Pamela Duncan was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 B-movie

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

 actress who starred in the cult classic Attack of the Crab Monsters

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Attack of the Crab Monsters is a 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film, written by Charles B. Griffith and produced and directed by Roger Corman via Los Altos Productions, on contract for distribution by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. The plot follows a scientific expedition...

and later appeared in an Academy Award-nominated documentary, Curtain Call

Curtain Call (2000 film)

Curtain Call is a 2000 short documentary film directed by Charles Braverman. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short....

a documentary made in 2000 that focused on the lives and careers of the residents of the Lillian Booth Actors Home

Lillian Booth Actors Home

The Lillian Booth Actors Home of The Actors Fund is an assisted living facility in Englewood, New Jersey operated by the Actors Fund. The facility was the subject of the 2000 film Curtain Call. The facility was established in 1928 at the former mansion of Hetty Green.-History:On May 8, 1902, the...

 in Englewood, New Jersey

Englewood, New Jersey

Englewood is a city located in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 27,147.Englewood was incorporated as a city by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from portions of Ridgefield Township and the remaining portions of...

.

Biography

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Duncan won several local beauty pageants as a teenager before moving to California to become a movie actor. Her first role came in 1951, when she appeared in the film Whistling Hills, but she was best known for her role in Attack of the Crab Monsters, a 1957 science-fiction release directed by Roger Corman

Roger Corman

Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...

. Also in the 1950s, she played the part of Mike Hammer's secretary Velda in the mystery drama My Gun Is Quick

My Gun Is Quick

My Gun Is Quick is a 1957 mystery film based on the novel My Gun is Quick by Mickey Spillane. Written by Richard M. Powell and directed by Phil Victor and George White, the movie stars Robert Bray as private investigator Mike Hammer, Pamela Duncan as Velda, Hammer's secretary.The story begins when...

.

On television, Duncan appeared on a number of television programs including Perry Mason

Perry Mason (TV series)

Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...

, Maverick

Maverick (TV series)

Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...

and Sea Hunt

Sea Hunt

Sea Hunt was an American adventure television series that was aired in syndication by Ziv Television Programs from 1958 to 1961 and was popular in syndication for decades afterwards. The series originally aired for four seasons, with 155 episodes produced...

. The photo displayed of Duncan is from a 1958 episode of Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford.

Highway Patrol (TV series)

Highway Patrol is a syndicated action crime drama series produced 1955-1959.-Overview:Highway Patrol stars Broderick Crawford as Dan Mathews, the gruff and dedicated head of a police force in an unidentified Western state...

She died of a stroke at the age of 73.

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