Heather Menzies-Urich

Charming Canadian-born actress Heather Menzies was a precocious child star and a cult-movie heroine before becoming one of the sunnier luminaries on 1970s television. At just 14, she overcame limited experience and, on pure charisma, won the part of the daydreaming Louisa Von Trapp in the Julie Andrews classic "The Sound of Music" (1965). Although her performance immediately landed a handful of film roles and reunited her with Andrews in the exotic, star-studded missionary drama "Hawaii" (1966), she began to work more consistently on television, dabbling in recurring guest roles on such prime-time hits as "Dragnet" (NBC 1967-70); among her several roles on that police procedural, she co-starred in 1967's legendary "Blueboy" episode, a warning against LSD. The '70s marked an advance into bolder territory; in addition to starring in such unabashed creature-feature exploitations as the celebrated Roger Corman creeper "Piranha" (1978) and snake-fest "Sssssss" (1978), she shed her confining sweetheart image with a full-frontal pose in the pages of "Playboy." In 1975, she met and married burgeoning TV star Robert Urich, which saw the couple co-star on episodes of such popular series as the enjoyably glitzy mystery show "Vegas" (ABC 1978-1981) and the P.I. adventure "Spenser: For Hire" (ABC 1985-88). Menzies retired from show business in 1990 and remained married to Urich until a rare form of cancer took his life in 2002. After surviving ovarian cancer, Menzies was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in November 2017 and died on December 24, 2017 at the age of 68.