Pamela Austin

Pamela Austin is an American retired actress born in Omaha, Nebraska, who built a career spanning Broadway, film, and television. Her father's Air Force service took the family to Europe during part of her childhood. She later studied dancing at Sacramento State College, and after relocating to Hollywood she found early professional work with the Tony Martin nightclub act.

Austin made her Broadway debut in 1958 in the revue La Plume de Ma Tante, for which the cast received a Tony Award Special Award in 1959. Her stage work preceded a busy screen career that included roles in two Elvis Presley films: Blue Hawaii in 1961, in which she played Selena Emerson, and Kissin' Cousins in 1964, in which she appeared as Selena Tatum. Additional film credits from the same period include The Chapman Report and Rome Adventure, both in 1962, Hootenanny Hoot in 1963, and The Caretakers and Critic's Choice, also in 1963.

Between 1964 and 1967, Austin became widely recognized as the "Dodge Rebellion Girl," appearing in approximately twenty television commercials and print advertisements for Dodge models including the Charger, Coronet, and Polara. Each spot placed her character in comic peril — threatened by sharks, falling from drawbridges, rooftops, and cargo planes — before she delivered the campaign's closing line: "The Dodge Rebellion wants you!" The series generated a three-page profile in TV Guide in the August 20–26, 1966 issue and produced numerous film and television offers. By 1968, Dodge replaced the campaign with a "Dodge Fever" concept featuring a different spokesperson, Joan Anita Parker.

In August 1967, Austin starred as Pauline in The Perils of Pauline, an adventure-comedy film drawn from the silent cliff-hanger serial. Promotional materials for the film directly referenced her Dodge commercials. The following year she appeared as a semi-regular during the first season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, contributing to comedy sketches, song-and-dance numbers, and pre-filmed segments that included an early music video for "Buy For Me The Rain" by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Her television work across the 1960s included episodes of Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip, Wagon Train, The Fugitive, The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, The Wild Wild West, The Virginian, and It Takes a Thief. Later credits include Columbo: Blueprint for Murder in 1972 and the television film Evil Roy Slade, also in 1972, in which she played Betsy Potter. Her final film role came in The Dressmaker in 1988, in which she appeared as a singer.

Austin married Charles W. Britt in Santa Clara, California, on October 27, 1963; the couple had one son, Beau C. Britt, born June 17, 1964, and later divorced. Her second marriage, to Hollywood press agent and studio executive Guy Franklin McElwaine, took place in Los Angeles on July 17, 1965, and ended in June 1967. She subsequently married Leopold S. Wyler in Los Angeles on January 9, 1974.