Nita Talbot

Nita Talbot, born Anita Sokol on August 8, 1930, in New York City, is an American actress of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. She made her Broadway appearances between 1951 and 1969, with credits including the comedy Uncle Willie, The Fifth Season, Never Say Die, and the production Zelda.

Talbot's screen career began in 1949 when she appeared as a model in It's a Great Feeling, followed by a role in Bright Leaf in 1950. Over the following decades she accumulated a wide range of film credits, among them This Could Be the Night (1957), I Married a Woman (1958), Who's Got the Action? (1962), A Very Special Favor (1965), Girl Happy (1965), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Day of the Locust (1975), Serial (1980), Night Shift (1982), Chained Heat (1983), Fraternity Vacation (1985), and Puppet Master II (1990).

Television became a particularly active arena for Talbot throughout her career. She played Mabel Spooner opposite Larry Blyden in Joe and Mabel in 1956, and took on the role of con-woman Blondie Collins during the second season of The Thin Man in 1958–59. That same period saw her appear in a season-four episode of Gunsmoke, a first-season episode of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, and the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Pint-Sized Client" in 1958. She appeared alongside Jack Kelly in the third-season Maverick episode "Easy Mark" in 1959, and returned to that series for the third-season episode "The Resurrection of Joe November" with James Garner in 1960. Additional television appearances included the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Maria" in 1961, the role of Girl-Friday Dora Miles on The Jim Backus Show, and a recurring presence on series such as Man Against Crime, Bourbon Street Beat — where she played Lusti Weather across four episodes — Mannix, and Supertrain. She also appeared in the Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "The Werewolf" and in a second-season episode of Columbo in 1973.

Her most prominent television role came through Hogan's Heroes, in which she appeared in seven episodes between 1966 and 1971 as Marya, a "White Russian" spy. The recurring role earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1968, specifically for the episode "The Hostage." In 1971, she was cast as talent agent Maggie Prescott in the CBS pilot for Funny Face, starring Sandy Duncan, but was dropped when the network revised the format before the series went to air that autumn.

Talbot also maintained a long-running presence in daytime television. She held roles on both Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital, the latter of which featured her as Delfina from 1981 to 1983 and again in 1992 — a character identified as an old friend of Tiffany Hill who takes on the task of designing Luke and Laura's wedding. She also appeared as snooty socialite Judy Evans in Here We Go Again in 1973 and as Rose opposite Bill Daily in Starting from Scratch in 1988. Her final acting credit came in 1997, when she provided the voice of Anastasia Hardy, mother of Felicia Hardy, in the animated series Spider-Man.

In her personal life, Talbot was married twice. Her first marriage, to actor Don Gordon, lasted from September 7, 1954, to April 11, 1958. She subsequently married actor Thomas A. Geas on August 13, 1961; that marriage ended in divorce in 1964. She has one daughter, Nicole Andrea Geas, born in Los Angeles on May 28, 1962.