Man From UNCLE # 20 Guest Star: Susan Oliver

- March 09, 2018

Susan Oliver (born Charlotte Gercke, February 13, 1932 – May 10, 1990) was an American actress, television director and aviator. Susan Oliver was born the daughter of George Gercke, journalist, and Ruth Hale Oliver, an astrology practitioner, in New York City in 1932. Her father was a political reporter and journalist for the New York World. Her parents divorced when she was still a child. In June 1949, Oliver joined her mother in Southern California, where Ruth was in the process of becoming a well known Hollywood astrologer. Oliver made a decision to embark upon a career as an actress and chose the stage name Susan Oliver.

By September 1949 and using her new name, Oliver returned to the East Coast to begin drama studies at Swarthmore College, followed by professional training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. After working in summer stock, regional theater and in unbilled bits in daytime and primetime TV shows and commercials, she made her first major television appearance in a supporting role in the July 31, 1955, episode of the live drama series Goodyear TV Playhouse, and quickly progressed to leading parts in other shows.

On April 6, 1960, the 28-year-old Oliver played a spoiled young runaway, Maggie Hamilton, in "The Maggie Hamilton Story" on NBC's Wagon Train. Flint McCullough, played by Robert Horton, searches for her so the wagon train can proceed on schedule. On November 9, 1960, she was cast as the lead guest star in "The Cathy Eckhart Story" on Wagon Train, with husband-and-wife actors John Larch and Vivi Janiss as Ben and Sarah Harness

Oliver was cast in episodes of Adventures in Paradise, Twilight Zone, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, The Naked City, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Burke's Law, The Fugitive, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Spy, The Virginian, and The Name of the Game. She made one appearance on The Andy Griffith Show and ABC's family western series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters. She also made two appearances in "The Invaders" (eps. "Inquisition" and "The Ivy Curtain"). Her most challenging role during this time was as the ambitious wife of doomed country music legend Hank Williams (George Hamilton) in Your Cheatin' Heart (1964). The same year she also starred opposite Jerry Lewis in The Disorderly Orderly, and also appeared in The Man from U.N.C.L.E (1965), and The Love-Ins (1967) with Richard Todd.

In 1967, piloting her own Aero Commander 200, she became the fourth woman to fly a single-engine aircraft solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the second to do it from New York City. Although she was attempting to fly to Moscow, her odyssey ended in Denmark after the government of the Soviet Union denied her permission to enter its air space. She wrote about her aviation exploits and philosophy of life in an autobiography published in 1983.

Oliver was diagnosed with colorectal cancer that later metastasized to her lungs and she died on May 10, 1990 at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

To read the complete Susan Oliver entry in the Wikipedia, click here.