Anjanette Comer, Actress in ‘The Loved One’ and ‘The Appaloosa,’ Dies at 86
She also starred in 'Quick, Before It Melts,' 'Guns for
San Sebastian' and 'The Baby' but made a few career missteps along the way.
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
September 21, 2026
Anjanette Comer, the 1960s ingenue who had leading roles
in The Loved One, The Appaloosa and The Baby but passed on two major starring
opportunities that could have transformed her career, has died. She was 86.
Comer died May 28 at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center,
according to a death certificate filed with the Los Angeles County Department
of Public Health that was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. She battled
leukemia and had heart issues.
Comer had chances to star opposite Robert Redford in
Barefoot in the Park and alongside Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, but she
declined to work in both landmark 1967 releases, and Jane Fonda and Faye
Dunaway, respectively, were the ones who would ultimately benefit.
In a 1981 interview with UPI’s Vernon Scott, Comer said
she rejected both jobs because she “had this very important relationship with a
man, an actor, who didn’t want me to work in movies. At that time I was young
and naive.” She added that she “hated her career.”
The green-eyed Comer, who came from a small town in
Texas, also didn’t do herself any favors when she backpedaled on starring with
Michael Caine in Funeral in Berlin (1966), a sequel to the Harry Palmer spy
thriller The Ipcress File. Unknown to producer Harry Saltzman, she left Germany
during filming to be with her boyfriend on weekends and was replaced by Eva
Renzi.
“I had a reputation for being crazy because I’d walked
out on Funeral in Berlin,” Comer said. “And I guess I was crazy. You see, I
didn’t build my career slowly like most successful actresses do. After a couple
of TV appearances, I became an instant movie star. I didn’t know how to handle
it all emotionally.”
Comer was born on Aug. 7, 1939, in Dawson, Texas. She
attended Dawson High School, was voted queen of the Corsicana Fair and Rodeo at
age 16 and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, where she was spotted by
agent Byron Raphael and signed.
She landed on episodes of My Three Sons and The Donna
Reed Show in 1962, then guest-starred the next year on Gunsmoke, Ben Casey and
the 90-minute ABC drama Arrest and Trial, which landed her a supporting actress
Emmy nomination for her performance as a hooker.
Comer appeared on the two-part 1964 episode of the
MGM-NBC series Dr. Kildare famous for giving viewers a look at Yvette Mimieux‘s
navel, then made her big-screen debut for the studio that year in Delbert
Mann’s Quick, Before It Melts, playing a flight attendant in the comedy that
starred George Maharis and Robert Morse.
When she was invited to audition for the role of make-up
mortician Aimee Thanatogenous in Tony Richardson’s funeral-industry satire The
Loved One (1965), she thought, “How ridiculous — me and 49 others. So I didn’t
go,” she told TV Guide in 1964.
“Later it was arranged for me to meet Mr. Richardson
personally. We talked about the role, and the next day he called to say I had
the part.”
She starred with Morse, whose character has come to bury
his uncle, in that film, too, and delivered one of the movie’s most famous
lines: “What did you have in mind? Inhumement, entombment, inurnment,
immurement? Some people just lately have
preferred ensarcophagusment. It’s very individual.”
In his review of The Loved One for The New York Times,
Bosley Crowther wrote that “Anjanette Comer does nicely as the honey-voiced,
nitwit girl, one of the Whispering Glades’ comforters, with whom the hero
inconceivably falls in love.”
She starred as a backstabbing heroine with Marlon Brando
and John Saxon in Sidney J. Furie’s The Appaloosa (1966) and played another
Mexican woman in Guns for San Sebastian (1968). In between, she appeared with
Robert Wagner and Jill St. John in Banning (1967).
Her next films, In Enemy Country (1968), Rabbit, Run
(1970) and The Firechasers (1971), co-starring Tony Franciosa, James Caan and
Chad Everett, respectively, didn’t create much heat, but her fans were
delighted to see her portray an earnest social worker opposite Ruth Roman in
the bizarre horror film The Baby (1973).
Marianna Hill, who also starred in The Baby, praised
Comer’s work in a 2016 interview with Shaun Chang for his Hill Place blog. “She
would tell me, ‘I’m going to create an inner life and this and that for my
character,’” she recalled. “I would listen to her and I would create these
secret choices for my character [as well].”
Comer’s résumé included the Tony Curtis-starring Lepke
(1975), Fire Sale (1977), Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath (1995) and A Bird
of the Air (2011) and TV guest-starring stints on Bonanza, Mod Squad, Love,
American Style, Mannix, Columbo, Jake and the Fatman, The Blue Knight, Hotel
and The Practice.
The romance that led Comer to lose focus on her career in
the ’60s never came to anything, but she was married to author, screenwriter
and director Robert Klane (Weekend at Bernie’s, Where’s Poppa?, Fire Sale,
Thank God It’s Friday) from 1976 until their 1983 divorce.
Survivors include her older sister, Jerra Tillman, who
when contacted did not want to comment on Comer’s death.
Comer told UPI’s Scott in that 1981 interview that she
was “absolutely certain I will get back to the high point of my career. I’ve
done it before and I can do it again. I have to believe that so other people
will believe it, too.”
COMER, Anjanette
Born: 8/7/1939, Dawson, Texas, U.S.A.
Died: 5/28/2026, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.
Anjanette Comer’s westerns – actress:
Gunsmoke (TV) – 1963 (Cara Miles)
Bonanza (TV) – 1964 (Joan Wingate)
The Appaloosa – 1966 (Trini Medena)
Guns for San Sebastian – 1967 (Kinita)
Barbary Coast (TV) – 1975 (Mary Louise)
Streets of Laredo (TV) – 1995 (Beulah)