Julia Meade Kunz was born on December 17, 1925, in Boston, and died on May 16, 2016.
She was an American film and stage actress who was a frequent pitch person in live commercials in the early days of television in the 1950s.
She was a graduate at the Yale School of Drama.
After she he moved to New York City and was hired as a model in 1948.
Julia came to public attention in 1953 as the public face of the Lincoln division of the Ford Motor Company.
She was live in commercials on The Ed Sullivan Show for such products as Kodak cameras and Life magazine for years, earning recognition from TV Guide as the “favorite salesgirl” of the program’s host.
In 1960, she gave her Life magazine that “I tackle commercials as though I were playing the queen in Hamlet”.
Her pitch work involved doing live commercials that ran for up to five minutes, becoming most closely associated with her promotions of Lincoln automobiles, with her work for the car company described by Gerald Nachman as “part auto dealer, part chic sexpot”.
She was a host of Playhouse 90 and appeared as a panelist on What’s My Line? and Get the Message.
Her long career on Broadway includes the 1954 production of The Tender Trap, in Mary, Mary in 1962 and The Front Page in 1969.
Julia appeared on film in the 1959 movie Pillow Talk, 1961’s Tammy Tell Me True and in Presumed Innocent in 1990.
Oliver Worsham Rudd, Jr., was her husband a commercial illustrator, from 1952 untiI his death in 1999, and survived by two daughters.
Julia Meade passed away at 90 yrs old.