Susan Harrison

Though actress Susan Harrison accumulated just a handful of film and television credits during her brief career, her fierce performance in "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957) and a more delicate turn in a 1961 episode of "The Twilight Zone" (CBS, 1959-1964) assured her a permanent place in pop culture history. Born August 26, 1938 in Leesburg, Florida, she was the daughter of vaudeville performers and began appearing in school productions while attending the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. From there, she studied acting under Peter Kass, a protégé of Clifford Odets, at Boston University and made her live television debut in "Can You Coffeepot on Skates?" a 1956 episode of the ABC anthology series "Star Tonight" (1955-1956). Harrison's star rose quickly in the years that followed: she starred in the Broadway production of William Saroyan's "The Cave Dwellers" in 1957 and made her first feature film appearance in "Sweet Smell of Success" that same year. A fiercely bitter and sardonic look at the entertainment industry from the perspective of those who work in it and report on it, "Success" starred Burt Lancaster as an imperious newspaper columnist who uses his audience and influence to destroy the career of a trumpeter (Martin Milner) who loves his sister, played by a then-18-year-old Harrison. The script, written by Odets and Ernest Lehman (with uncredited assistance from director Alexander Mackendrick), provided the actress with several show-stopping sequences, including a suicide attempt after discovering her brother's scheme and a closing kiss-off to Lancaster in which she admits to preferring death than living with him. A critical hit but a box office flop, "Success" would gain status in subsequent decades for its noirish tone and acidic dialogue; its cult status, however, did little for Harrison's career, which included just one other feature, "Key Witness" (1960), a modest thriller by director Phil Karlson, with Harrison, Dennis Hopper and singer Johnny Nash as gang members targeting Jeffrey Hunter. One year later, she earned what was perhaps her most widely known and popular credit as a ballerina trapped in a nebulous space with soldier William Windom and clown Murray Matheson in "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," a Rod Serling-penned episode of "The Twilight Zone." Harrison made her final television appearance in a 1963 episode of "Breaking Point" (ABC, 1963-64), a largely forgotten medical drama produced by Bing Crosby about the psychiatric staff of a major hospital. She left show business soon after to look after her family with her third husband, artist Cass Conger, but did not remain entirely out of the spotlight. In 1965, Harrison sued agent Harold Hecht, who along with Lancaster and producer James Hill, had produced "Sweet Smell of Success"; Harrison alleged that Hecht had "fraudulently induced" her into breaking a contract with the production company. That same year, she also received a suspended 90-day jail sentence for child neglect after failing to report that her son, Daniel, had suffered a brain injury after a fall. After decades of relative obscurity, save for occasional appearances at film and television conventions, Harrison was revealed to be the mother of Darva Conger, winner of in the critically lambasted reality series "Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire?" (Fox, 2000). Conger, who later became a nurse anesthetist, reported her mother's death at the age of 80 on March 5, 2019.