She was a darling of television. Maine’s “girl next door.” A “raving beauty” who could have passed for Elizabeth Taylor’s sister.
Cancer, however, cut her career short, and she’s largely faded into obscurity despite the many credits to her name.
Born on March 12, 1933, Myrna Fahey spent her earliest years in Carmel before her family moved to Bangor and then settled down in Southwest Harbor, where her father, Francis, worked as a shipbuilder.
A young Fahey didn’t always pine for the glamour of Tinseltown.
As a child, she envisioned a life working as a designer, teacher or even a guide, considering herself an expert at canoeing. Fahey worked briefly at Rines Co. on Main Street in downtown Bangor — a storefront that later became home to Rebecca’s Gift Shop and then Out on a Whimsey Toys.
But it wasn’t until her final year at Pemetic High School, in 1950, when the allure of acting became too strong to ignore.
“Then by the time I was 17 I felt life had to provide me with more excitement than merely existing. Acting seemed to be the one career which could do it,” she told legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in 1959.
Fahey’s parents, though, weren’t enthusiastic about their daughter’s career ambitions.
“I guess father learned more about me in the arguments which followed my declaration of intention,” Myrna told Hopper in 1959, “than he’d gathered in all the years that went before. He couldn’t have been more amazed if I’d said I was embarking on a career as tail gunner on a spaceship. It really shook him out of his New England calm. He found out he and I were very much alike and both could be stubborn over an issue; but this time I won.”
She attended the Pasadena College of Theatre Arts and spent time at the Pasadena Playhouse, working under the tutelage of writer John Butler, a family friend.
Like any New Englander, she worked hard to break into the biz, starting out humbly hocking toothpaste and detergent in TV ads before finally getting real roles.
Fahey was prolific in her early years in Hollywood, performing in some 40 television plays, by her own count, in the mid-1950s. Her first big role, although uncredited, came in 1955, when she appeared alongside Jack Palance, Lee Marvin and a young Dennis Hopper in the noir film “I Died a Thousand Times,” promoted earlier under the title “A Handful of Clouds.”
Around this time, Fahey attracted the eye of photographer Paul Hesse, who convinced her to try for the 1956 Miss Rheingold title, eventually becoming one of six finalists in the nationwide beauty contest.
Fahey wasn’t new to the world of beauty competitions; she was crowned the Hancock Poultry Queen in 1951 and was a finalist for Miss Maine in 1952.
Although she didn’t get the Miss Rheingold title, Fahey was now a recognizable face from Bangor to Barstow.
Then, in 1959, she got her biggest role to date, appearing with Rita Hayworth and Tony Franciosa in “The Story on Page One.” Director Clifford Odets saw big potential in the Mainer, telling a reporter, “This girl has a big career ahead of her.”
By this time, Fahey’s mother, Olevia, had come out to California to help maintain her daughter’s home, but the New Englander didn’t take to the Hollywood life like Myrna, often speaking tersely and curtly to studio people on the telephone.
And when that big break came in 1959, the elder Fahey wasn’t impressed, Myrna Fahey told Hopper.
“I breathlessly described every step of the whole thing to Mother without getting a reaction to anything I’d been saying. I said: ‘Oh Mother, aren’t you thrilled? Aren’t you going to say anything?’ She came over to put her hand on my shoulder, said: ‘Yes, dear, of course I’m pleased since you are, but I don’t like to see you get so excited over these things; it isn’t at all like a state-of-Maine girl.’”
Fahey’s biggest role came the next year, when she appeared alongside Mark Damon and Vincent Price in Roger Corman’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale of decadence, isolation and madness, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Fahey played Madeline Usher, the sickly sister of Roderick Usher, the anxious, oversensitive and hypochondriatic scion who longs to see his family line extirpated. When she falls into a cataleptic state, Roderick entombs her alive in the family crypt to keep her from marriage. But consumed with a murderous rage, she escapes the tomb to seek revenge.
“House of Usher,” her last film role, was a staple in Greater Bangor theaters throughout 1960.
It was around this time, as Fahey told Los Angeles Times television critic Cecil Smith, that her parents had come around and were “all for” her Hollywood ambitions.
Into the 1960s, Fahey racked up appearances on numerous popular television shows, including “Batman,” “Bonanza,” “Father of the Bride,” “Gunsmoke,” “Maverick” and “Perry Mason,” becoming, as a Bangor Daily News reporter put it, “one of the best known actresses in modern television.”
And she didn’t shy away from far more colorful roles, playing dipsomaniacs and “bad girls” that got her away from the “simpering sweet parts” often written for women.
Despite her success, Fahey didn’t conform to the Hollywood life, preferring to spend her time skiing and boating rather than drinking and schmoozing with actors and other Hollywood types. That’s no surprise given she came from a conservative New England family.
As the ’60s drew to a close, Fahey was diagnosed with cancer. She died May 6, 1973, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California.
Fahey once mused to a reporter that she might never return to live full time in Maine. Although the allure of California and Hollywood held her in life, Fahey chose Mount Pleasant Catholic Cemetery in Bangor for her long repose.