Susan Oliver (February 131932—May 101990) was an Emmy-nominated
American actress, television director and a record-setting aviatrix.
Early life and family
A native of New York City, Susan Oliver was born Charlotte Gercke, the daughter
of journalist George Gercke and astrology practitioner Ruth Hale Oliver, who divorced when
Charlotte was still a child.
At the end of World War II, George Gercke joined the United States Information Agency and in 1946 was posted to Japan as a supervisor overseeing news dissemination and instruction in democratic institutions during the
U. S. occupation. While living with her father, Charlotte studied at
Tokyo International College in 1948-49 and developed a lifelong interest in Japanese society and its absorption of American pop culture.
In 1977, twenty eight years after her early experiences in Japan, she wrote and directed Cowboysan, a short film which
presents the fantasy scenario of a Japanese actor and actress playing leads in an American western.
Upon coming back from Japan in June 1949, Charlotte joined her mother in Southern
California, where Ruth Hale Oliver was in the process of becoming a well-known Hollywood astrologer.
New York-based actress during 1955-1958
Surrounded by the trappings of show business, Charlotte made a decision to embark upon a career as an actress and chose the
stage name Susan Oliver. By September 1949, using her new name, she returned to the East Coast to begin drama studies at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College, followed by professional
training at the Neighborhood Playhouse 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 playing a supporting role in the July 311955 episode of the live drama series Goodyear TV Playhouse, and
quickly progressed to leading parts in other Golden Age of TV shows.
1957 was a banner year for Susan, including Broadway, numerous TV shows and a
starring role in a movie. She began the year with an important ingenue part,
as the daughter of an 18th century Manhattan family, in
her first Broadway play, Small War on Murray Hill, a Robert E. Sherwood comedy
about the intrigues surrounding the visit in September 1776, at the start of the Revolutionary War, of the British commander
General Howe (Leo Genn) to the home of
Susan's family whose putative "loyalty" to
King George is assumed to be beyond reproach. The play's opening night
at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre was on January
31957 and, 12 performances later, closing night was January
12.
The play's disappointingly short run was immediately followed by meaty roles in live TV plays on Kaiser Aluminum Hour,
The United States Steel Hour and Matinee Theater. Susan then
went to Hollywood, where she appeared in the November 141957 episode of Climax!,
one of the few live drama series based on the West Coast, as well as in
a number of filmed shows, including the October 301957
Wagon Train and "Country Cousin", a memorable installment of Father Knows Best (broadcast on March 51958), in which she was the titular relative of the show's family, the Andersons.
Motion picture debut
In July 1957 Susan was chosen for the title role in her first motion picture The Green-Eyed Blonde, a low-budget
independent melodrama released by Warner Brothers in December on the bottom half of a double bill. The film was scripted by renowned
blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, and
credited to "front" Sally Stubblefield.
Despite the alluring title and exploitative publicity stills designed to capitalize on Susan's attractiveness, the storyline
was raw social protest mixed with soap opera, portraying
outcast teenage girls in reform school, banding together to secretly shelter one of the
girls' baby. Susan played Phyllis, the tough veteran inmate considered the unofficial leader of the group. The downbeat ending
had the baby being discovered and removed, followed by a riot which ends with Phyllis' death. Ironically, The Green-Eyed
Blonde, which in black-and-white is incapable of conveying the descriptive promise of the title, would turn out to be the
only motion picture on which Susan Oliver received first billing.
At the close of the year, Susan returned to New York, appearing in Robert Alan
Aurthur's "The Thundering Wave", the December 121957
broadcast of the prestigious live drama series Playhouse 90. Her performance in the
John Frankenheimer-directed teleplay was well-received and she was invited to
Playhouse 90 two more times, March 261959 and
January 211960.
As the next year began, Susan continued to be a part of the Golden Age of TV
Drama, acting in the February 261958 episode of
Kraft Television Theatre and "The Woman Who Turned to Salt", the June 161958 installment of Suspicion, an hour-long suspense anthology series produced by Alfred Hitchcock, who directed a single episode. Susan's entry, directed by Robert Stevens, also starred Michael Rennie along with
Hitchcock's daughter, Patricia.
In mid-1958, Susan began rehearsals for a co-starring role in Patate, her second Broadway play. The melancholy comedy,
written by renowned French playwright Marcel Achard,
played to sold-out theaters in Paris upon its premiere in 1957. Adapted for
American audiences by Irwin Shaw, Patate (which in French means "spud", but
can also mean "chump") paired Susan with veteran
leading men Tom Ewell (in the title role) and Lee Bowman.
The play opened at Henry Miller's Theatre on October
281958 and closed on November 1, its 7-performance run
being even shorter than that of Small War on Murray Hill. Nevertheless, Patate won Susan a Theatre World Award for "outstanding breakout performance". It also turned out to be her last
Broadway appearance.
Permanent move to the West Coast in 1959
Noted for her striking good looks, the blonde actress spent the remainder of her career in Hollywood, going on to play in more
than one hundred television shows, five made-for-TV movies, as well as twelve
additional theatrical features. She appeared in three more episodes of Wagon Train,
four episodes of The Virginian, three episodes each of
Adventures in Paradise, Route
66 and Dr. Kildare, as well as "Never Wave Goodbye", a critically-praised
October 8–October 151963
two-part episode of The Fugitive.
She was fourth-billed in her second theatrical feature, 1959's The Gene Krupa Story. The film gave her the meaty
femme fatale role of Dorissa Dinell, a beautiful big-band singer who seduces
up-and-coming drum virtuoso Gene Krupa (1909-1973), played by Sal
Mineo, from the faithful girl who truly loves him (Susan Kohner) into a high life of
partying and marijuana smoking. The fictional Dinell was based on a number of women in
Krupa's life, but reviewers primarily noted that Susan Oliver had the film's juiciest dialogue—tempting Krupa to try the "weed",
she whispers, "...put your miseries out to pasture, Gino" and when he's arrested for possession, she abandons him with the line,
"...now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a town I'd better get out of".
Of the ten players listed in the opening credits of her next movie, the 1960 Elizabeth
Taylor vehicle BUtterfield 8, Susan was ninth, the lowest billing of her
career. As Norma, a self-assured young woman, to whom the secondary male lead Steve (Eddie Fisher) proposes after realizing the pointlessness of carrying a torch for Taylor's
character, Susan's plain-spoken, plain-dressed personality was a total opposite of her previous characterization as the
hypnotically enticing and alluring Dorissa Dinell. In this relatively minor supporting role, she shared only one brief scene with
Elizabeth Taylor in which they exchanged no dialogue, and her makeup and hairstyle were apparently designed to seem rather
non-competitively down-to-earth.
The subsequent three-year period between 1960 and 1963 saw Susan Oliver tackle a busy schedule of over thirty guest star
appearances in primetime network series as well as a fourth feature film assignment, which cast her in the role of psychiatric
nurse Cathy Clark, one of the mental-health-care professionals depicted in Warner Brothers
1963 multi-character hospital melodrama The Caretakers. Robert Stack, Polly Bergen and Joan
Crawford were top-billed, along with two stars of the studio's 1960-62 TV detective series Surfside 6, Diane McBain and Van
Williams. In the film's tangential plotline, however, Williams' doctor character is drawn to Susan, as evidenced by their
only personal scene together, a brief dinner sequence. The Caretakers' opening credits list fourteen players, with Susan's
name appearing last, directly behind Robert Vaughn. The mitigating factor is that each of
those last two names is alone on the screen, giving them special prominence. In contrast, the end credits show a cameo-shaped
close-up of the face of each cast member, in ascending order of prominence. In this definitive list, Susan's face and name are
followed by those of eight other performers, thus effectively consigning her to another ninth billing.
Co-starring with Charles Bronson in Guns of Diablo
At the end of 1963, Susan filmed a guest-starring spot on the hour-long ABC western The Travels
of Jaimie McPheeters, which featured 12-year-old Kurt Russell in the title role.
The 26-episode, plotwise-unfinished series about a westward-bound wagon train, originally focused on the relationship between the
boy and his free-spirited Scottish physician father (Dan
O'Herlihy). The 13th episode, however, introduced the charismatic new wagonmaster Linc Murdock, played by Charles Bronson who, along with Russell's Jaimie, became the focus of the remaining storylines.
"The Day of the Reckoning", shown on March 151964 as the
show's final installment, presented Susan as Maria, Linc Murdock's long-lost former love, whose star-crossed romance became a
touching subplot shown in flashback. Maria had long black hair (a
rarity for Susan) and a vague Latino accent. Even though the series' previous 25 episodes were
filmed in black-and-white, the 52-minute finale, while not providing an ultimate resolution to the westward journey, was viewed
by the producers as having at least a made-for-TV movie potential. With an eye towards expanding it, the filming was done on
color stock and additional scenes were lensed to bring the running time to 75 minutes, the pre-commercial length of a 90-minute
TV "movie of the week". Entitled Guns of Diablo the "movie" has a cast composed of
familiar TV faces from the 1960s and further betrays its origins by including the prominent
commercial break fade-ins and outs typical of TV product from that era.
By January 1965, the film, with Bronson billed first, Susan second and Kurt Russell third above
the title, already had showings in West German cinemas and was later released to theaters
in other parts of Europe as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America to capitalize on Bronson's eventual world-wide
popularity. With an eye towards continental audiences, the additional scenes included an unusually torrid (by 1964 standards)
display of passion between Susan and Bronson, including a striking image in which, following lovemaking, both are laying on the
grass by a riverbank, ostensibly nude, with only strategically-placed tree limbs providing censorship.
Three movies and a memorable guest shot on Andy Griffith
In addition to appearing in six TV shows in 1964, Susan had major roles in three features—Looking
for Love, The Disorderly Orderly and, most prominently,
Your Cheatin' Heart, in which she was second-billed as Audrey Williams, wife
of country music legend Hank Williams, portrayed by
George Hamilton. Hamilton, along with a number of other guest stars, also popped
up in a cameo appearance in Looking for Love, a Connie Francis vehicle, with Susan
in support as Connie's friend.
The Frank Tashlin-directed Disorderly Orderly was another entry in the
then-popular Jerry Lewis theatrical series. Amidst the wild slapstick, Susan was cast in an
oddly serious role as a beautiful former cheerleader from Jerry's high school days who, after having been used and exploited by
men, attempted suicide and wound up in the medical institution where Jerry is the titular character. Jerry has never gotten over
his lovesickness for her, and finding out that she is destitute, works overtime to pay for her stay. Unaware of these
circumstances, she expresses revulsion when, in his fumbling eagerness to please her, he innocently manages to crawl under her
hospital bed, only to be discovered and denounced as an apparent peeping tom. As a basically
unsympathetic, neurotic and ultimately pitiable character, Susan brought a note of
pathos to the otherwise knockabout comedy, but some reviewers noted that she seemed jarringly out
of place with the rest of the proceedings.
One of Susan's 1964 TV appearances was an infrequent outing on a sitcom. As in The Disorderly Orderly, her handful of
comedy acting turns were played relatively straight, including what some fans consider as the most memorable episode of
CBS' top-rated The Andy Griffith Show,
"Prisoner of Love". The storyline plays out almost entirely in the holding cell area of "Mayberry" town jail, as Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney (Don Knotts) succumb
to the feminine wiles of their new occupant behind bars and make fools of themselves (especially, of course, Barney) catering to
her needs and whims. The enticing prisoner, whose name never comes up in conversation, was arrested by the state police for
"suspected grand larceny—jewel thief" and held for a single night in Mayberry's lock-up. During her brief stay, she almost
exchanges a kiss with Andy and is almost allowed to escape by the naive Barney. The following morning, leaving with the state
police, she is wistful, yet still seems prepared to ply her charms on the handsome young deputy escorting her.
The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Invaders, Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and
Night Gallery
Genre fans consider Susan's appearance in the March
251960, episode of The Twilight Zone as
one of her most emblematic. In the
Rod Serling-scripted "People Are Alike All
Over", the last of three entries helmed for the series by veteran movie director Mitchell Leisen, Roddy McDowall stars as Sam Conrad, an
astronaut who lands on Mars, which he finds to be inhabited by a handsome, highly-intelligent,
seemingly-human race. The only female Martian he has the opportunity to befriend is the beautiful Teenya who evokes all the
attributes that allow him to feel secure and safe—warmth, compassion, desire and vulnerability but, at the despondent climax, is
reduced to a mournfully silent observer when the superior beings place the Earthman in a zoo-like
enclosure for Martian public display as an example of a lower interplanetary species.
Four years later Susan was cast in a storyline which evoked similar themes, "The
Cage", the unsold 1964 pilot episode of Star Trek. In what
may be the iconic role of her career, she portrays Vina, the lone survivor of a
long-ago crash landing on the distant planet Talos IV, whose idealized image becomes the
irresistible fulfillment of love for Captain Christopher Pike
(Jeffrey Hunter). Although the network executives saw no fault with the ensemble cast,
"The Cage" is known to have been deemed "too cerebral" and, in a rare move, NBC asked for a revised pilot, made a year later with
William Shatner as Captain Kirk.
Seen ten weeks after Star Trek's September premiere, the November
17–November 241966 two-part episode "The Menagerie" incorporated, in re-edited form, about 80 percent of "The Cage"'s footage. "The
Menagerie" was well-received by the science-fiction community and garnered a Hugo Award for
dramatic presentation, although Susan Oliver and Jeffrey Hunter were not recalled to film any additional revised scenes.
Twenty-two years later, less than two years before Susan's death (Jeffrey Hunter died in 1969), "The Cage" was finally telecast
to a new generation of fans as a 1988 syndicated special, hosted by Gene Roddenberry.
Finally, in the end-credit still images seen in early episodes of Star Trek, fans also take note of a striking visual of
Susan as the archetypal green-skinned "Orion Slave Girl". It is her portrayal that
created a standard for other actresses in this type of Star Trek role.
Remaining with the genre, Susan was seen in two episodes of Quinn Martin's
Larry Cohen-created alien-impostors-on-Earth series, The
Invaders, "The Ivy Curtain" (March 211967) and
"Inquisition" (March 261968)[1], as well as playing the unreliable associate of dwarf-like recurring villain
mastermind Miguelito Loveless (Michael Dunn) in "The Night Dr. Loveless Died", the
September 291967 episode of The Wild Wild West. She also appeared in non-genre episodes of Thriller ("Choose a Victim", January 241961, directed by Richard Carlson, the star of a number of 1950s
sci-fi films, such It Came from Outer Space) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (in the title role of "Annabel", November 11962, scripted by Psycho's Robert Bloch from the novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by another actor, Paul Henreid,
best-remembered as Victor Laszlo in 1942's Casablanca).
In a brief footnote, twelve years after her Twilight Zone performance, Susan was seen in one of the stories on the
January 51972 episode of the Rod Serling-hosted
Night Gallery. In the 15-minute ghost tale "The Tune in Dan's Cafe", she is the
unhappily-married wife of Pernell Roberts, as the couple experiences an emotional
epiphany, triggered by the single song
emanating from a cafeteria jukebox.
Final theatrical films
Susan Oliver spent most of 1966 in the continuing role of the tragic Ann Howard on ABC's prime-time serial Peyton
Place, and in 1967 had her most sexually-provocative role in one of the first movies to portray the
then-newly-emerging counterculture, The Love-Ins.
In the independently-produced film, Richard Todd starred as a Timothy Leary-like professor who promotes himself into an LSD-advocating media star. He lures Susan's character into his hallucinatory world,
impregnates and rebuffs her, causing her to suffer a breakdown. In response, her former lover, underground publisher James MacArthur, assassinates the
demagogue at one of his mass rallies. Susan's most memorable scene depicts her LSD "trip" in
which she visualizes herself as "Alice in Wonderland", vigorously
executing go-go gyrations in a skimpy outfit, while moving her head to toss her long blond hair front and back and side to side.
At the scene's abrupt conclusion, the image disintegrates as she tears off the remnants of her clothing. The sensational nature
of the film caused it to be banned in the United Kingdom.
Susan co-starred in three medium- to low-budget features which saw release in 1968-69. She was one of two female leads in
A Man Called Gannon, a western with
Anthony Franciosa, which was a little-noticed remake of the 1955 Kirk Douglas vehicle Man Without a Star. It received spotty local
distribution at the end of 1968 and into 1969.
The remaining two films, Change of Mind and The
Monitors may be considered science fiction, although neither fits into the traditional definition of the genre.
Change of Mind was filmed in Toronto by Robert Stevens, who had directed Susan 11 years earlier in the episode of Suspicion. In
the storyline, she plays the racially-torn wife of a district attorney whose memory, at the point of his death from cancer, is
transplanted into the brain of a just-deceased African-American (Raymond St. Jacques). The newly-reborn individual finds a streak of rejectionist racism in all the
people he knew, including his own mother. Determined to re-establish himself, he returns to the D.A.'s office and unmasks the
racist sheriff (Leslie Nielsen) who pinned the sensational murder of his own black
mistress on an innocent black victim. Despite her still-festering bias, Susan, the wife, now comes to appreciate her husband, in
his new body, as the righteous man she originally married. Despite the recently-found freedom of cinematic subject matter, the
specter of implied miscegenation was still reflected in the prejudices of the period, thus
consigning Mind to exploitation grindhouses upon its release on
October 11969.
Monitors, the last of the three titles, was released a week later, on October
81969. The independently-made, poorly-distributed satire was filmed in Chicago by The Second City troupe and depicted
derby-wearing, slogan-chanting aliens who pacify Earth "for its own good" by negating human emotions and turning America into a
passive nation, which spends its time watching brainwashed celebrities appear in TV ads designed to perpetuate the regime.
Guy Stockwell and Susan starred as the leaders of an opposition underground dedicated to
the overthrow of the ostensibly benevolent alien dictatorship. The numerous familiar faces in the film included Sherry Jackson, Larry Storch, Avery Schreiber, Keenan Wynn, Ed
Begley and Peter Boyle, with "alien TV" cameo appearances by Alan Arkin, Adam Arkin, Xavier
Cugat, Stubby Kaye, Jackie Vernon and even the
then-media celebrity, gravelly-voiced Senator Everett Dirksen, who died a month before
the film's release. These efforts represented Susan's final burst of filmmaking activity.
Carter's Army and moving from acting to directing
At the start of the following decade, Susan appeared in the first of her five made-for-TV-movies, all of which placed her in
supporting roles. Carter's Army, co-scripted by Aaron Spelling, premiered January 271970 as one of the entries on ABC's Tuesday night 90-minute
Movie of the Week. Susan, as the sole female member of the cast, appears 32 minutes into the film in a 10-minute role as
Anna, a war widow in 1944 Germany, helping captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racially-insensitive Southerner, and his
all-black platoon capture a vital roadway over a dam. Following her controversial turn in Change of Mind, Susan in
Carter's Army again (briefly) raises the flag of "forbidden" romance as Anna kisses the second-in-command,
African-American lieutenant Wallace (Robert Hooks). Michael Weldon in his Psychotronic
Movie Guide write-up of the film's video version, Black Brigade, credits Susan with "TV's first interracial kiss".
Third-billed in Carter's Army (after Boyd and Hooks), a year later Susan fell to sixth (after Gene Barry, Lloyd Bridges, Diane
Baker, Joseph Cotten and Sidney Blackmer)
in her second made-for-TV film, NBC's Do You Take This Stranger?. The two-hour
identity-switch suspenser, broadcast January 181971, gave Susan
three scenes, but left most of the dramatics to the other cast members.
By the late 1970s, with acting assignments becoming scarcer, Susan turned to part-time directing, helming several TV episodes,
including the October 251982 installment of M*A*S*H and the December 41983
entry of one of its sequel series, Trapper John, M.D., whose title character
was her former Night Gallery co-star Pernell Roberts. During 1975-76 she was a regular cast member of the soap opera
Days of Our Lives and received her only Emmy nomination (for "Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress") in the 3-hour October 251976 NBC made-for-TV movie,
Amelia Earhart. Playing Amelia's (Susan Clark) friend and mentor, aviatrix Neta Snook (born 1896), was a
natural for Susan, a genuine flying enthusiast who piloted her own aircraft. The two were further connected by a
near-birthdate—"Snookie" (as she is called in the film), 80 years old at the time of production, was born on February 14 to Susan's February 13. Neta Snook, who ultimately
continued past her 95th birthday (and Susan's own death in May 1990), died on March
231991, ironically outliving Susan by ten-and-a-half months.
Susan's final three theatrical features were dispersed between 1974 and 1979. In the first, 1974's Ginger in the Morning, she appeared with another rarely-seen black hairdo (apparently not a
wig, since her hair stylist received a separate credit). Monte Markham was billed first
and Susan second, but audiences first saw her 45 minutes into the 90-minute film, which gave its real star fourth billing: "and
Sissy Spacek as Ginger". Susan, playing a feisty southern-accented divorcee, was
well-received in her few scenes, but the talky film had the look and feel of a filmed stage play.
Three years later, Susan had a supporting role in her penultimate theatrical movie, an obscure Spanish-made item entitled Nido de
viudas, which was barely shown in Los Angeles in December 1977 as
Widow's Nest. Despite a cast which included Oscar
winners Patricia Neal and Lila Kedrova, the film
quickly disappeared and has remained elusive.
From actor to aviator
After surviving a 1966 plane crash which almost took her life, Susan co-piloted her Piper Comanche (a different aircraft from the one shown in the photo to the right) to victory in
1970 in the 2760-mile transcontinental race known as the "Powder Puff Derby", which
resulted in her being named Pilot of the Year. In 1967 she became the first woman to fly a single-engined aircraft solo from
New York City across the Atlantic Ocean as part of
her attempt to fly to Moscow. Her odyssey ended in Denmark after
the government of the Soviet Union denied her permission to enter its air space. Susan
wrote about her aviation exploits and philosophy of life in an autobiography published in 1983 as . There has been a continuing specialized demand for the
long-out-of-print book, and used copies typically are quoted at over $100 on Amazon.com.
At the end of the 1970s, Susan appeared in her last theatrically-released motion picture.
Fittingly, it was a reunion with her old friend Jerry Lewis in his self-directed comeback
vehicle, the hardly-released Hardly Working, in which she was second-billed as
Jerry's patient, long-suffering sister. Following the pattern of her earlier dramatic turn in The Disorderly Orderly, this
role was also a straight one, but Susan was singled out in a couple of reviews as the
better part of an unhappy comedy which sat on the shelf for over two years before receiving a perfunctory release in 1980-81.
Final decade
Susan continued to act through the 1980s, playing strong supporting roles in her final two films, Tomorrow's Child and
International Airport, both TV movies made for
ABC. Child, broadcast on March
221982, was the second of two consecutive TV films about the then-sensational topic of
surrogate motherhood (the first one, CBS' The Gift of Life was seen on March 16). Airport, shown on May 251985,
was an all-star unsold pilot integrating multiple
stories and characters into a plot-driven mix of suspense and danger at a giant airport. Produced by Aaron Spelling, it had most of the multi-star-multi-plot elements typical of his successful shows
Fantasy Island and The Love Boat,
which had already hosted Susan in its January 241981
episode.
In Susan's last fully active year, she also appeared in the February 211985 episode of Magnum, P.I. and two episodes of Murder, She Wrote, March 31 and December 1. She was seen in the February 111986 installment of Spenser: For Hire and the February 121987 episode of Simon and
Simon, in which her entire appearance consists of an oddly abrupt, seemingly heavily edited 50-second scene in which
her character charges into a hotel room and delivers an angry outburst. In the scene she is almost unrecognizable, sporting what
appears to be an ill-fitting black wig. It may have been worn to mask the effects of chemotherapy and radiation, since the
following year, in her final two appearances in front of the camera, her hair has a shorter, flatter aspect.
The January 101988 episode of the NBC domestic drama Our House and the November 61988 episode of the syndicated horror anthology Freddy's Nightmares show Susan clearly ravaged by illness. In
the Nightmares hour-long entry "Judy Miller, Come on Down", she appears in the second half-hour as a mysteriously gloomy
cleaning maid who arrives at the young title character's home and eventually, in an anguished monologue, reveals herself to
"Judy" as seemingly her own gray-haired future self and warns her of dire events to come. In Susan's prophetic final scene, she
turns away from "Judy" and leaves the house, slowly walking and disappearing into the fog-shrouded darkness.
Death and uncertainty regarding year of birth
A heavy smoker, Susan Oliver died from lung cancer in Woodland Hills, California. Her age at death would appear to have been 58, but
in the city of her birth, The New York Times obituary stated that she was 61
years old [see discussion]. Virtually all older editions of printed reference works have perpetuated outdated
biographical details, giving her birth year as 1936 or 1937, although if the Times is correct, the actual year would have to be 1929. Ultimately, as of the 2000s, the
majority of biographical references have accepted 1932 as the most likely year. Additional details have been provided by the
passenger manifest of U.S.A.T. General Sultan, and
Swarthmore College registration records. The manifest listed Charlotte Gercke as departing Yokohama,
Japan on May 281949 and arriving in San Francisco on June 7. Her age on the manifest was given as
17, confirming the birth year as 1932. Swarthmore records indicate that a student named Susan Oliver, born February 131932, attended classes from September 1949 to May 1950.
See also
External links
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