Kathleen Hughes

Kathleen Hughes, born Elizabeth Margaret von Gerkan on November 14 1928 in Hollywood, California, grew up with show business in her blood—her uncle was the playwright F. Hugh Herbert—and caught the acting bug after watching a Donald O’Connor picture as a teenager. While studying at Los Angeles City College and UCLA she began reading for studio parts, and in 1948 Twentieth Century Fox signed her to a brief contract before Universal-International picked her up and put her into a rapid succession of supporting roles.

Between 1949 and 1953 Hughes appeared in more than a dozen features, including her debut in “Mother Is a Freshman,” collegiate comedies like “Mister 880,” and melodramas such as “Take Care of My Little Girl.” Universal liked her lithe, five-foot-seven frame and expressive green eyes for Technicolor and soon for the new 3-D process; in 1953 the studio loaned her to Universal’s sci-fi unit for “It Came from Outer Space,” whose memorable desert cave sequence turned her into an early-1950s scream-queen pin-up. The same year she played a scheming model in the noir thriller “The Glass Web,” followed by sword-and-sandal fantasy in “The Golden Blade” and cult favorites like “Cult of the Cobra” and “Three Bad Sisters.”

As big-budget roles grew scarcer for actresses of her type, Hughes shifted smoothly to television. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s she guest-starred on anthology staples “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” crime procedurals such as “Dragnet” and “Perry Mason,” westerns like “Wagon Train,” and even the primetime soap “Bracken’s World,” produced by her husband. She never abandoned the stage—her favorite assignment, she often said, was touring with the Broadway hit “The Seven Year Itch,” where playing opposite a live audience rekindled the thrill she had felt watching movies as a girl.

On July 25 1954 Hughes married writer-producer Stanley Rubin at her uncle’s home in Los Angeles; the couple had one daughter and three sons and remained together for nearly sixty years until Rubin’s death in 2014. Away from the camera she was known for a wry sense of humor about Hollywood and for loyally attending film-noir festivals, where audiences delighted in hearing behind-the-scenes anecdotes about oversized 3-D cameras and desert night shoots with Jack Arnold.

Hughes died in Los Angeles on May 19, 2025, aged ninety-six, leaving a legacy of Technicolor exotic adventures, crisp noir turns, and early science-fiction terror that continues to screen in repertory houses worldwide. Survived by her four children, she is remembered as one of the last living links to the moment when Hollywood experimented with 3-D, widescreen spectacle, and television all at once, and for proving that an actress could juggle B-picture thrills, prime-time drama, and domestic life with equal poise.