Rant #2,001: I Call Your Name

On Wednesday, I did something I haven't done in a while, that is, take the day off from work because of sickness.

I went to the doctor, was diagnosed with an upper respiratory problem, was given two prescriptions for medicine, started taking them, and I feel much better today, and I am back at work, with today being the second day back.

On Wednesday, I went to the doctor in the mid-morning, finally got out of there and received my medicine by late morning, and then basically went home to vegetate.

But in the morning, before I had my doctor's appointment, I watched some TV that I usually don't have time to watch, and one of the shows was one of my favorites of all time, "Leave It To Beaver." That show has always clicked with me as a boy's eye view of the world, circa late 1950s to early 1960s, and I have seen every episode dozens of times, and still laugh out loud like I was watching the show for the first time.

Anyway, on the episode I watched was a guest star who actually was on the show off and on for about three years, a young, pretty actress by the name of Karen Sue Trent. She played Penny Woods, the perfect female foil for Beaver as he was getting older and starting to discover the opposite sex.

They both hated each other, said so to each others' faces, but secretly, they kind of liked each other.

Anyway, the Penny Woods character was an antagonist to the Beav, inciting him to do stupid things and behave stupidly in her presence.

She replaced Judi Weil, who played Beaver's first female antagonist, Judy Hensler, for a few seasons of the show, when the leading actors were young. I think they wanted a more "mature" antagonist, and Trent was it.

Although her role was featured in just 14 episodes, it was a pivotal one, as Theodore Cleaver morphed from a little boy to a young man in front of our eyes.

Jerry Mathers, as we all know, was the Beaver, and he has had an interesting career both inside and outside of show business, and you can easily check it out on Wikipedia or using any of the search engines you normally use.

But what ever happened to Karen Sue Trent?

When I was feeling better, I decided to do a search for her, and while I did not come up with much, what I came up with was very interesting indeed.

She was born March 14, 1948 in an undetermined location.

In 1954, at the age of six, she appeared in her first, and what appears to be her only film, "Garden of Eden."

This was an, at the time, notorious movie about naturists, or nudists. This was way before nudity was allowed in general movie releases, but at the time, there were plenty of these types of films being made, and evidently, shown somewhere throughout the country.

This one was all the more notorious because it was actually part of a famous court case which led to a law being written related to the use of nudity in movies. In Excelsior Pictures vs. the New York Board of Regents, the New York State Board of Appeals ruled that onscreen nudity was not obscene, and underground film producers used this case as an opening to include nudity in numerous films after that, although mainstream Hollywood did not necessarily jump on board with this until the late 1960s.

Anyway, in the film, Trent plays Joan Latimore, a young girl who enjoys playing with her friends in the nudist colony in the buff. It is her insistence to do so that allows her mother, Susan, played by Jamie O'Hara, to adopt the naturalist lifestyle after first being hesitant to do so.

Trent is seen from the top up in frontal scenes, and to this day she is the only child actress to have a major role in a naturist film.

Her "Leave It To Beaver" role came slightly later, and in the interim and afterward, Trent was on a slew of TV shows, including "Wagon Train," "Shirley Temple's Storybook," and "Death Valley Days."

But pretty much after "Beaver" went off the air in 1962 or so, Trent may have left the business, because after 1962, there is nothing that I could find that talked about what she did from 1962 to the present time.

By 1962, she was 14 years old, and presumably, if she did leave the business, she must have gone to high school and perhaps afterward, college.

Maybe she had another career, got married, started a family, raised children, and later, became a grandmother, but there is no record of her anywhere that I could find after 1962.

Really hunting for any information on her, I found one reference, that the referencer admitted could not be substantiated, that she worked as a topless dancer for a spell, but again, this may have been hearsay, and not truth.

There are plenty of photos of her as a kid, but I found two that said they were her as an adult, but again, this could have been her or another Karen Sue Trent, and actually, the photos looked like another actress with a similar name, Karen Black, so I won't post them here.

So at this point, I have hit a complete dead end.

Her name is not unique to her, and there are several Karen Sue Trents who are on the Internet. I read another reference to her where the referencer said he had called a few Karen Sue Trents in the Los Angeles phone book several years ago and came up completely empty in trying to find her.

So right now, Karen Sue Trent has vanished off the face of the earth, and maybe that was by design. Maybe she had had enough of the business, and had moved on with her life.

I would like to think that, but I am still wondering why there are no references to her at all after 1962.

Like I said, maybe she likes it that way, but unfortunately, it led me nowhere.

So when I see her again on "Leave It To Beaver," I will once again ask the question, "Whatever happened to her?" and I guess I will have to move on.

I wish I had the time to dig further on her, but unfortunately, I don't.

The interesting thing is that she will always be a young lady, etched in time on that timeless show, never to age, never to change.

I guess that is a "freeze-frame" moment lots of kid actors have to endure, and some do it pretty well, and some don't.

Karen Sue Trent? Who knows.

Have a good weekend. I will speak to you again on Monday.