It pays to be connected, and to grow up in Hollywood knowing how the showbiz game is played. Mary Mitchel started by changing her last name from Dingman (such a shame; such a good name!), and attended UCLA. When she started getting some stage roles, she grabbed an agent and made her way into TV and movies, appeared in episodes of Leave It to Beaver in 1961, and Bachelor Father and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in 1962. She also had a part as Karen Baldwin in the movie Panic in Year Zero! (1962), directed by and starring Ray Milland and Frankie Avalon. Now here’s where the whole “pays to be connected” thing comes in… While Mary was still in college, she made friends with a fellow student, one Mr. Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola, who would eventually go on to win 48 awards (including five Oscars) and 54 nominations, wrote a movie called Dementia 13 that he also planned to direct. He hired Mary to play the part of Kane in the horror/thriller—and that’s how you get a Coppola film on your resume. Mary went on to play Shirley in A Swingin’ Summer (1965) with Raquel Welch; Emily in The Girls on the Beach (1965) featuring The Crickets, The Beach Boys, and Lesley Gore singing on screen; and Ann in Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told(1967) with Lon Chaney Jr. When the on-screen credits dried up, she kicked off a career as a script supervisor, helped along by Coppola once again, who hired her to watch the words for his blockbuster movie Dracula(1992) with Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. Mary also did it for The Mask of Zorro (1998) with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and for Scary Movie 4 (2006) with Anna Faris. Here’s to making the right friends in college!
