RIP Olive Sturgess

 

Olive Sturgess, Vincent Price’s Daughter in ‘The Raven,’ Dies at 91

The Canadian-born actress also worked on a bushel of TV Westerns, from ‘Rawhide’ and ‘Wagon Train’ to ‘Maverick’ and ‘The Virginian.’

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

February 27, 2025

 

Olive Sturgess, who appeared on about two dozen TV Westerns and got to act alongside Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson in the Roger Corman 1963 cult horror spoof The Raven, died Feb. 19, her family announced. She was 91.

Through two decades starting in the mid-1950s, the fresh-faced Sturgess showed up on (by her count) about 300 episodes of television, including 12 from 1956-59 as the girlfriend of Dwayne Hickman’s character on the NBC-CBS sitcom The Bob Cummings Show.

The Canadian-born starlet also was seen on such series as West Point, Perry Mason, Panic!, The Donna Reed Show, Hawaiian Eye, The Danny Thomas Show, Petticoat Junction, Dr. Kildare and Ironside, but TV Westerns dominated her résumé.

Sturgess appeared on Tales of Wells Fargo, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, U.S. Marshal, Rawhide, Have Gun — Will Travel, Lawman, Laramie, The Rebel, The Tall Man, Bronco, Whispering Smith, Maverick, Wide Country, Destry, The Virginian and Bonanza, among others.

When she guest-starred alongside Mickey Rooney on a 1960 episode of NBC’s Wagon Train, she got to wear the wedding dress used by Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride (1950).

“I don’t know how many times the gown, which was beautiful, was recycled, but I got to wear it with very few alterations. It needed shortening only two inches!” she recalled in an undated interview for the Western Clippings website.

Sturgess said working on two episodes of the Karloff-hosted NBC horror anthology series Thriller in 1960 and ’61 paved the way for her to land the role of Estelle Craven, daughter of the sorcerer Dr. Erasmus Craven (Price), in American International Pictures’ The Raven.

Lorre and Karloff also play sorcerers, Dr. Adolphus Bedlo and Dr. Scarabus, respectively, while Nicholson is Rexford Bedlo, the son of Lorre’s character. The film took about two weeks to shoot.

In an interview for Tom Weaver’s 2014 book, I Talked With a Zombie, Sturgess said collaborating with legends Price, Karloff and Lorre was quite a thrill “because of the way they used their voices and the way they spoke. It made you chill just to hear it.

“When Mr. Karloff would turn to me during a scene, and when he was talking about me, I felt the chills go up my spine because of the way he said it! Oh, golly! It was a great education just being with them.”

Meanwhile, she described Nicholson, who was then about 26, as “sort of ‘different’ … you could feel this talent of his, but he wasn’t letting it out yet.”

Olive Dora Sturgess was born on Oct. 8, 1933, in Ocean Falls, British Columbia, and raised in Vancouver. She took ballet and piano lessons when she was a youngster, and seeing Mary Martin on and above the stage in Peter Pan inspired her to try show business.

“We were sitting in the front row of the balcony,” she told Weaver, “and when she came flying out, I felt like I was watching a magic thing happening, and I knew that [being an actress] was what I wanted to do with my life.”

After she and her family moved to California in 1954, she was attending Whittier College and acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse when she met Hank Garson, a well-known writer of radio shows at CBS. That led to her appearing on such TV programs as Matinee Theatre, Studio 57, The Millionaire, The People’s Choice and The Red Skelton Hour.

She signed a contract with Universal-International — Clint Eastwood, also at the studio then, did her screen test with her — and before long, “You’d see me twice a week on TV in the ‘50s,” she said.

On the first season (1960-61) of NBC’s The Tall Man, starring Barry Sullivan and Clu Gulager, she and Judy Nugent played tomboy sisters on three episodes.

The 5-foot-2 Sturgess knew how to ride a horse, and she also performed in rodeos and in one Western feature, Requiem for a Gunfighter (1965).

She gave up acting when her daughter, Amy, was born, with her final onscreen credit coming on a 1974 episode of The Rookies.

She was married to Dale Anderson, a percussionist and Hollywood studio musician who worked often with John Williams, from 1964 until his 2003 death.

In her Western Clippings interview, Sturgess said the shows she was on were vastly superior to those that followed.

“We used to have stories that had a beginning, middle and an end, that made you feel good after watching them,” she said, “not those terrible shallow shows of today. We had stories that were genuine; stories of the West done with humor or drama and romance. A good show you looked forward to seeing. You really felt good when you saw the TV shows of those days.”

STURGESS, Olive (Olive Dora Sturgess)

Born: 10/8/1933, Ocean Falls, British Colombia, Canada

Died: 2/19/2025, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

 

Olive Sturgess’ westerns – actress:

Tales of Wells Fargo (TV) – 1957 (Mary Lambert)

Cheyenne (TV) – 1958 (Kathy Donovan)

Sugarfoot (TV) – 1958 (Olive Turner)

Buckskin (TV) – 1959 (Mary McNamara)

Have Gun – Will Travel (TV) – 1959 (Helen Martin)

Lawman (TV) – 1959 (Wanda)

Rawhide (TV) - 1959 (Sally Devereaux)
The Rebel (TV) – 1959, 1960 (Charity Brunner, Jeannie)

The Texan (TV) – 1959 (Mary Lou Martin)

U.S. Marshal (TV) – 1959 (Pat Latimer)

Laramie (TV) – 1960 (Caroline Clark)

Maverick (TV) – 1960, 1961 (Phoebe Albright, Phyllis Hulett)

The Tall Man (TV) – 1960, 1961 (May McBean)

Wagon Train (TV) – 1960 (Cathy Burns, Melanie Evans)

Whispering Smith (TV) – 1961 (Meg Phillips)

Bonanza (TV) – 1962, 1965 (Mary Ann Wilson, Nancy)

Outlaws (TV) – 1962 (Ruthie Durant)

Wide Country (TV) – 1963 (Bibsy)

Destry (TV) – 1964 (Sally)

The Virginian (TV) – 1964 (Laura Carter)

Requiem for a Gunfighter – 1965 (Bonnie Young)

Bronco (TV) – 1965 (Virginia Munger)