McLain, was a twice-divorced, unemployed waitress raising two young children. She was one of 500 extras, and during her two days of filming, "she kept maneuvering herself into positions where someone important would notice and offer her a movie career."
Personal life
Liz was married a total of seven times to:
- Ricky Romano: She married him when she was about 15 years old. From this marriage, a daughter, Brenda Whylene, an actress who went by the stage name Brenda Renay, was born. (At 16, Brenda married Leo Landry.) Ricky and Renay were divorced in 1943.
- Paul McLain: From this marriage, one son, Johnny Allen McLain Sr. (1945–2012) was born. They later divorced.
- George L. "Lou" O'Leyar : She married him on September 21, 1950, in Los Angeles County, California.
- William Forrest: An actor, she married him in 1956, but the marriage proved to be bigamous, as Forrest had not divorced his former wife until 1959. Forrest died August 10, 1960, "while making a movie in Tokyo."
- Read Morgan (b. 1931): An actor, she married him on November 25, 1963, in Nevada. They appeared together in the film Deadwood '76 (1965).
- Thomas W. Freeman (born circa 1925): She married him on May 23, 1966. In a 1972 Los Angeles Times article, Freeman was described as "a millionaire entrepreneur who provides her with almost everything she wants — including a separate $175-a-month apartment for her two dogs. He also gives her her freedom." It adds: "Freeman is on the road almost constantly. He and Liz see each other only on weekends — if then — and Miss Renay says it is an ideal relationship, 'more like a romance than a marriage.' They have been married six years now — longer than her first five marriages combined — and Miss Renay readily admits this marriage, too, would have been over long ago were it not for their unusual arrangement." They were divorced in April 1973.
- Gerald E. Heidebrink (1933–1987): She married him on November 3, 1976, in Nevada. The marriage ended in divorce on April 12, 1983, also in Nevada.
Career
She was known more as a performer with ties to celebrities, usually actors, rather than as an actress herself.
Nevertheless, she did play the lead role in John Waters' film Desperate Living and appeared on an episode of Adam-12 as a burlesque dancer who calls the police about a peeping tom outside her home (season five, November 1972, episode "Harry Nobody").
She and her daughter, Brenda (1943–1982), toured with an on-stage striptease act. The act ended when her daughter Brenda committed suicide on her 39th birthday in 1982.
Renay was mobster Mickey Cohen's girlfriend. Renay was convicted of perjury in 1959 and served 27 months of a three year sentence at Terminal Island.
In a tell-all book about her many relationships with men both famous and not so famous, titled "My First 2,000 Men", she claimed flings with Joe DiMaggio, Regis Philbin, Glenn Ford, and Cary Grant. Renay's other books include "My Face for the World to See" and "Staying Young" (Lyle Stuart, 1982). "My Face for the World to See" was reissued in 2002, headlined "A Cult Classic", with a foreword by John Waters. Waters integrated the title into the dialogue of his film Female Trouble (1974) before working on his film Desperate Living with Renay.
Renay died at age 80 on January 22, 2007, in her adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, from cardiac arrest and gastric bleeding.
- Liz Renay photos
USPS postage stamp
with Albert Anastasia
with Mickey Cohen
At the Miss Exotic World Pageant, 2006. Photo Michael Albov
From "New York Times" Obituary
- By Dennis Hevesi Jan. 29, 2007 [Source 1]
Liz Renay, a boisterous, buxom cult film actress who worked as a stripper, wrote several books and got a little too close to some mobsters in the late 1950s, leading to a three-year prison term, died last Monday near her home in Las Vegas. She was 80.
The cause was internal bleeding, said her son, Johnny McLain.
In her prime — at 5-foot-7, with measurements of 40-26-36 and blond hair that her son said had probably started out as auburn — Ms. Renay appeared in 18 sexploitation movies, among them “The Thrill Killers” (1964), “Lady Godiva Rides” (1969) and “Blackenstein” (1973).
But she is perhaps best known for her starring role in the 1977 John Waters fairy-tale melodrama “Desperate Living,” about a politically corrupt town called Mortville where everyone lives outside of conventional society. Ms. Renay played Muffy St. Jacques, who kills her drug-tripping babysitter by smothering her in a bowl of dog food.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Waters said he had spoken to Ms. Renay two weeks ago. “She was very much a glamour girl right up to the end,” he said. “She always played the glamorous Vegas showgirl type, no matter how old she was.”
And she usually made a splash. In 1950 she was the subject of a five-page photo spread in Life magazine. In 1965 The Saturday Evening Post ran a three-page profile of her, saying she could “claim the prize as the girl who looks most like Marilyn Monroe.” Ms. Renay wrote five books, two of them memoirs that made several best-seller lists: “My Face for the World to See” (1971) and “My First 2,000 Men” (1992).
Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins (Liz Renay was her stage name) was born on April 14, 1926, in Mesa, Ariz. Her parents, William and Ada Philips Dobbins, were strict evangelical Christians. As a teenager, Ms. Renay ran away from home to Las Vegas, where she found work as a showgirl.
In 1950 Ms. Renay was noticed by a reporter and photographer from Life magazine while she was working as an extra — and doing everything she could to attract attention — on a movie set in Phoenix. The result was the five-page photo display, titled “Pearl’s Big Moment.” Soon after, she moved to New York, where she worked as a stripper.
In a club near Broadway, she met Tony (Cappy) Coppola, the right-hand man of the mob boss Albert Anastasia. After rejecting Mr. Coppola’s marriage proposal, she headed for Hollywood. There she befriended the mobster Mickey Cohen, who used his influence to get her several television roles.
But on Oct. 25, 1957, while he was sitting in a barber’s chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Anastasia was shot to death. As law-enforcement officials looked into that crime and other mob activities, Ms. Renay was called before grand juries on both coasts. She was asked, particularly, about her connection to Mr. Cohen and about money he had run through her checking account.
In 1959 she was convicted of perjury and began serving 27 months of a three-year sentence at the Terminal Island federal prison in Los Angeles Harbor. While in prison, Ms. Renay wrote her first memoir, made 150 paintings and taught an art class. Soon after her release, she resumed her stripping career and was again cast in ribald movies.
In 1974, at the height of the streaking craze, Ms. Renay was arrested after running naked down Hollywood Boulevard. A jury acquitted her.
Last June she appeared at the 49th annual Striptease Reunion sponsored by the Exotic World Burlesque Museum in Las Vegas. According to Judy Thorburn’s Las Vegas Round the Clock, a Web site that captures what doesn’t stay in that raucous city, Ms. Renay, held aloft by four moderately clad young men, “stole the show by being carried in like she was Cleopatra” on a royal pillow.
Correction: Feb. 5, 2007
An obituary last Monday about Liz Renay, a cult film actress, misstated the year she began serving prison time after a perjury conviction for lying about her connections to mobsters. She went to prison, as a result of a probation violation, in 1961, not 1959. The obituary also misstated the year that her daughter, Brenda, died. It was 1982, not 1987.
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Liz Renay Filmography
Sources
Notes
- ↑ Ricky Romano (c. 1941–1943), Paul W. McLain (1944–?), George O'Leyar (1950–?), William Forrest (1956–59, his death), Read Morgan (1963–?), Thomas W. Freeman (1966–73), Gerald E. Heidebrink (1976–83)
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