Actress Diane McBain has died at the age of 81 following a battle with liver cancer. Let’s find out more details about Diane McBain and his cause of death in the following.
Actress Diane McBain’s Early life
Diane McBain born in Cleveland on May 18, 1941, McBain moved with her family to Glendale in 1944. She modeled for TV commercials and magazine ads as a teenager, and while appearing in a play at Glendale High School, she was spotted by a talent scout and signed by Warners to a seven-year contract on her 18th birthday.
She explained to Lisanti, “They gave me the role of Richard Burton’s granddaughter in Ice Palace when I was ready to graduate from high school. And would you believe it, I had no idea who Richard Burton was! I was a teenybopper, and he was an English actor.
She made her onscreen debut in 1959 on an episode of ABC’s Maverick, and in addition to Surfside 6, she showed up on many other Warner Bros. TV shows, including The Alaskans, Sugarfoot, Lawman, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and Bourbon Street Beat.
McBain was married to Rodney Burke, whom she met at a Buddhist camp, from 1972 until their 1974 divorce. Survivors include her son, Evan, and her goddaughter, Mary.
McBain Movie Journey
Diana McBain then appeared in the low-budget AIP films Thunder Alley (1967), directed by Richard Rush; Maryjane (1968); and, as the savage leader of a motorcycle gang.
The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968). Her résumé included the films Five the Hard Way (1969), I Sailed to Tahiti With an All Girl Crew (1969), The Broken Hearts Club (2000) and Besotted (2001) and episodes of Burke’s Law, The Wild Wild West, Police Story, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, Charlie’s Angels, Eight Is Enough, Dallas, Days of Our Lives and Knight Rider.
McBain, who won the role of Claudelle Inglish’s protagonist over Shirley Knight, later played a farmer in Black Gold (1962), a nurse opposite Joan Crawford in The Caretakers (1963), and a health fanatic in Mary Mary (1963), a Debbie Reynolds and Debbie Reynolds film. For Raoul Walsh’s final picture, A Distant Trumpet (1964), she later reunited with Donahue.
After declining a small role in Sex and the Single Girl, she departed Warner Bros. (1964). The woman stated, “I was doing leads and decided this wasn’t a smart idea.
In Spinout, McBain competed for Elvis’ love with Shelley Fabares and Deborah Walley’s characters, but Diana wed Carl Betz’s elder figure.
Diane Mcbain com a Pinky Pinkston en Batman, 1967 pic.twitter.com/8L38z9mKOt
— Pinícules & Flims (@FPenicules) November 14, 2022
Post-Warners career
Arrest and Trial, Wendy and Me, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Burke’s Law (on various occasions), The Wild Wild West, The Man from UNCLE, and Vacation Playhouse were among the shows in which McBain appeared as a guest star.
She was cast in the unproduced movies Spring Is for Crying and Halcyon Years. In Spain, she created Five from the Hawk. Later, McBain said, “I was pretty foolish about money.”
“I was ashamed of the fact that my mother had always made my outfits. I developed a shopping addiction and blew a fortune on retail purchases. Tammy Bakker most likely imitated how I did my shopping and applied my eyelashes.”
Work began to dry up. “We were going through a revolution in society with the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War,” she said. “Now, white Anglo-Saxon, pretty people were low on the totem pole.
We were thought to be on the other side, conservatives who were the cause of the war and the civil-rights problem. Dustin Hoffman, yes. Troy Donahue, no. Nobody wanted beautiful people on the screen. They wanted people to like them, as average. I didn’t get much work
Diane McBain death: '60s actress who starred alongside Elvis dies at 81 – https://t.co/dSQ0m5ZvQ1
Diane McBain, an old Hollywood actress who co-starred with Elvis Presley, has died aged 81.McBain reportedly died of liver cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country Hou… pic.twitter.com/jcL8lFBgrz— Worldpak (@Worldpak2) December 22, 2022
McBain’s Battle in Personal life
She has endured physical and mental pain as a result of her past struggles in her personal life.
McBain’s parents reported her missing in August 1965. It found out that she had registered herself as “Marilyn Miller” at a motel in San Diego . It is with the intention of “changing faces, surroundings, and attitudes… I just wanted to be Miss Nobody from Nowhere.”
She claimed that she had felt hopeless due to a decline in her salary and a lack of opportunities for the parts she desired. McBain co-starred in the 1966 film Spinout with Shelley Fabares and Deborah Walley as Elvis Presley’s leading lady. She appeared on Batman as a guest.
In 1982, after returning home from a party, McBain was assaulted, robbed, and raped by two men in her garage in West Hollywood around 1:30 am on Christmas Day.
She started working as a counselor for rape victims.
The offenders were never located. In 1990, she claimed, “The shock of what happened caused loss of memory, an inability to focus, and I’m still startled out of proportion.”
The victim of a rape attack in 1982, Diane McBain chose to heal from her traumatic experience and help others as a rape counselor. #Parrish #TCMParty pic.twitter.com/hst0GWsQiL
— Lorraine Hickman (@shortyblueyes5) December 19, 2019
Diane McBain’s Cause of Death
Diane McBain died from liver cancer on the morning of December 21, 2022, at the Motion Picture Country Home in Los Angeles, California, where she had lived for several years.
She was 81. McBain’s death occurred on Wednesday following a battle with liver cancer. Her writing partner, Michael Gregg Michaud, told The Hollywood Reporter that she was at her home in the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif., at the time of her death
Before her death, he went on her Facebook account on Nov. 18 to express that she was ill and in “a bit of a rough patch.”
Diane McBain, whose quick rise to fame as a young Warner Bros. contract player in the early 1960s soon had her starring in the ABC series ‘Surfside 6’ and co-starring opposite Elvis Presley in 1966’s ‘Spinout,’ died of liver cancer today. She was 81 https://t.co/DlkMsIe8qC
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) December 21, 2022
Condolences Posted on Social Media
Michael Posted
Michael, who co-authored Diane’s 2014 memoir titled Famous Enough, said on social media: “It is with great sadness that I report actress Diane McBain lost her battle with liver cancer and passed away on December 21, 2022.”
Fans quickly took to social media to share messages of condolence following the news. One user on Twitter wrote: “Sad to hear that Diane McBain has passed.”
A Fan Posted
Another penned his own personal experience with the actress, writing: “RIP #DianeMcBain I still recall our lunch interview for my first book at Wolfgang Puck’s in LA. She was sweet.
“Diane excelled as the bad girl in #Parrish #ClaudelleInglish #TheMiniSkirtMob but played the ingenue in #TheCaretakers & the sophisticate in #Spinout with #ElvisPresley”
Another Fan Posted
And a third who was friends with the star said: “#dianemcbain, a true #hollywood #classicactress, and #hollywoodroyalty has left us, at 81. Recently we became friends thru social media, my heart would skip a beat whenever she’d message me. a #dreamgirl of mine since childhood. I’m glad I knew you #elvis #Batman66 #Surfside6.”
Actress Diane McBain has died at the age of 81 following a battle with liver cancer.https://t.co/Nd2I7w7mfi
— Mirror Celeb (@MirrorCeleb) December 22, 2022
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