Allison Hayes 1930-1977 By Barry Brown

What Theda Bara was to the silent screen in general, Allison Hayes was to the horror picture in particular. 5'7", weighing 120 pounds, with deep brown eyes and (usually) long, darkish-red hair, she was the definitive Sci-Fi/ Horror Queen of the Fifties and for her there was no precedent. Never had one actress appeared as the beautiful but evil woman in so many fantasy films so often. Her performances, rarely subtle, were unabashedly erotic and she matched the unwieldy, passionate dialogue provided her by hack scriptwriters with her own intense approach that somehow prevented her characters from seeming ludicrous. It is, perhaps, that consistent quality of Eros Hayes employed time and again that made her one of the most important cult figures in the genre. Certainly it enabled her to work as much as she did, not only in the type of films with which this book concerns itself, but in numerous other B melodramas and tv shows.

As the deceitful witch in Corman's atmospheric The Undead; the impetuous voodoo priestess of The Disembodied; the spoiled wife who, in Zombies of Mora Tau becomes a zombie herself; the sinister accomplice of a demented hypnotist in The Hypnotic Eye; and, most notably, as the unfortunate title character in Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman -- all these appearances, together with her less characteristic role as the heroine of The Unearthly, combined to make an enormous and indelible impression on fantasy fans of all ages and secured her a distinguished place in film history. Strangely enough, however, she happened onto an acting career largely by accident.

Mary Jane Hayes was born March 6, 1930 in Charleston, West Virginia, the only child born to William Edward Hayes, a widower with one son, and his second wife, Charlotte Gibson. When Mary Jane was five months old, the family moved to Washington, D.C. where she grew up. Her father was a chief engineer in the U.S. Navy Department's Bureau of Ordinances (and, later, a recipient of the Distinguished Civilian Service Award) and her mother worked as a millinery designer and secretary for a patent attorney. For a hobby, Mrs. Hayes played the piano and soon little Mary Jane became interested in the instrument.

By the age of eleven, Mary Jane Hayes, after studying since the age of five, received for her piano-playing some of the highest marks available in a tournament presided over by judges from Juilliard. She planned for a career as a concert pianist. After six years at private school, two in parochial and two at a private girls' high school, she persuaded her parents to allow her to attend and graduate from a public school. She did so, from Coolidge High, in 1948.

The following year, Mary Jane entered the Miss Washington D.C. contest and won, going on to represent the Capitol district in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. "I hated every minute of that. I hated it. I can't stand that kind of regimentation and parading," she later said. Nevertheless, hoping to get a chance to study music abroad, she wanted the scholarship prize to be awarded the winner. But it was not to be. One of the rules stringently enforced during the contest was that none of the contestants was allowed to speak to a man, even their own father. Meanwhile, Mary Jane's favorite relative, her mother's cousin, came to Atlantic City to see the pageant. Mary Jane spotted him in the hotel lobby: "I was so happy to see him, I went up and threw my arms around him and gave him a big hug. And they had women sitting in the lobby watching everybody and it was reported. And I was told later that I was disqualified because of this, but I had to go through with the contest." A direct result of the pageant, however, was that she was invited by the Peruvian ambassador to represent the United States at the 1949 Peru Fair in Lima. Accompanied by her mother, Mary Jane accepted and had a marvelous time.

After her return to Washington, Mary Jane divided her time between teaching piano and working as a fashion model. At her mother's behest, she took a secretarial course, but didn't stay with it long. "I hated it", she said. "It just wasn't for me."

Miss Hayes had, by this time, taken to vacationing in Florida once or twice a year and on one such trip, the couple who ran the hotel where she usually stayed persuaded her to enter the 1951 Miss Dixie Contest, which offered as its prize a complete wardrobe at the expense of the Miami Fashion Council and the choice between a college scholarship or a savings bond. Mary Jane entered the contest and won, but the council managed to avoid giving her the wardrobe or a scholarship, instead paying her with a three hundred seventy-five dollar bond. The young woman went on to win other titles in other contests, but the only one she was truly proud of was being chosen Forget-Me-Not-Girl for the Disabled American Veterans. Her attitude towards beauty contests remained ambivalent throughout her lifetime, "but", she said, "if the prizes are worthwhile, it's a good chance for a girl."

In 1952, Mary Jane entered Catholic University in Washington, majoring in music, but also enlisting in several theatre arts courses with the goal, more or less, of 'self-improvement'. "I'd always been quite shy and introverted", Allison recalled in a 1976 interview. "I thought if I could learn to get up on a stage and learn to project myself in another character, another role, that may help my self-confidence." She did some stagework at the University -- the only stage acting she would ever do. "Some of the things I did there", she commented candidly, "were the best things I ever did."

She wasn't taking a full course-load at Catholic, however, because, besides still modelling and giving piano lessons, Mary Jane was also co-hosting, with Milton Q. Ford, a local talk tv show from eleven to twelve midnight dedicated to interviews with various politicians and visiting celebrities.

In the winter of '52, Mary Jane journeyed to Palm Beach, Florida to do some fashion-modeling and was surprised when, after an evening show, she received an offer from Harry Mayer, a talent scout for Warner Brothers' New York office, to do a screen test. Having no compelling interest in an acting career, she politely declined.*
 
* A widely-circulated publicity story to the effect that Mrs. Earl Warren, wife of the Supreme Court Justice, had arranged for a talent scout to see her was concocted, as well as one that implied Allison, as a graduate of the National Law School, was a qualified lawyer.

Nine months later, however, the opportunity she'd passed up was still in Mary Jane's mind and, when the occasion for a trip to New York arose, she called Mayer to see if interest was still there. It was. A screen test was arranged, a photographic silent test: walking, moving, standing, sitting. Shortly after the test was completed and the Warner executives were mulling over the results, a representative of Universal Pictures who happened to be in Washington, saw Mary Jane's picture in the newspaper and caught her on the late-night television show. He, too, inquired about the possibility of a screen test for her and when he heard she'd just completed one, contacted Warner Brothers in New York. At first they refused to let Universal see the test, but eventually did loan it out and Universal promptly offered her a seven-year contract. Debating whether or not to take the offer, she finally went with her father's advice -- if she didn't try it, she might regret it the rest of her life. She accepted, then went off to Florida for a vacation.

She wasn't there long before she got an urgent call from the Universal offices in Hollywood. She was to fly immediately to California to play Ildico, the wife of Attila the Hun (Jack Palance) in Sign of the Pagan. The bewildered Mary Jane Hayes arrived for the first time in Los Angeles one evening in early 1954. The very next morning she was driven to the studio and ushered into meet the director, Douglas Sirk. Recalling the incident, Allison said: "Now I'd never been inside a movie studio and I'd never met a Hollywood director." Sirk was wearing an ascot and holding a riding crop. "He just sat back at his desk and leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his arms and stared at me. Finally, he said 'Vell, tell me, vot have you done?. I said 'Nothing.' And he looked at me and said, 'I like you, you're honest.'". Mary Jane (who would soon become Allison Hayes) was then rushed into a wardrobe test, coached a bit by Sirk to see if he could direct her, then sent back to her temporary home, the famed Studio Club for young actresses. Within a few days, filming of her scenes would commence.
 
Sign of the Pagan proved quite an experience for Allison. Luckily, in this first time out as a professional actress, knowing little or nothing of camera technique, hitting marks, etc., she played a character whose tongue had been cut out, so at least lines didn't distract from her concentration. Still, she had many surprises in store for her: in her first scene, she had ropes tied to her wrists and ankles as she was dragged in to be shown to Attila. The scene was rehearsed dozens of times and each time Allison gave her all, not knowing that nearly every one of those times the camera wasn't rolling -- it was merely rehearsal. By the time the scene was completed for the camera, she was bruised, dirty and near tears. In her first love scene with Jack Palance, the actor grabbed and kissed her so hard that he split her lip with his teeth and fractured two of her ribs. After being treated, she was sent back to work the very next day. Allison was learning that the life of a Hollywood movie actress could be far from glamorous.

Sign of the Pagan was released in December of 1954, by which time Allison had completed a minor fantasy comedy, Francis Joins the WACS, in which she was lost among the antics of the famous talking mule and a bevy of her fellow contract players, many of whom were as green as herself.

In the nine months Allison was under contract to Universal, she appeared in, all told, four films, the other two being smaller supporting roles in So This is Paris and The Purple Mask, both of which starred Tony Curtis. In the meantime, she acquired an agent, Jack Pomeroy, and rented a guest house behind he and his wife. She attended classes at Universal five days a week, where she was given instructions in acting by coaches Estelle Harmon and the late character actress Katherine Warren and also studied dance, singing and diction (she still had a bit of a Southern accent). Her classmates included Mamie Van Doren, Susan Cabot, Jeff Chandler, Clint Walker, Mara Corday, Clint Eastwood, John Saxon, Barbara Rush, Suzan Ball, Gregg Palmer and Sara Shane, who remained one of her closest friends.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of Allison's career came the same year. Cecil B. DeMille was preparing his blockbuster, The Ten Commandments, and Allison's agent knew one of its scriptwriters. Both of them thought that, with her exotic looks, she'd impress C.B. Her agent arranged for her to lunch at a strategic point next to DeMille's long table at the Paramount commissary. The ploy worked. DeMille arrived with his entourage and "Sure enough, he looked over. He kept looking and he kept looking. And he asked this writer who I was and he told him." Word was sent to her table. DeMille wanted to see her in his office after lunch.

It turned out that DeMille had drawings of every character to be cast in The Ten Commandments hanging on the walls of his office and had been struck by Allison's resemblance to Sephora, Moses' wife (Zipporah in The Holy Bible). He put her to work on a scene with another actor and had her come back in a week. The scene came off badly; still, DeMille liked her and told her "I'm willing to work with you for this part because you look so like the character." He then arranged for actor Henry Wilcoxon to work with her on the same piece.

One important lesson Allison learned about acting came during a rehearsal with Wilcoxon. Rehearsal was held in the old Paramount 'fishbowl' room, where actors could be observed without seeing those who were doing the observing. One day, Wilcoxon returned from a talk with DeMille and said: "I'm going to tell you something Mr. DeMille said about you. Mr. DeMille said that your feet are dirty." Now, Allison had been tipped about DeMille's foibles, for instance, that he hated nail polish and beat-up, unattractive shoes and she was always scrupulous anyway. In shock, she hurriedly glanced down at her feet. They were perfectly clean. Wilcoxon then said: "Now, Mr. DeMille didn't say that, but he said you're weak on reaction in the scene." It was a lesson Allison would not forget.

It is probable that DeMille would eventually have hired Allison to play Sephora, but her fatal mistake had been made on her first interview with the producer when, against her better judgement but on the insistence of her agent, she neglected to mention she was a contract player at Universal. In the meantime, another agent informed Universal their contractee was meeting with DeMille and the studio called him to say they understood he was interested in Allison. C.B. was incensed with being taken for a fool and thereafter refused to see her again. Her agent was barred from the Paramount lot. "He (DeMille) was so anxious to go along with me and to work with me when I really wasn't ready for that film, that if we had been honest with him, I'm sure it would have worked out and he would have borrowed me. It just proves you have to think for yourself", Allison said.

Released from her Universal pack in 1955, Allison decided to continue her career on a freelance basis and her first big part came in a Columbia release, Chicago Syndicate (1955) as Joyce Kern, the daughter of the slain accountant for a mobster (Paul Stewart). Bosley Crowther, reviewing the film for the New York Times, wrote: "This is a standard melodrama in which a bright spot is Allison Hayes, a tall and agreeable young lady who gives considerable aid to the somewhat battered Mr. (Dennis) O'Keefe." Her first truly exciting role came the same year in Columbia's Count Three and Pray. As Georgina Decrais, daughter of a wealthy and aristocractic Southern family ruined by the Civil War, Allison is determined to win the love of Luke Fargo (Van Heflin) a now-reformed former roisterer who, after fighting on the Union side in the war, has returned to his hometown to become a preacher. She eventually loses him, however, to the charms of a wild, young hillgirl, played by Joanne Woodward in her motion picture debut.

In 1956, Allison starred in the first of two films she was to do for Roger Corman. As the singularly nefarious Erica Page, owner of the Red Dog Saloon, Hayes is not only a merchant of vice, but she intends to use the proceeds of her business to invest in property that she shows is being considered as the site for a railroad. If her land deals fall through, she plans to rob the town itself. On top of that, she pays a hired killer (John Ireland) to wipe out the town sheriff (Beverly Garland). Unfortunately, Ireland and Garland fall in love and he turns on Hayes at the end, killing her, whereupon he himself is executed for the sake of Christian principle, by Garland, who loves him. (Ha!)

Allison's performance in Gunslinger was her first characterization of a truly 'evil' woman. Perhaps her best line in the script comes when the town's Mayor warns her the townspeople may not be very happy when they learn of her underhanded land speculation. Cooly, she replies: "Some nights I lie awake two or three seconds worrying about it." The film was also her first experience with a low-budget independent film and the contrast in shooting conditions with her previous pictures was great. Both Garland and Hayes were injured on the picture, the former breaking her ankle and Allison, in a fall from her horse, suffering a broken arm on the last day of shooting.

Despite the unfortunate experience with Corman, she made one other film for him and, if one discounts Francis Joins the WACS, The Undead was not only her first fantasy film, but the first in that series of fifties horror pictures that cemented her reputation with the sci-fi/horror crowd. From the time she acted in The Undead till the release of Attack of the 50-Foot Woman a year or so later, Allison was starred in no less than five fantasy films.

The Undead (1957) is an eerie tale about a streetwalker (Pamela Duncan) hynotized by a psychotherapist (Val DuFour) and sent back to a former life in the ninth century, where she was falsely accused of being a witch and was executed. In reality, she was framed by a real witch, the ravishing Livia (played by the ravishing Allison) who wishes to gain the affections of the man (Richard Carlson) who loves Duncan. Eventually, Garland slays Livia and it becomes possible for Duncan to avoid being beheaded. Meanwhile, back to modern times, the psychotherapist becomes worried he may be in danger of screwing-up the present by changing the Past; so, by dubious means, he transports himself back to that time (though how he, in a former life could be aware of his Future mission is not made clear) and convinces Duncan to allow her own execution or destroy all her future reincarnations. His argument prevails. Besides Allison and the strange and charming setting of the picture, The Undead boasts richly amusing performances from Richard Devon as Satan, Billy Barty as Allison's midget-goblin, Mel Welles as a bald-pated gravedigger, Dorothy Neumann as a long-nosed, warted crone and Bruno VeSota as a timorous innkeeper beheaded by Allison.

A Republic film, The Unearthly (1957) was her next venture into the land of monsters, but here she was the heroine, Grace Thomas, who is sent to a sanitarium recommended by her physician, Dr. Loren Wright (Roy Gordon). Wright is in collusion with the head of the establishment, Dr. Charles Conway (John Carradine), who claims to have discovered a seventeenth gland and is experimenting with an operation that he hopes will reveal the secret of eternal life, using as his subjects the patients that Wright brings him after having carefully screen them to make sure they have no immediate relatives. Conway has so far been unsuccessful. An under cover cop (Myron Healey) posing as an escaped convict saves the day, however, and gets the girl. The end of the picture reveals the doctor's underground prison where, in one room, is locked the whole hideous collection of Conway's botched experiments. The Unearthly was a dud, suspense-wise, and Allison seems out of place as the good girl. She was back in her element, though, with her next picture.

Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) starred Allison as Mona Harrison, the greedy, pouting wife of an equally greedy American tycoon (Joel Ashley) who hires a deep-sea diver (Gregg Palmer) to help him recover some legendary diamonds reported lost in a ship sinking off the African coast some years before. When they arrive they meet up with the widow (Marjorie Eaton) of the captain of the ship, who tells them that, because he and his men had stolen the diamonds from an African idol, they had been turned into zombies whose eternal task must be to guard the treasure from fortune hunters. The story is true, as Allison soon finds out when, after the trio have discovered the treasure, she encounters the walking dead, is murdered and herself becomes a zombie and murders she husband. When Palmer himself is being pursued, he decides to scatter the diamonds so that they will never be found. This does the trick and the zombies turn to dust.

Allison's next film found her out of the jungles of Africa and into the jungles of Haiti, as Tonda Metz, the restless young wife of an older doctor (John Wengraf) she has, inexplicably, become a voodoo priestess given to casting spells over people. The name of the film is The Disembodied (1957) and it provided Allison with some of the most hilariously absurd dialogue she ever ran up against. When a young author-lecturer (Paul Burke) comes across Tonda and her husband living in the jungle, Tonda sees her opportunity to escape her isolation. Her character is best summed up by her husband when, furious with her peccadilloes with the natives he cries: "There are two places where you belong: the jungle and the place where I found you first!". When Burke asks her, "I don’t understand how a young and very beautiful girl can be happy living in a jungle" she replies, "What makes you think I'm happy?". Tonda tries to get Burke to kill her husband: "Do it because you love me, because you want me." Finally, the classic Allison Hayes line: "I can get any man I want."

When Burke rejects her advances Tonda tries to kill him, too, through the use of voodoo, as she has already done to her native lover (Norman Frederic) and has attempted to do to her husband, but before she can do further harm she is killed by the native girl (Eugenia Paul) who loved Fredric.

The entire film was shot on one soundstage at Allied Artists and remains, perhaps, the best example of how Allison triumphed over an atrocious script. One is thrown off, diverted, first of all, by her beauty and obvious sensuality; when one concentrates on the performance, one finds it hard to quibble with the actress's sincerity. The combination of the two, quite simply, was a knockout. Less convincing, however, was the voodoo dance that, as high priestess, Allison performs. It was choreographed with the help of A. E. Okonu, an African who was attending the University of Los Angeles at the time and who appears as a native drummer in the film. As Allison herself apty observed: "It never came off the way it should have. It came of as more of a bump and grind number instead of a voodoo dance." She remembered the day she had to do the routine. It was to be the first shot of the morning. The stage was filled with people who'd come to see her prance about. Allison was anticipating enough trouble doing the number without having to be gawked at and so she asked to have the set cleared and director Walter Grauman (it was his first foray into feature films) obliged her. "And so I was starting the number", she recalled, "and I looked and there was a man standing there with his arms crossed, very serious-looking, just watching -- so I stopped and I said 'You! Out!'. The man left." Allison found out later that the man was Walter Mirisch, head of the studio.

The order of release dates of movies do not always reflect the order of their completion. Though her next film role was in the Puerto Rican locationed suspense drama Counterplot, the next film her fans saw her in was Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman (1958), her best-remembered picture.

Again it is the sincerity and competence of its able performers that makes Attack of the 50-Foot Woman viable entertainment for children and bearable enough for adults to sit through until its undeniably comic moments emerge. Quite simply, Allison is believable as the miserable, alcoholic Nancy Archer, whose great wealth cannot allay her mental distress; likewise the late William Hudson as Harry, her heel of a husband who so ruthlessly tramples on his wife's emotions. Yvette Vickers, as Honey Parker, gives another of her fine slut-portrayals of the fifties and old pros Roy Gordon and Otto Waldis, both now deceased, are, as ever, dependably natural.

Which is not to say that Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman can be accepted seriously, despite the efforts of some undaunted intellectuals to analyse its alleged deeper meanings (for instance, that Nancy's size represents her hate for her husband). It remains nothing more nor less than a fun film aided by a cast that, happily, played with their tongues in their mouths, not in their cheeks.

The story, once the character relations are delineated, is simple enough. Nancy Archer, driving alone one night, sees a huge white sphere land and from it steps a giant bald-headed man who looks vaguely like President Eisenhower (but who, in reality, was a sometime stand-in for Milton Berle). The giant is attracted to the huge Star of India diamond Nancy wears about her neck and in his effort to take it, contaminates her with a substance that causes her eventually to grow up to a height of fifty feet. At first, her alarmed physicians try to keep her chained in her room, but she breaks out, tracks her cheating husband down at the café where he is drinking with his girlfriend and kills them both before she herself dies when a sheriff's bullet touches off a powerline and she is electrocuted.

It is ironic that this most famous of Allison's films is notorious for being, technically, the worst with which she was associated (though her last horror film, The Crawling Hand, rates a close second). The special effects are abominable: the fifty-foot woman can be variously gauged as being no more than thirty feet or, sometimes, over seventy-five, considering which backdrop she is seen against. Not to mention that she is oftentimes transparent and in the scenes where her giant hand is seen up close it is ludicrously obvious that it is a badly-botched plaster fake. One of the most unforgettable images in low-budget horror films will always be of Bill Hudson holding on to this large plaster hand as it is slowly and carefully hoisted off-camera.

Obviously, this was not Allison's favorite film.

In fact, though it was these horror pictures that served to distinguish her as a screen personality quite removed from run of other B-movie leading ladies (Sally Fraser, Peggie Castle, Mara Corday, et al), Allison reserved most of her fondness for her earlier films, particularly Count Three and Pray. When interviewed in April, 1976, less than a year before her death, she offered only minor anecdotes concerning these films, preferring to forget most of them.

But, regardless of her attitude towards the quality of some of her films, she admitted to having had a great deal of fun in making them --- with one exception. In The Hypnotic Eye (1960), a series of self-mutilations by women who throw acid onto their faces is finally traced to a hypnotist, the Great Desmond (Jacques Bergerac) and his beautiful wife, Justine (Allison) who, beneath her fair exterior, is hideously scarred. At the end of the film, Allison seems to literally peel off her own face. In order to achieve this effect, make-up artists Emile LaVigne had first to make a plaster mold of Allison's face, which means the entire face is submerged beneath a coat of latex (see picture of Robert Clarke, page   ) for nearly an hour. If the subject moves his eyelids or mouth more than slightly the entire process may have to be done all over again. Allison, who had a tendency towards claustrophobia and had never experienced this process before, had to have it done several times because she inadvertently moved. Once the plaster mold was completed and a face mask made from it, the scar makeup was put on her face and the face mold placed over it to be torn away for the shot. The painful latex scars then had to be removed. To complicate matters more than necessary, there was dissension in the produc-ranks of the film and trouble with the personal problems of one of the performers that made for a discomfortingly tense set. But the finished product was reasonably effective.

Amidst her film activity, Allison worked often in television, appearing in numerous series, including Perry Mason, Rawhide, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside Six, Hawaiian Eye, Ripcord, Shotgun Slade, Wells Fargo and so on. Besides episodic work, she was a regular on the short-lived series Acapulco, starring Telly Savalas and James Coburn and played a semi-regular part as Elly, a 'saloon girl' with a heart of gold, on the Bat Masterson series. In 1962, she became a regular on the General Hospital daytime tv series and though in 1963 her contract was renewed, she had to drop out because, mysteriously, her health had begun to decline.

Between 1963 and 1967, as her condition worsened, Allison began to accept only undemanding roles. Her last three screen appearances were small, the latter two merely bits. The first of the three was her last horror film, by far her worst and her own least favorite. The Crawling Hand (1963) was a low-budget item with a fascinating celebrity cast that included Alan Hale, Jr., serial star Tris Coffin, Peter Breck, Kent Taylor, Richard Arlen, old time comic Syd Saylor and thirties star Arline Judge. Allison had a cameo as the fiancée of an astronaut who is killed in the line of duty. The story itself concerns how the astronaut's dismembered arm, found on the beach by a teenaged youth, infects the young man, making him a murderous, possessed creature with dark circles under his eyes. The youth was portrayed by Rod (Black Zoo) Lauren. His performance is fascinating, resembling a grostesque imitation of James Dean by a less than particularly talented member of a Hollywood drama school.

Allison's other film roles were a small part in a Dean Martin comedy, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963) and an unbilled bit in an Elvis Presley movie, Tickle Me (1967) in which, wearing a blonde wig (her hair had begun to fall out) she had one scene with Presley. Her last work as an actress came in '67 in an episode of the Gomer Pyle tv series.

By 1967, she had lost a significant amount of weight and was suffering from constant fatigue, headaches, insomnia, nausea, dizziness and a continual metallic taste in her mouth. Yet a string of doctors could not discover the malady, some going so far as to suggest it was psychosomatic. Others hinted that, since she had never married, she was suffering from insecurity and loneliness. All that was definitive was that she recorded an unusually low blood-count, particularly in the white blood cells and platelets.

In 1968, Allison was bedridden nearly constantly. Her mother moved in to care for her and in July of that year discovered her daughter laying on the bathroom floor in a coma. For the next eighteen months, Allison went through 450 blood tests, 300 X-rays and three dangerous and painful bone marrow aspirations. Diagnoses from various and sundry physicians (all in all, she consulted 22 doctors, none of whom could find an answer) ranged from cancer to rheumatoid arthritis. One specialist, unable to define her condition, wrote in his medical report: "I suggest she seek psychiatric care to learn to accept the fact that the doctors do not have an answer."

By 1969, dying, Allison decided she'd have to find out what was killing her by herself. She would have friends carry her to various medical libraries. When she couldn't check the books out she would sit on the floor of the library and read them. She spent a total of nine months in her bed reading anything that might have to do with her illness, taking voluminous notes. Finally, she became convinced that her illness was to be pinpointed somewhere in the field of toxicology -- that, in fact, she had ingested some sort of poison.

She spent weeks looking for a toxicologist and, finally, through a student at University of Los Angeles, she was able to contact a Dr. Klaus Swarz, who was conducting research at a Veterans' Hospital in Long Beach, California. Although he didn't accept patients, Swarz became fascinated with her case and asked her to give him every aspect of her case history. He wondered if she'd been taking any sort of special food or drug at the time the illness began to come on. She replied: "Nothing, just two mineral-type health supplements." He asked her to send him some samples of both.
Two weeks later, on a dreary weekend in December, 1969, Allison received a telegram from Swarz. What he has suspected was true: Allison was suffering from lead poisoning.

In a nutshell, what had happened was this: in 1962, suffering from menstrual cramps, Allison consulted a doctor a friend had recommended. He prescribed a calcium supplement sold over the counter at health food stores. What he did not know was that the supplement, manufactured in England, had been sprayed with two of the deadliest insecticides known to man, Lindane and Aldrin (since banned for use in the United States). The dangerously high lead content of these insecticides went unnoticed by the manufacturers, who had no quality-control procedures. From 1962 until 1968, Allison had continued to take the supplement, giving it up only when her health seemed beyond repair. By then, it was too late.

In a desperate and frustrating attempt to seek exactance from those who'd harmed her, Allison initiated a long, drawn-out courtsuit, in the end losing because of ill choice of lawyers and the machinations of the guilty. An obscure California law (Code of Civil Procedure, No. 998-C), written to protect business interests against consumer litigation, turned the trick. When the defendants, aided by the negligence of Allison's lawyers, were able to extend the case to the five-year civil suit limitation, Allison had to choose to take a chance on a judgement that, if it went against her, would force her to pay trial costs incurred by the other side for the five-year period (the thrust of the above-mentioned law) or she could accept the modest payment the defendants offered her on the contingency that she not bring the case to court again. Ill, fearful that the judgement court conceivably go against her, she accepted the hush-money payment of fifty thousand dollars (which would not begin to pay her medical bills) and the legal nightmare was over.

Not so Allison's nightmare. Though she regained a healthy appearance and led a semblance of social life, though she would occasionally drive into Los Angeles from her expansive San Clements beach house to visit good friends like Gloria Swanson, Sara Shane or Jack Klugman, Allison had, to the end of her life (which came shortly more than a year after the trial was resolved) return to a hospital every six to eight weeks for a complete blood transfusion. Her body could no longer produce white blood cells.

Allison's most fervent wish during her last days was that her story be published. Her most frequent nightmare was of a crippled man in a metal walker. She had seen him in the health food store she frequented, buying the same product that was ultimately to kill her. She wondered how many people were in the same way as she, but knew not what was killing them.

She was optimistic about reviving her career when she entered a hospital in La Jolla, California in early 1977 for her routine transfusion. On February 27, less than two weeks before her forty-seventh birthday, the beautiful horror queen died.

Allison left a poem that she wanted published when or if her story ever came out. It read:

THE FILMS OF ALLISON HAYES

Francis Joins the WACS (Universal, 1954)
Sign of the Pagan (Universal, 1954)
So This is Paris (Universal, 1955)
Chicago Syndicate (Columbia, 1955)
The Purple Mask (Universal, 1955)
Count Three and Pray (Columbia, 1955)
The Steel Jungle (Warner Brothers, 1956)
Mohawk (20th Fox, 1956)
Gunslinger (ARC, 1956)
The Undead (American International, 1957)
The Unearthly (Republic, 1957)
Zombies of Mora Tau (Columbia, 1957)
The Disembodied (Allied Artists, 1957)
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (Allied Artists, 1958)
Wolf Dog (20th Fox, 1958)
Hong Kong Confidential (United Artists, 1958)
Pier 5, Havana (UA, 1959)
Counterplot (UA, 1959)
The Hypnotic Eye (AA,1960)
The High-Powered Rifle (20th Fox, 1960)
Lust to Kill (Barjul International, 1960)
The Crawling Hand (Hansen Enterprises, 1963)
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (Paramount, 1963)
Tickle Me (AA, 1965)