Sultry, brunette Faith Domergue was born in New Orleans, part Creole,
but primarily of Irish and English extraction. She was adopted when she
was six weeks old. In 1927, her adoptive parents took her to live in
California where she was educated at Catholic schools in Santa Monica.
She had her first flirt with the acting profession while still at
school, on stage at the Bliss Hayden Theatre. Just after her graduation
she suffered a disfiguring injury during a car accident when she was
thrown into a windshield and spent 18 months undergoing intensive
plastic surgery. Still in her teens, she was briefly married to
Acapulco night club owner and bandleader
Teddy Stauffer.
By 1941, she was properly back in circulation. "Discovered" by a Warner
Brothers talent scout, she was signed to a contract and her name
streamlined a la Hollywood to "Faith Dorn". Sometime at the end of May
that year, young Faith found herself at a studio party (it was not
unheard of for underage ingénues to be thrown together with rich or
influential men) given on board the Southern Cross, a yacht owned by
billionaire Howard Hughes. Hughes,
21 years her senior, became quickly infatuated with the teenager and
bought out her contract from Warner Brothers for $50,000, then signed
her to the studio he owned, RKO Pictures. He also mollified her
adoptive parents by buying them a house and he paid for Faith to take
lessons to perfect her diction and acting. The romantic affair
continued on-and-off until mid-1943 but was eventually scuttled by
Hughes' various indiscretions with stars
Lana Turner,
Ava Gardner and
Rita Hayworth.
In 1945, Faith reclaimed her original name, Domergue (insisting it be
pronounced "Dah-mure") and, by the following year, made her screen
debut in Young Widow (1946), a film
starring another Hughes find,
Jane Russell. Hughes then spent the
--for the time-- extravagant amount of $3.2 million on
Vendetta (1950), the picture that was to
catapult Faith to stardom. Three directors went to work on the project,
only to be fired in quick succession:
Max Ophüls,
Preston Sturges and
Stuart Heisler. Faith's lack of
theatrical training also proved to be a detriment. The picture was
eventually completed by Mel Ferrer,
but not released until 1950. When it finally arrived in cinemas,
it--like Hughes' other fiasco, the Spruce Goose--failed to take off. An
earlier effort, the film noir
Where Danger Lives (1950), was
also released at this time. It starred Domergue in the role as a
homicidal femme fatale, opposite
Robert Mitchum as the lover she
manipulates into taking the blame for her murdering millionaire hubby
Claude Rains. In spite of another huge
publicity campaign, with Faith featured on the cover of "Look" Magazine
and articles in numerous other publications, this film also performed
indifferently at the box office and caused Hughes to lose interest in
his erstwhile protégé.
During the next few years, Faith began to freelance at other studios,
appearing in westerns:
Schüsse in Neu Mexiko (1952),
with Audie Murphy;
Der große Aufstand (1953),
with Jeff Chandler; and
Die Mestizin von Santa Fe (1955) with
John Payne at Republic. In 1955, she
starred in the first of a trio of sci-fi/horror outings for which she
is chiefly remembered. In
Metaluna IV antwortet nicht (1955), shot
in Technicolor at Universal, she played a scientist kidnapped by aliens
and, with her colleagues, pressed into service defending their world
against interplanetary attack. Helped by a clever script and make-up
artist Bud Westmore's $24,000 creation of a
bug-eyed mutant monster, the film was a huge success and has become a
cult favorite. Faith essayed yet another scientist engaged in
destroying Ray Harryhausen's giant
octopus (six-tentacled, because of the minuscule budget) in
Das Grauen aus der Tiefe (1955).
In Cult of the Cobra (1955),
Faith replaced Mari Blanchard in the role
of the high-priestess of a cobra-worshiping cult who assumes the shape
of a serpent in order to kill six GI's who have witnessed a secret
ceremony.
Following her separation from Argentine writer/director
Hugo Fregonese, Faith made three films in
England, most notably as queen of the London underworld in
Vernon Sewell's
Soho Incident (1956). During the 1960s, she concentrated on television and
appeared in everything from
Bonanza (1959) to
Combat! (1962), from
Perry Mason (1957) to
Bronco (1958). After making several
films in Italy (and getting married for a third time, to assistant
director and theatrical producer
Paolo Cossa in 1966)), she
revisited the horror genre in the cheap but cheerful
Beschwörung (1973),
as the emotive star of a horror movie who awakens the deceased after
reading from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead".
Faith Domergue never quite made it as a major star, unlike
Jane Russell. She did, however,
acquire something of a cult following because of her involvement in the
seminal
Metaluna IV antwortet nicht (1955), as
well as her other science-fiction films from this period. Ironically,
Faith later confessed that she never much cared for the genre.
