Within the Nineteen Fifties, Mara Corday, a nightclub showgirl and standard pinup mannequin, was a star of three science-fiction film thrillers, together with “Tarantula” (1955), wherein she fled from a 100-foot-tall spider that had escaped from a laboratory.

“The entire world is after him,” Ms. Corday informed the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper that 12 months, in regards to the terrifying arachnid. “He’s a reasonably sad spider, I can inform you. I’m a woman scientist, and Leo Carroll and John Agar are enjoying two prime roles.”

At a time when sci-fi cinema was targeted on topics like alien invasions, area exploration and nuclear paranoia, Ms. Corday was solid in B-movie tales about nasty, gigantic creatures.

In 1957, she performed a mathematician in “The Big Claw,” wherein a huge chicken (first considered a U.F.O.) tears down buildings and foments panic. She returned that 12 months to outsize bugs, as a rancher in “The Black Scorpion,” about large scorpions threatening the countryside after rising out of a volcanic eruption in Mexico.

Whereas filming on location in Mexico, Ms. Corday found a coral snake of regular dimension in her lodge room. Her screams introduced a bellboy to her rescue.

“After working with scorpions all day,” she was quoted as saying in Valley Occasions of North Hollywood, “I’m in no situation to fight snakes at night time.”

Ms. Corday — whose film profession stretched from sci-fi and western movies within the Nineteen Fifties to 4 of her good friend Clint Eastwood’s films a long time later — died on Feb. 9 at her dwelling in Valencia, Calif. She was 95.

Her dying, which was not broadly reported on the time, was confirmed in an obituary revealed on Could 30 in The Washington Publish, which obtained her dying certificates.

Marilyn Joan Watts was born on Jan. 3, 1930, in Santa Monica, Calif. Her father, Emerson Watts, held a number of jobs, together with chauffeur and auditor; her mom, Shirley (Wooden) Watts, was a stenographer.

Marilyn’s show-business profession started as an adolescent, working as an usher on the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. At 17, she was employed as a showgirl for Earl Carroll’s revue at his Hollywood nightclub.

“I used to say to my mom, ‘I don’t need to go to highschool as a result of I’ll marry a film star,’” Ms. Corday informed The Los Angeles Occasions in 1980. “My mom received fed up. She noticed an advert, ‘In search of New Faces,’ and my mom took me to the tryouts at Earl Carroll’s.”

Marilyn began within the refrain in 1947, however quickly graduated to performing skits with the comic Pinky Lee.

In quest of an unique stage title, she mixed Mara — derived from a nickname she was given by a bongo participant on the Mayan — and Corday, from the fragrance model.

After Mr. Carroll died in a aircraft crash in 1948, Ms. Corday danced in Las Vegas reveals and acted in a manufacturing of Anita Loos’s play “Gents Favor Blondes” on the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in 1950.

She was quickly beneath contract at Common-Worldwide Footage. She additionally modeled in bikinis and different revealing outfits, showing on the covers of magazines like Tempo, Sir!, Pose!, Trendy Man, Picturegoer, Eye and Folks In the present day. She was one in all two Playboy Playmates of the Month in October 1958. The Boston Globe reported in 1955 that she was the second hottest pinup mannequin, after Marilyn Monroe, amongst males within the armed forces.

By the Nineteen Fifties, Ms. Corday was featured in quite a few movies, together with “Sea Tiger” (1952); “Cash From Residence” (1953), with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis; and “So This Is Paris” (1954), with Tony Curtis, a narrative about three American sailors in search of romance whereas on go away, wherein she performed Yvonne, a horny French cashier.

Yvonne, she mentioned, was her favourite position, one for which Common despatched her on a publicity tour. When she returned, she landed the feminine lead in “The Man From Bitter Ridge” (1955), a western wherein she was solid reverse Lex Barker, with whom she grew to become romantically concerned. She appeared in main roles in different westerns, together with, in 1956, “Uncooked Edge” and “A Day of Fury,” and, in 1957, “The Quiet Gun.”

Ms. Corday’s display screen profession slowed after her marriage in 1957 to Richard Lengthy, a fellow actor who starred within the Nineteen Sixties TV collection “The Massive Valley.” She mentioned he didn’t need her within the enterprise.

In “Westerns Ladies” (1999), a e book by Boyd Magers and Michael G. Fitzgerald, Ms. Corday mentioned Mr. Lengthy had turned down roles she’d been supplied — on her behalf, with out telling her — together with one reverse Fred MacMurray in “The Oregon Path” (1959).

“I divorced him 10 instances the primary 12 months of our marriage, getting a lawyer and all the things,” she mentioned, “and 13 instances the second 12 months..” She added, “He’d plead actually on his fingers knees, ‘Please forgive me, I don’t know why I did it, give me one other probability.’”

They’d a tempestuous marriage, with quite a few separations. Mr. Lengthy was jailed in 1961 for beating her however was launched after she refused to signal a criticism towards him, in line with United Press Worldwide.

Mr. Lengthy died in 1974. Ms. Corday’s survivors embody a daughter, Valerie Lengthy, and a son, Gregory Lengthy. One other son, Carey, died in 2008.

Ms. Corday’s final credited display screen roles have been in 1961, till she returned about 15 years later with a small half in an episode of “Joe Forrester,” a TV collection starring Lloyd Bridges as a police officer. Round that point, she wanted medical insurance, and she or he received a lifeline from Mr. Eastwood, a good friend from their time collectively at Common-Worldwide. (He had a small position in “Tarantula.”)

“He put her in films as a result of she didn’t have medical insurance, and he additionally thought she was a very good actress,” Ms. Lengthy mentioned final 12 months on the Rarified Inheritor Podcast, which options interviews with the grownup kids of celebrities. “He’d say, ‘Why aren’t you working?’”

Mr. Eastwood gave Ms. Corday components in “The Gauntlet” (1977) and “Sudden Affect” (1983). She additionally appeared with him in “Pink Cadillac” (1989) and “The Rookie” (1990).

As Loretta, a waitress in “Sudden Affect,” Ms. Corday grew to become a part of cinematic historical past. After Mr. Eastwood, enjoying the detective Soiled Harry Callahan, walks right into a diner, she pours copious quantities of sugar into his espresso — not like his regular, no-sugar order — to silently sign that one thing is incorrect: Gunmen are holding the employees and prospects hostage.

Studying his newspaper, he’s oblivious to her efforts till he leaves the store, spits out the espresso and returns to complain — after which confronts the gunmen along with his Smith & Wesson revolver. He shoots three of them, and when the fourth places a gun to Ms. Corday’s head, he points his well-known ultimatum: “Go forward, make my day.”