Carol Wayne

Born in Chicago, Wayne began her show business career as a teenage figure skater in the Ice Capades along with her younger sister, Nina.{{cite web| url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/carol_wayne/| title=Carol Wayne| website=Rotten Tomatoes| access-date=July 16, 2018}}

Wayne did television guest shots on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy (as the title character in the episode "Trouble with Temple"), Bewitched (as a rabbit turned into a cocktail bunny), I Dream of Jeannie (as dim-witted starlet Bootsie Nightingale), Love American Style, Emergency! and The Fall Guy, and appeared in many sketches on The Red Skelton Show.

Wayne said she was "discovered" at a Hollywood party and auditioned for The Tonight Show after appearances as a Las Vegas chorus line dancer.{{cite web| url=http://www.vintageplayboymags.co.uk/80s/Feb/04.htm| title='Playboy' Magazine February 1984 vol.31, no.2| website=Vintageplayboymags.co.uk| access-date=16 July 2018}}{{cite news| url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-01-14-mn-9729-story.html| title=Carol Wayne, Sexy Blonde on Carson Show, Drowns| date=January 14, 1985| newspaper=Los Angeles Times| access-date=10 June 2020}}

She gained her greatest fame for appearances (1967–1984) on The Tonight Show,{{cite book| title=Comic Support: Second Bananas in the Movies| first=Ronald L.| last=Smith| page=236| publisher=Carol Publishing Group| year=2008| isbn=978-0-8065-1399-7}} including 100-plus appearances (1971–1984) as the buxom Matinée Lady on The Tonight Show in Johnny Carson's popular Art Fern's Tea Time Movie sketches, which were filled with sexual double entendres. After her death, Carson kept the Art Fern character off the air for most of the next year. He eventually hired Danuta Wesley and later Teresa Ganzel to be his new Matinée Lady.

Wayne made appearances on several game shows during the 1970s including Mantrap and Hollywood Squares. She was a regular panelist on Celebrity Sweepstakes. She landed roles in several films, including Gunn, The Party (both directed by Blake Edwards), Scavenger Hunt, Savannah Smiles and Surf II. Her final onscreen appearance came in the 1984 drama Heartbreakers, for which she received the best reviews of her career. Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Her performance is so good, so heartbreaking, if you will, that it pulls the whole movie together."{{cite news| via=RogerEbert.com| first=Roger| last=Ebert| title=Heartbreakers| url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/heartbreakers-1985| newspaper=Chicago Sun-Times| date=September 3, 1985| accessdate=August 16, 2022}}

In February 1984, Wayne appeared nude in a pictorial for Playboy magazine. The same year, she filed for bankruptcy.{{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/hollywoodsbabylo00aust| url-access=registration| page=[https://archive.org/details/hollywoodsbabylo00aust/page/93 93]| quote=Buxom blonde actress Carol Wayne was bankrupt and hooked on cocaine andn booze when she jetted off to Mexico in January 1985,...Accompanying Wayne was a Los Angeles used car salesman...named Edward Durston.| title=Hollywood's Babylon Women| first=John| last=Austin| date=16 July 1994| publisher=SP Books| isbn=978-1-5617-1288-5| access-date=16 July 2018| via=Internet Archive}}{{cite web| url=http://www.tvparty.com/wayne.html| title=Carol Wayne / Mysterious Death of Carol Wayne| website=Tvparty!| access-date=16 July 2018}}

Wayne was married three times. She married her first husband, Loreto "Larry" Cera, on May 1, 1965; they divorced in June 1967. In 1969, Wayne married her second husband, rock-music photographer Barry Feinstein, with whom she had a son, Alex Feinstein (b. 1970).{{cite journal| title=The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Film Actress Carol Wayne| url=https://www.grunge.com/1064586/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-film-actress-carol-wayne/| first=Debra| last=Kelly| date=19 November 2022| website=Grunge| access-date=10 January 2023}} The couple divorced in 1974. A year later, she married television and film producer Burt Sugarman, who served as producer on Celebrity Sweepstakes.{{cite news| url=https://www.latimes.com/la-xpm-2011-aug-02-la-hm-hotprop-mary-hart-20110802-story.html| title=Mary Hart, Burt Sugarman buy unit at Ritz-Carlton Residences| first=Lauren| last=Beale| date=August 2, 2011| newspaper=Los Angeles Times| access-date=June 10, 2020}} They divorced in 1980.{{cite news| url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-01-15-mn-7419-story.html| title=Carol Wayne, TV Comedienne, Dies| date=15 January 1985| newspaper=Los Angeles Times| access-date=June 10, 2020}}

Wayne told Johnny Carson in an interview on April 30, 1974, one of 38 appearances, that she enjoyed gardening and growing bonsai trees, and in another interview, breeding Andalusian horses.{{cn|date=November 2022}}

In January 1985, Wayne vacationed at the Las Hadas Resort in Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, with companion Edward Durston, a car salesman.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ErVCPPafmBgC&q=wayne&pg=PA93| title=More of Hollywood's Unsolved Mysteries| first=John| last=Austin| date=July 16, 1991| publisher=SP Books| isbn=978-0-9440-0773-0| access-date=July 16, 2018| via=Google Books}}{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTWSCgAAQBAJ&q=Wayne&pg=PA88| title=Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story| edition=2d| first=E. J.| last=Fleming| date=2 October 2015| publisher=McFarland| isbn=978-1-4766-1850-0| access-date=July 16, 2018| via=Google Books}} After an argument, Wayne reportedly took a walk on the beach. Three days later, a local fisherman found Wayne's body in a shallow bay. An autopsy performed in Mexico revealed no signs of alcohol or other drugs in her body, and her death was ruled "accidental."

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• [https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/202907%7C27738/Carol-Wayne#overview Carol Wayne at the TCM Movie Database]

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Category:1942 births

Category:1985 deaths

Category:Accidental deaths in Mexico

Category:Actresses from Chicago

Category:American television actresses

Category:American film actresses

Category:Deaths by drowning

Category:20th-century American actresses