Jill Haworth

Dead, Valerie Jill Haworth on the 3rd of January 2011 at the age of 65, she was an English actress.

Born in Hove, Sussex on the 15th of August 1945 to a textile magnate father and a mother who trained as a ballet dancer, she was named Valerie Jill in honor of the day she was born, Victory over Japan Day or V.J. Day.

Her first film appearance was in the remake of The 39 Steps (1959), directed by Ralph Thomas when she had a non-speaking part as a schoolgirl.

Next, she played another schoolgirl in The Brides of Dracula (1960), directed by Terence Fisher.

Haworth dated television producer Aaron Spelling in the summer of 1965 when he was 42 and she was nearly 20.

Spelling told friends that he hoped that Haworth would be the next Mrs. Spelling, but Haworth’s mother, Nancy, “scoffed” at the idea and told the press that she was dating lots of guys and was in love with a different one every week.

Though Haworth and Mineo were not a couple, they were still friends and he was very protective of her.

He found Haworth and Spelling together at a Beverly Hills private nightclub called Daisy, and walked up and punched Spelling in the face, yelling, “Do you know how old she is? What are you doing with her at your age?”

In 1965, she appeared in an episode of The Rogues entitled “Mr. White’s Christmas” as Timothea and really loved working with David Niven and Charles Boyer.

She appeared in one of the final episodes, “Duel at Daybreak”, of the series Rawhide as Vicki Woodruff, where Haworth just “adored” Charles Bronson, but Clint Eastwood snubbed her and did not say two words to her off camera.

Haworth first hurt her back in an accident on the set when she jumped from a runaway buggy and team of horses.

She then caught pneumonia and was bedridden for two months after she had to stand waist-deep in a man-made pond for six hours doing retakes.

Interestingly, it was veterans Lotte Lenya and Jack Gilford who received Tony nominations for their elderly roles in the production and not the young leads Haworth and Convy.

Later on, while Grey was asked to recreate his magnetic Tony-winning part for the 1972 film Cabaret (1972), Jill and Bert were snubbed again when the leads went to others.

It should be noted that by the time Bob Fosse’s screen version was ready to go, Jill’s star had dimmed considerably. The movie was now geared as a showcase for the fast-rising Liza Minnelli.

As such, the Bowles character was Americanized and her boyfriend, played now by Michael York, served as her British counterpart.

In 2001 she appeared out of nowhere in a support role for the America film Mergers & Acquisitions (2001).

She was living in New York and reportedly had just finished working on a voice over YMCA spot in 2011 when she died suddenly.