Leigh Snowden

Was diagnosed with skin cancer after a melanoma was found on her back in 1972 She had invasive surgery to remove the growth but, in 1981, the cancer returned and she died the following May (1982).

Universal dropped her in 1956 when she went against the studio's wishes and married Dick Contino, a brawny singer/accordionist of Italian descent. Contino had made bad press several years back when, while serving in the Army, he went AWOL and was fined $10,000 and served several months at a federal penitentiary. The couple, who married in September of 1956 and had two daughters and a son, subsequently put together a singing nightclub act and much later entertained troops in Vietnam in 1966.

The Tennessee-born Snowden (real name: Martha Lee Estes) was a movie actress and model who first made a splash on the Jack Benny TV show, sashaying across the stage at the San Diego Naval base. Twenty thousand sailors gave the curvy sweater-clad starlet a standing ovation that made headlines in "Variety", and every talent scout in Hollywood was on Snowden's trail the very next morning. Three days later, she was hired to make her film debut in director Robert Aldrich's obtuse crime classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) (Aldrich expanded her role and gave her featured billing).

In January 1955, she signed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios, beginning by playing up her Dixie drawl in their glossy soap opera All That Heaven Allows (1955).

Other movies include Francis in the Navy (1955), The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) and the Bridey Murphy-inspired I've Lived Before (1956).

Moved to Hollywood in 1954 and first shared a Los Angeles apartment with another wannabe actress, Barbara Stuart, who later played Bunny on the "Gomer Pyle" series. The two starlets became life-long friends. When Leigh became ill with terminal cancer in 1981 and was receiving treatment at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, Barbara and then-husband Dick Gautier insisted that husband Dick Contino, who lived in Las Vegas, move temporarily into their guest house.

Met first husband Jimmy Snowden when they were college students at Lambuth College in Tennessee. The marriage, which happened in the summer of 1952 and produced both a boy and a girl, lasted only a couple of years as he quickly enlisted in the military and they grew apart. With desires to become an actress, Leigh moved to California while her mother kept the children for a time until she settled. She started out in small "cheesecake" parts until finally breaking into co-star roles.

Leigh followed Julie Adams and Lori Nelson as co-star to the Creature in the popular 1950s sci fi series. Adams started it all as the Gill Man's damsel-in-distress in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), followed by Nelson in Revenge of the Creature (1955) and finally Snowden in The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).