Now she's a budding actress named Marianna Hill. She was pretty wild. And pretty too. One of those limpid-eyed ones who wave their lashes at you and whose dark good looks seem almost too painstakingly nurtured to be real. But underneath that cosmetic armor plate there was a girl, and actress (of some seriousness) and undeniably, a lively (if arch) personality.

"I'm a crazy combination," said Marianna Hill with the air of a star halfback about to run 98 yards through the entire Notre Dame team. "I mean I like life. I'd rather work than goof around. My real name is Schwarzkopf. That's spelled S-C-H-W-A-R-Z-K-O-P-F. I'm part German and I'm part Spanish. My father was a building contractor. I was born in Santa Barbara, but we lived all over the world. He even owned a crazy island off British Columbia. Then he traded the island for a Southern California restaurant. That's how I got into summer stock."

Marianna, who was 14 at the time (she is now all of 19), was a precocious one. And stagestruck, too. Her father "knew some people" in Laguna. Among them was John Swope at the Laguna Playhouse. Swope took her on as an apprentice. "I worked hard," Marianna explains. "I danced in 'Pal Joey.' I was a peasant in 'Miss Julie.' Next season I moved to La Jolla--the playhouse there--and worked myself up to four lines with James Mason. My first big break was in 'The Chalk Garden! It was crazy."

After that things were just fine. Marianna spent one summer, at Laguna and three at La Jolla. During the winter she worked at the Globe in San Diego and Drury Lane in La Jolla. Then, when she was 18, she decided it was time to invade TV. She did. Score to date: three 77 Sunset Strips, one The Man and the Challenge, a For Better or for Worse, and a Tate. She's scheduled for Westerner on October 14.

"The Tate was crazy," she said. "I played a Mexican girl. She had a big range of emotion. I like serious things. Tragedies I like too."

Actually, Marianna is probably a lot less kookie than she likes to pretend. She works hard. In fact during one period last summer, she was playing in two shows at once. She also found time to work for three months with Sanford Meisner, a dramatic teacher who does not fool with low-caliber talent."I model a lot too. Some guy's always wanting to photograph me, and I'm forever turning up on the cover of some magazine. "Television? "Well," said Marianna, "everybody's always saying, 'Oh television!' I don't think so. There's more excitement to it than a play. You only get to do it once and that's it. It's horrifying, but wonderful."

Hollywood is bulging with bulging sex goddesses in these frenetic days when talent ... in certain quarters ... is judged by a tape measure, the degree of callipygian countours or the angle of projection of certain upper structural portions of the female anatomy ... fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on how you appraise the situation) most of this talent proves to be a bust after brief public exposure.

One lovely exception is volatile Marianna Hill, a newcomer to the ranks but one who shows every sign of posessing marked dramatic ability in addition to those other eye-catching attributes. Marianna makes her movie bow in Paramount's "Red Line 7000," a trilogy about girls in love with race car drivers ... Under Howard Hawk's keen direction she plays a frisk French import quite capable of giving lasses like Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau a run for their money in every department.

"I happened to get this role," explained Marianna, "because of my facility with French and Spanish accents and my qualifications as an actress."

Her big brown eyes glowed like embers as she elaborated on the subject of discussion.

"I think it's an awareness, a sort of 'aliveness' that makes a girl appealing," she said. "It's not just a matter of being well-endowed physically." Marianna went on to say that she thinks Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor are genuine sex goddeses. "They have great mystery, and to me that's the most important appeal."

Marianna, cute and curvaceous and 21, is a young lady of strong convictions and has her eye fixed on a definite goal --- a successful career on stage, screen and television . . . Her exciting performance in "Red Line 7000" has Paramount execs convinced they have a star in the making.

She launched her acting career at the La Jolla Playhouse, serving as an apprentice ... She also studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, then returned to Hollywood as Barry Sullivan's co-star in "The Tall Man" teleseries ... this led to roles in "Bonanza," "Dr. Kildare." ... Howard Hawks spotted her work opposite Red Buttons in "The Greatest Show on Earth" last year and summoned her when he assembled the cast for "Red Line" ... a film which will feature youthful stars inluding Norman Alden, Laura Devon, James Caan, Gail Hire, John R. Crawford, and Charlene Holt.

The future? ... "I like doing what I'm doing. I wouldn't give up acting for marriage right now even if the right man came along. Some day I will of course. But not right now, and I don't think marriage and careers mix very well for women."

That's Marianna Hill for you.

About Mariana Hill: I've always wanted to ask one of these new girls just getting started in leading roles in films how much their careers really mean to them: Is it the money, the sudden flattering glare of publicity, the exitement of the studio life which holds them? Or, in their secret heart, would they give it up in a minute if the right man, security, and the prospect of a happy home and children came along?

Marianna Hill seemed as good a candidate as any for the probe. Young, quite beautiful, and with a brand new five year contract with Paramount in her safe deposit box, the brunette charmer made her motion picture debut in "Red Line 7000" for Howard Hawks and followed that up with Elvis Presley's leading lady in "Hawaiian Paradise." "No, I wouldn't give it all up now if the right man came along." Marianna answered slowly when I put the test questions to her over a luncheon at the Brown Derby. "I just couldn't right now. It's like asking a medical or law student if he'd give up all those years of background work just as he's ready to hang out his shingle.

'It Isn't Easy': "Most people refuse to realize that a lot of hard, hard work goes into the making of a successful actor or actress. You writers are partly responsible for this," she said pointedly, "you have a way of emphasizing how easy the steps are, usually starting in school plays, then modeling, then the usual 'scout' on hand who discovers you for TV or the screen. It all sounds ridiculously easy. Believe me -- it isn't."

Apparently, it wasn't, in her case. Marianna was born in San Francisco, one of three children. Her father was a contractor moved his family from place to place as work dictated. She grew up attending school in La Jolla, Encino, Spain and Canada.

"When I made up my mind I wanted to become an actress, I didn't expect anything to happen 'over night.' I'd read enough biographies of famous stars to realize I needed much training."

She launched this training season at the La Jolla Playhouse. "I served as an apprentice for three years -- before I got any kind of break -- a chorus girl in 'Pal Joey' !"

This was followed by two more years of study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. "That's five years of study before I even landed a supporting role," Marianna added up the score.

On 'The Tall Man': Her first leading role came with Barry Sullivan on his "The Tall Man" TV series. This was followed by parts in "Bonanza" and "Dr. Kildare." It was while she was appearing in "The Greatest Show On Earth" TV series, that Howard Hawks saw her and launched her movie career in "Red Line 7000."

At 22, she figures she's invested six years of her life preparing for her career.

From Motion Picture Magazine, April 1966
Marianna Hill: The Girl Who Turned Elvis off!
by Tony Taylor

We were shocked to read starlet Mariana Hill's scathing attack on Elvis Presley, but think it only fair to Elvis to air out these unkind stories.

Some months ago, I found myself on a hotline to Hawaii with that Marianna Hill girl. She was at the time, Elvis Presley's leading lady. Which, in itself, is some kind of distinction.

At that time, there were hot romance rumors linking the vivacious Miss Hill and the still-very-single Mr. Presley. All that talk triggered my trans-Pacific call to their Paradise, Hawaiian Style location site in Honolulu.

To my surprise, it seemed that Marianna was that very rare one-in-a-million gal who just didn't succumb to the charms of the King. But, of course, she was not the run-of-the-mill girl either. She was not even the typical Hollywood starlet. She happened to be a pretty girl who, according to her own opinion, takes her acting very seriously.

She was an interviewer's delight-- intellingent, forthright, and a bit of a kook. So I just sat back and listened, adding an occasional line of sympathy for her obvious lonely state.

"Hawaii's so beautiful," she bubbled. Then she sighed. "But it's like being alone in paradise. There's no one to share it with.

"Elvis and his entourage (the 12 boys plus the police guards that stand outside his local hotel suite all night) stick together. They aren't too friendly or warm or outgoing, and they have rather a defensive way about them. They're suspicious about people they don't know.

"It's kind of difficult," Mariana confessed, "trying to be congenial, because every time I speak, the boys think I'm just buttering them up to get to Elvis.

"They always expect you to go to them. Then if you do, it's as if you want something from them. That's no way to treat a lady.

"When I arrived I wasn't introduced to either Elvis, or Colonel Tom Parker, his manager. In both instances I had to walk up and introduce myself. Neither one said, 'Hello, how are you?'

"I was terribly enthusiastic about coming to Hawaii and working with Elvis, you know. But it's nothing like I expected.

"One night I was so bored," she realted with somewhat obvoius pleasure, "I decided to alarm them all and give them a big thrill. Our hotel is shaped in such a way that Elvis and his gang can see my suite from their balcony. I can never go out on my own balcony without them yelling, 'Oh, look! Look, everybody... there's Country! They call me that because I teased them at the very beginning with, 'Hey, boys, y'all wearing shoes now?'

"But the night in question, I put on black tights, and a black leotard and went out on my balcony, pretending I wasn't aware of them watching. I did a wild ballet to an opera that was playing on the stereo. All of them came out to see. I still didn't acknowlege them; I just kept dancing. When I finished, I went directly back into my room and didn't come out again. Every night since, they've kept watch to see if I will dance again. One day on the set, one of the boys even asked, 'Why don't you dance no any more, Country?" I played the prima donna. 'You watched? You saw me dancing? I'll never dance again!'

"A couple of days later, Elvis and several of his gang tackled me and rolled me in the sand. Elvis rolled right on top of me and rolled me under. And it wasn't romantic," she giggled. "It was more scary than anything else. And, in doing so, he broke my best pair of sunglasses.

"I got even the other day. Elvis and I were doing a song and dance routine for the cameras. It was actually a take. I was in control, and every now and then I'd jab him in the back as I danced around him. He'd try to get even with me by stepping on my toes.

"We havent fought all the time, though. At first we held hands a lot between scenes. If you can call it hand-holding. Elvis would bounce my hand between his hands and then sort of pat mine.

"Once in a while--but only once in a while--he just holds it. But not for long at a time. He holds hands very reluctantly. If a photographer or one of his boys or anybody walks by, Elvis immediately pulls his hand right away. I guess he's too afraid of what everybody is thinking. I think he's afraid of exposing his feelings.

"And if one of the boys teases him for doing some particular thing, he won't do it again.

"Elvis kisses like a frightened child," Marianna opined. "I felt the same thing when I first kissed him in a love scene as I did when he holds my hand. And it hasn't changed. It's like he's afraid to get involved--even in a screen kiss. He doesn't seem to to be able to differentiate between acting and reality.

"Elvis is not a particularly accomplished actor. He doesn't approach acting the way most actors do. He imagines it as some way of getting involved in the things he tries to avoid. An actor's job is being involved in what he's doing.

"Instead, he makes a big deal of it. After each kiss, he feigns a little swoon and the boys giggle. It's as though he has to show the gang that he really doesn't care.

"I don't think he even knows how to kiss," Marianna continued. "Maybe that's what Elvis is afraid of. Of having someone find out he can't kiss.

"Elvis seems to have the attitude that all women are trying to make out and that he has to avoid them. I guess this is because of women throwing themselves at him. I should say girls, because I'm not sure Elvis would interest a mature woman.

"He seems to have the idea that everybody is after him and that he has to protect himself. I dont think that Elvis would be aggressive in a relationship with a woman."

Then she added, "When I first worked with Elvis, he seemed somewhat flirty. He says things I'm sure he's said a lot of times--things that he's decided are the right things to say, like how small and dainty my hands are, or something.

"Elvis is a rather big guy. Over six feet. But he's not in such great shape. In fact, he was putting on weight during the first weeks of the filming, so he'd sneak out of the hotel late each night to go work out at a gym.

"Elvis loves starchy foods, which accounts for his tendency to gain weight. Things like mashed potatoes and bread. He likes popcorn a lot.

"He really doesn't eat a balanced diet. Yet he looks young. Too young, I think. He's 30 and his face doesn't look like he's lived at all. There's no maturity, no lines, no muscles in his face.

"He just likes to stay inside and eat popcorn and watch television and laugh it up with the boys. Just live in the big house. When he sees a girl that interests him, he has the boys make all the arrangements. Then she goes up into the house and they eat popcorn.

"A long time ago somebody asked Elvis, 'Why do you have all these boys around--they're not good for you?' And Elvis replied, 'Who else would talk to me?' It's interesting that he had that feeling. I think it's pretty indicative of having a true inferiority thing happening.

"Someone told me that Elvis often calls Colonel Tom during the night for reassurance that it's all not going to end.

"A friend said that when he was on location with Elvis for another picture, it started to rain, and they all ran to the nearest tree for cover. Elvis started talking: 'Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself if this is going to last; what if I can't sing any more and everything runs out?' Elvis then calls the Colonel who says, 'Don't worry boy, everything's going to be all right.'

"I think Elvis shies away from the public because he's afraid. Not because he's afraid of being mobbed, but because he's afraid of showing himself. Therefore, he thinks that every time he gets out he has to put on a great big show.

"When not on the set, the boys stay up there together in Elvis' suite, hiding away from the world. The boys go down to the lobby in shifts and take in all the action, then come back and tell Elvis what's happening.

"The gang is always trying to catch me at something. They're constantly asking me who I go out with, what I do, and why they never see me out. Then they report to Elvis.

"The boys carry attach� cases. It's like big businessmen wearing velours and Levi's. Except their breif cases are full of nonsense. Playing cards, Pepsis movie magazines, aspirin--articles that don't mean a thing. They sit around on the set all day, with little or nothing to do, yet they get these very important looks on their faces.

"Elvis has this big, black Rolls Royce, not because he digs it, not because he looks at the wood and says, "Oh yes, look at this,' the way a conoisseur would--but because he thinks you're supposed to have a Rolls if you're important. They park it outside the stage door.

"All the boys run around after work (carrying those attach� cases) with very authoritative looks on their faces. Some pile into the Rolls; others follow it up in Cadillacs or Continentals or whatever they happen to be driving that day. They sit and wait as if they were waiting for the Shah of Iran or Queen Elizabeth.

"Elvis parades out and gets in the back of the Rolls with comrades on either side. And they ride off in this caravan with still another look on their faces--like 'We have arrived!' The whole thing is like a satire on a singing star.

"Elvis adores making grand entrances, even onto the sound stage or from his dressing room. He's very narcissistic. He wears brightly colored shirts (I've never seen him in a coat and tie), unbuttoned low to show his chest. He doesn't have to play the prima donna with us. We are here merely to do a job, to work and make a living. One afternoon in particular, he came out in his yellow shirt and acted as if the whole world was waiting for him. We were just waiting to go home.

"And he's always competing with the leading ladies. He doesn't seem to want you to get serious with your work because he knows you're better trained than he. So he likes to break up all the time and throw the scene. He doesn't concentrate on what he's doing. He acts as though he cares, but he doesn't.

"Like his veneer of politeness," Marianna went on to explain. "Elvis is always going Yes, sir and No, sir, Yes ma'am and No, ma'am. He pretends to be humble, but I'm not sure he is. Underneath it all, there seems to be a lot of resentment and defensiveness and hostility.

"I also find Elvis to be non-professional. I never care about anybody turning up late. However, it's very difficult to work with people when they're not trying and not doing what they have to do. But the apathy on the set is quite discouraging.

"But Elvis is a show business phonomenon. He's a business commodity. Somewhere between LA and NY he sells a lot of records.

"Elvis does have a bag of tricks. Even if they're old, though. He has this physical thing-- this jumpy kind of thing-- that's often mistaked for something great coming across on the screen. At first glance you might think that it's warmth or depth. But it's not. It's some sort of nervous tic which, I think, is a result of surpressing impulses and having them come out physically.

"His eyes are always darting about. Very quickly. That's why I think Elvis is much like an animal. He reminds me of a kitten.

"Elvis has changed his image a lot. Remember when he was younger and really wild? That was great! But then he calmed down and got very GI and supposedly became very mature.

"I loved him when he was wild and crazy. Now it's like he's sold out to the enemy. Personally, I think the Colonel made the decision.

"I told Elvis I was in the audience in Los Angeles when he gave the concert during which he jumped on the RCA Victor dog. Remember? He did bumps and grinds. I asked him why he did it and what was he thinking. He said he didn't remember but laughed and said, 'The police almost got me that time.'

"Elvis doesn't talk about the things that are important to him. His mother or Priscilla. (Priscilla Beaulieu is the girl he met while stationed in Germany. Since, she's been a permanent house guest at Graceland in Memphis and the Bel Air mansion.) He never discusses what things mean to him. He speaks only of little things that don't matter. Like that fact that he once went on an all-pink kick. He wore nothing but pink and bought a bunch of pink cars.

"He says he reads a lot, but I don't know whether he does or not. I asked him if he was familiar with Catcher In The Rye and other well known books, but he didn't seem to have any knowledge of them.

"I asked Elvis if he'd like to do a play, to which he replied, 'I wouldn't want to learn all those words.' When I asked him how he spends his money, he told me that his father took care of that. I asked him if he had ever flown any girls around from place to place, and he said, 'I've been known to do that.'

"Elvis is not really interested in other people or their lives. He's too self-conscious and too self-involved. He thinks though that other people are very aware of him and he has to guard himself from them.

"I asked Elvis why he never went out. He answered, 'Because I get mobbed.'" A loud, unmistakably Marianna Hill-laugh came over the wire and she added, "Maybe he would-but not by me!"

From the Los Angeles Times (September 27, 1966)
Marianna Hill Puts Accent on Acting by Hal Humphrey

A pretty face and a fancy figure won't take a girl very far in Hollywood anymore. When Marianna Hill discovered these things were considered standard equipment, she became an expert at accents -- self taught. At least she says she's an expert, and boasts a full repertoire from Arab to Zulu, or anyway from British to Yugoslavian.

Marianna has been a Greek in a Perry Mason show, an Irish lass with Dr. Kildare and a Sicilian for Run For Your Life. In Hollywood, of course, it isn't too difficult to fool a producer. Most of them think the chief difference between an Apache Indian and an Apache from Paris is a feather and a horizintal-striped shirt.

"I was interviewed for the part of a German girl in Hogan's Heroes and pretended I was German and still spoke with an accent," Marianna reports. "Well I had them convinced I was German, and would have had the part except they wanted a blonde. I didn't want to bleach my hair for two days' work."

Mariana, who is of English extraction, stumbled on to her facility for accents by accident when she was 19. She was attending a Hollywood costume party dressed as a Spanish belle, complete with mantilla. "A producer introduced himself to me, then asked if I was really Spanish, and I found myself answering him with a Spanish accent so thick that I had trouble understanding," Marianna recalls. "He said he'd been looking for someone to play a Spanish type in the CBS daytime serial, For Better or Worse. When I read the part for the next day, my accent still fooled him and I got the job."

Easier To Work: From that day Marianna experimented with all kinds of foreign accents and decided it was easier to work with an accent because, as she put it, you don't have to deal with yourself. So convincingly did she lay on her Spanish accent that it wasn't long before Marianna was getting fan mail from adoring viewers wanting to know what part of Spain she hailed from. One viewer wrote, "If you could talk English, you'd be a big star."

The only research Marianna does for her various accents is listening. She has a library of records by the late French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, and when she can't find the right recordings, she goes restaurant hopping.

"Too much research confuses me," says Marianna. "When I did the Greek girl on Perry Mason, I went to a Greek restaurant and talked with the owner. People love to talk. I asked him to tell me about Greece, and in no time I had the rythm and the accent. It just comes easy for me."

She doesn't clutter up her mind by learning any of these languages. Marianna speaks household Spanish which she picked up in Majorca where her father, a contractor, took the Hill family on one of his construction projects. Aside from Spanish, however, everything else is just accent.

Plays a Psychiatrist: "I was a little worried for a while that I might never get another part calling for straight English, but I've played a psychiatrist in a new Star Trek coming up, and also a kind of Cleopatra in this week's Batman episodes. "They didn't want me for an accent on either show," added Marianna, flattered and surprised. If the truth be known, this probably was because in neither case the directors didn't know what a Cleopatra or a space accent should sound like, and there is some doubt that Marianna could have found an Egyptian or space restaurant. "I'd rather stay out of restaurants anyway," she says, "because I eat too much, especially if I'm not working. That's when I get fat and mixed up."

What does Marianna believe to be her best accent? The answer is French. "I feel more French," she says.