Career Highlights: The King's Pirate, The Secret of Lost Valley, Get Yourself a College Girl
First Major Screen Credit: Get Yourself a College Girl (1964)
Biography
Mississippi-born Mary Ann Mobley won the 1959 Miss America crown by singing a medley consisting of an aria from Madame Butterfly and the pop hit "There'll Be Some Changes Made." Within a year, Mary Ann was featured vocalist on the CBS TV variety series Be Our Guest; she then plunged into a series of youth-oriented theatrical films. Her movie leading men were an odd assortment, ranging from Elvis to Jerry Lewis. Far busier on TV than in films, Mary Ann was a guest on virtually every important prime-time dramatic series of the 1960s; she later played a recurring role on the ABC daytimer General Hospital, and in 1985 replaced Dixie Carter in the part of Conrad Bain's wife on the weekly sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. Trivia cultivators are fond of citing the two plum TV roles that Mary Ann was up for but didn't get; secret agent April Dancer on The Girl From UNCLE (she played the role in the pilot episode, but the series proper starred Stefanie Powers) and Batgirl-aka-Barbara Gordon on Batman (Yvonne Craig took over when Mary Ann fell ill). Mary Ann Mobley has long been married to actor/talkshow host Gary Collins. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Coincidentally, Mobley and Dixie Carter, who originated the role of Maggie on Diff'rent Strokes, worked together in an episode of Ms. Carter's later series, Designing Women, in which Mobley played Karen, a snide representative of the local historical society.
In an interview with a scuba diving magazine, she described herself as an "avid diver."