Barbara Stuart

Barbara Stuart, born Barbara Ann McNeese on January 3, 1930, in Paris, Illinois, was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television. She died on May 15, 2011, at a nursing home in St. George, Utah, at the age of 81.

Stuart grew up in Hume, Illinois, and after completing high school pursued formal actor training at the Schuster-Martin School of Drama in Cincinnati. She subsequently relocated to New York City, where she studied under Uta Hagen and Stella Adler. Her Broadway work included an appearance in the musical Jumbo in 1935. She also performed in the national touring company of Sidney Kingsley's Lunatics and Lovers.

In the early 1960s, Stuart worked as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Her film credits include Marines, Let's Go (1961), Hellfighters (1968), Airplane! (1980), Bachelor Party (1984), and Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills (1997). On television, she held a recurring role as Bunny, Sergeant Carter's girlfriend, on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. In the early 1990s, she performed in dinner theaters.

In 1967, Stuart married actor Dick Gautier. Their honeymoon was cut short when she was hospitalized for a blood clot in her leg; the clot subsequently moved to her lung and she developed pneumonia, resulting in an eight-month hospitalization.