Edie Has Now Left the Stage

First it was British author and Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter, who passed away this last Tuesday. Now comes word that Lola Albright, the model turned actress who starred with Craig Stevens in the 1958-1961 TV crime drama Peter Gunn, has died at age 92. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

Albright died Thursday in a home in the Toluca Lake enclave of Los Angeles, her friend, Eric Anderson, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. News of her death was first reported by the Akron Beacon Journal; she was born and raised in the Ohio city.

Albright was perhaps best known for playing the sultry singer Edie Hart, the girlfriend of private eye Craig Stevens, on all three seasons of the Blake Edwards NBC-ABC series Peter Gunn. She received an Emmy Award nomination in 1959 for her work.

While the series was on the air, Albright released the album Dreamsville, backed by Henry Mancini’s orchestra (he, of course, composed the theme song for Peter Gunn), in 1959. She had done an album two years earlier, Lola Wants You.

On the big screen, the blue-eyed blonde was memorable in a leading role as an aging burlesque stripper who seduces a teenager (Scott Marlowe) in A Cold Wind in August (1961), and she received the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival for portraying Tuesday Weld's suicidal mother in Lord Love a Duck (1966).

Variety adds that “Albright had an extensive TV career and substituted for Dorothy Malone on ABC’s prime-time soap opera Peyton Place in 1966. Other credits included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Three Sons, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Kojak, Columbo, McMillan & Wife, Starsky & Hutch, and The Incredible Hulk.”