Rant #2,320: Stand Pat

Yesterday, we talked about the life of Beverley Owen, the first Marilyn on the classic TV show, "The Munsters."

Well, how about the actress that followed her into the role, the comely Pat Priest?

No, she has not died, thank goodness. She is alive and well and will be celebrating her 83rd birthday this year.

Priest will always be known as the longest-lasting Marilyn, the beautiful counterpoint to the rest of the Munster family's ghastliness.

As an adult watching the show, I have found her to have been a beautiful woman, and her portrayal of Marilyn was a bit more mature than that of Owen.

I think the producers knew that fact, and while Owen seemed to be a high school girl, Priest appeared to be a college coed.

Anyway, Priest has had an interesting, under-the-radar life since "The Munsters" ended, but her back story is pretty interesting.

She was born in Utah, but grew up around Washington, D.C., as her mother was the U.S. treasurer in the early 1960s, so her mom's signature was on all the paper money produced during that time.

As she grew up, Priest became something of a high society debutante, appeared in numerous local TV and stage productions, and her look gravitated her to modeling, which brought her to Los Angeles.

Over a period of a few years, she became something of a bathing suit pinup girl, posing for hundreds, if not thousands of photographs in bikinis and one-piece suits.

She became a cheesecake darling, but never ventured off that course for anything lower than that.

When Owen left "The Munsters" after just 13 episodes, the producers looked for a replacement actress who would seamlessly fill the role without too much disturbance, and Priest was it.

Her role, compared to that of the other cast members, was relatively minor, so Priest eased into the role with nary a blip, but again, as an adult, the producers kind of saw that they couldn't paint this particular Marilyn as simply a nice-looking young girl, and if you notice, her role was a bit more expanded than the role was with Owen, with a couple of episodes centering on her and her non-existent love life.

She continued to pose in swimsuits, but now, with her newfound fame, she posed in swimsuits to promote the revved up Munster Coach.

Anyway, when the show ended abruptly in 1966, Priest got something of a reprieve, as she was married and had become pregnant and would not have been able to fulfill her obligations to the role if the show had come back as had originally been planned.

In fact, another actress had already been chosen for the role, as Debbie Watson played Marilyn in "Munster, Go Home!" a theatrical movie which was supposed to usher in the series' third season, which was never to be.

After "The Munsters," Priest raised her family and acted sporadically. She had one very significant role on the classic TV sitcom "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in that series' seventh season in 1976.

She played Lila, the even-prettier-than-Marilyn Munster and more mature sister to Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens' character, who relocated to Minneapolis. Nivens was nice looking, but simply could not compete with her sister, who she was always in competition with in getting and winning the interests of the opposite sex.

Priest also appeared in a few films during the period after 'The Munsters," including "Easy Come, Easy Go" with Elvis Presley and the exploitation film "The Amazing Two-Headed Transplant," and she did do lots of TV, including roles on "Bewitched" and "Perry Mason."

She married twice, had two sons, and by the 1980s, had retired from show business.

In recent years, she has been treated for lymphoma, and is currently in remission.

With the improvement in her health, beginning about 20 years ago, Priest began appearing at numerous nostalgia conventions, often times with Butch "Eddie Munster" Patrick.

And she keeps going well into her 80s, which is a good thing.

Priest was never a major actress on the Hollywood scene, but as Marilyn in "The Munsters," she is forever etched in stone as that character, and her performance in the role has been seen for the past 50-plus years in reruns of the show.

From debutante to swimsuit model to Marilyn Munster, Priest had an interesting career, and happily, she is still around to talk about it.