Ina Balin

Ina Balin (November 12, 1937 – June 20, 1990) was an American actress on Broadway and in film.

Born Ina Rosenberg to a Jewish family^[1] in Brooklyn, New York City, Balin first appeared on television in the 1950s' Perry Como Show. She also did summer stock, which led to roles on Broadway, and in 1959, she won the "Theatre World Award" for her performance in the Broadway comedy A Majority of One. That same year, she landed her first film role in The Black Orchid, starring Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn. A year later, Balin was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress — Motion Picture for her performance opposite Paul Newman in From the Terrace. She also appeared in The Young Doctors.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she starred alongside many Hollywood notables, including Newman, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Lee Marvin, Stuart Whitman, Max von Sydow, John Wayne, Orson Welles, and Joanne Woodward. She had a secondary but major role in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told and she costarred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film Charro! Balin also guest-starred on dozens of television shows, including Bonanza; Battlestar Galactica; Get Smart; Ironside; Quincy, M.E.; and Magnum, P.I.

In 1970, Balin toured Vietnam with the USO on the first of many trips to the war-torn region. In 1975, she aided in the evacuation of orphans during the fall of Saigon; eventually, she adopted three of these orphaned children. In 1980, she played herself in a made-for-television movie based on these experiences, titled The Children of An Lac.^[2]

While working on The Children of An Lac, she became acquainted with Christy Marx, who at the time worked as a producer's liaison for various television programs. According to Marx, she used Balin's story as a basis for a character in the animated show Jem when she later became a writer. The character of Ba Nee is based on Balin's adopted daughter, Ba-Nhi. Ba Nee's obsession with and struggle to find her birth father are the focus of several episodes of Jem.

Ina Balin died in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 52 from pulmonary hypertension brought on by coronary heart disease.

A single parent, she was survived by her three children, Nguyet Baty, Ba-Nhi Mai, and Kim Thuy. The oldest of Ina's children, Ngyuet (who is part Black and part Vietnamese) has three children; one of them is named Ina.^[3]

References

External links

• Ina Balin at the Internet Movie Database
• Ina Balin at Allmovie

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