| Cara Williams | |
|---|---|
Williams in 1960. |
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| Born | June 29, 1925 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
Cara Williams (born June 29, 1925) is an American film and television actress.
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Williams was born Bernice Kamiat in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Flora (née Schwartz) and Benjamin Kamiat, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Austria.[1] She began her screen acting career in 1941, and was initially billed as Bernice Kay. Williams earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination in 1959 for her role in the film, The Defiant Ones.
She starred opposite Harry Morgan in the CBS situation comedy Pete and Gladys (1960–62), and earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1962 for Best Actress in a Series. She later had her own CBS sitcom, The Cara Williams Show (1964–65), with costars Frank Aletter, previously the star of Bringing Up Buddy on CBS, and Jack Sheldon, later star of the short-lived 1966 series, Run, Buddy, Run, also on CBS.
On the series, Williams and Aletter played a married couple, Frank and Cara Bridges, who tried to keep their union secret because company policy did not permit employees to marry within the company they both worked for, called Fenwick Diversified Industries.
At work, Cara, who used her maiden name, Wilton, was a secretary who possessed a very unique filing system. The system was so complex that only she knew where to find the exact file needed. This trait made her a valuable commodity to her boss, Mr. Burkhardt (Paul Reed).
The series was created by Keefe Brasselle's Richelieu Productions, along with two other programs that season, The Reporter starring Harry Guardino and Gary Merrill and Paul Ford's sitcom The Baileys of Balboa. All three series were ordered by CBS president James T. Aubrey without formal pilot episodes (he was a close friend of Brasselle's), and all of them, including Cara's, were cancelled after Aubrey was fired from the network in February 1965.
In Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) she played a redheaded dancer who performed a notable number, declaring she did not like rock 'n' roll. She played James Cagney's girl friend in the musical comedy Never Steal Anything Small (1959) and even had a duet with Cagney. During the early to mid-1960s, CBS executives groomed Williams to be the next Lucille Ball, but these plans never materialized. After the demise of her show, she did guest roles on other shows, briefly appearing as a regular on Valerie Harper's CBS series Rhoda.
Williams married Alan Gray in 1945; the union produced a child, but ended after two years. Williams then married John Drew Barrymore (later the father of Drew Barrymore) in 1952. They divorced in 1959. Their son, John Blyth Barrymore, is a former actor. She is currently married to her third husband, Los Angeles real estate entrepreneur Asher Dann.