Maureen Hingert, the Sri Lanka-born magnificence queen who appeared as an actress in The King and I, Gun Fever and Gunmen From Laredo, has died. She was 88.
Hingert died Sunday of liver failure at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, her daughter, Marisa Zamparelli, instructed The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a gorgeous and peaceable passing,” she stated.
As Miss Ceylon, the 18-year-old Hingert completed second runner-up on the 1955 Miss Universe contest held in Lengthy Seashore, California, then appeared as a royal spouse in Fox’s lavish adaptation of the Broadway musical The King & I (1956), starring Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr and Rita Moreno.
She adopted with extra substantial components as Native American ladies in Gun Fever (1958), starring, directed and co-written by Mark Stevens, and, billed as Jana Davi, Gunmen From Laredo (1959).
Born in Colombo, Ceylon, on Jan. 9, 1937, Maureen Neliya Hingert appeared in two 1954 movies made in her house nation, Circus Lady and the Elizabeth Taylor-starring Elephant Stroll, directed by William Dieterle.
After being topped Miss Ceylon, she stayed in California after competing within the first Miss Universe pageant to be televised. (Her look was credited with serving to put her South Asian island nation “on the map.”) It additionally received her a contract at Common and a task in Pillars of the Sky, a Western starring Jeff Chandler and Dorothy Malone.
She carried out as a dancer in venues round Los Angeles, and {a photograph} of her on the set of Gun Fever made it into Playboy in September 1957.
Hingert’s résumé additionally included the 1958 movies Fort Bowie and The Rawhide Path and episodes of The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, Dying Valley Days and Captain David Grief. She was completed with performing by the beginning of the Nineteen Sixties, quickly after she had her first of three daughters, Gina.
Her first husband was Mario Armond Zamparelli, chief designer for Howard Hughes’ company empire (RKO Footage film posters, the Desert Inn, and so on.). They first met when she was modeling for a TWA mural he was portray for Hughes, they usually have been married from 1958 till their 1970 divorce.
Gina Zamparelli, a live performance promoter, died in 2018 of a mind tumor at age 59. One other daughter, Andrea Zamparelli, died in 2009 at age 42.