Audrey Long

Audrey Gwendoline Long (April 14, 1922 – September 19, 2014) was an American stage and screen actress of English descent. Born in Orlando, Florida, she was the first child of English parents; her father, Christopher Stanley Long, was an Episcopal minister and naturalized American citizen who served as a Navy chaplain, and her mother was Ellen Gwendoline Erskine. The family spent time in Hawaii, where Long's younger brother John Stanley Long was born. Her education took place at several institutions, including St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock, Virginia, Los Gatos High School in California, and Disputanta High School in Virginia. Before entering the acting profession, she worked as a model.

Long's screen career began in 1942 with two films: The Male Animal, in which she played a student, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which she appeared as a receptionist. In May 1943, she made her Broadway debut in the drama Sons and Soldiers, portraying the character Dora Applegate. She returned to film the following year, taking the female lead opposite John Wayne in Tall in the Saddle (1944). In 1945, she appeared in Wanderer of the Wasteland. Her work in 1947 included featured roles in two films noir, Desperate and Born to Kill. Long continued working in low-budget films from 1948 through 1951, appearing in six productions in 1948 alone. Her final film was Indian Uprising (1952), in which she played Norma Clemson, after which she retired from acting.

In January 1945, Long married Edward Rubin, a dialogue director; the marriage ended in divorce in 1951. On April 26, 1952, in California, she married Leslie Charteris, a British novelist best known for creating the character Simon Templar in the literary series The Saint, which was later adapted into a popular British television series in the 1960s. The couple traveled widely, and Charteris drew on their travel locations as settings for his Saint novels. They remained married for more than four decades until Charteris died in 1993. Long died on September 19, 2014, in Surrey, England. She was cremated, and her ashes were placed in an urn alongside those of her late husband, bearing the inscription "Love Never Dies."