Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Jones spent the first half of the 1950s at the edge of other people's frames: a small part in House of Wax in 1953, another in The Big Heat the same year, Miss Finch in The Seven Year Itch in 1955. Then 1956 handed her two films that outlived almost everything else made that year, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the parts started getting bigger.

What she had was a face that read as knowing. Directors used her for the woman who has already understood the situation while everyone else is still catching up, which is why she works so well inside a paranoia picture, and it is what earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party in 1957. She won a Golden Globe as a new star for Marjorie Morningstar, and the film career ran on for another two decades: Elvis Presley's King Creole in 1958, Frank Sinatra in A Hole in the Head in 1959, the sprawling How the West Was Won in 1962.

Then 1964, and Morticia Addams, and a career permanently reorganised around two seasons of a black-and-white sitcom. The role followed her: she voiced Morticia again in Scooby-Doo crossovers in 1972. Everything after was guest work, which she did constantly and well. Marsha, Queen of Diamonds on Batman in 1966. Queen Hippolyta on Wonder Woman in 1975. Mrs. Moore in Roots in 1977. Fantasy Island in 1978. The latest dated credit here is the soap Capitol in 1982; she died the following year.