Beach Life

Edna Skinner (May 23, 1921 – August 8, 2003, North Bend, Oregon) was an American film and television actress who embodied both Hollywood glamour and a rugged outdoor spirit across a multifaceted career spanning five decades. Born in Washington, D.C. and growing up in Fulton, New York, she got her industry start in local theatre plays, then studied acting at the prestigious New York Academy of Dramatic Arts and starred in the Broadway hit "Oklahoma!" Her film debut came in 1947's "Forever Amber" with Linda Darnell and Victor Mature, and she appeared in 1950s films like "My Sister Eileen" (1955), "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955), and "The Wyatt Earp Story" (1956), but her most famous role came in "Mister Ed" (1960–1963)—Kay Addison, the neighbor of Wilbur Post (Alan Young) who became the talking palomino's confidant and appeared for three full seasons until she was dropped from the show in Season Four shortly after her TV husband Larry Keating died. After retiring from show business in 1964, she became a champion fly fisher, winning a trophy in 1962 from the Newport Harbor Yacht Club for catching a 31-pound albacore (largest caught in 1961), wrote more than 280 articles for fishing magazines, and for her work with two fishing equipment companies, she and her companion of 40 years, photographer Jean Fish, amassed more than 450,000 miles traveling the country on fishing trips and industry shows. After retiring to the southern Oregon coast in the 1970s, the couple built a house shaped like a big boat on the bay and restored a pioneer-era store into a popular antique shop and cafe in nearby Lakeside. Edna lived an openly gay lifestyle with Jean Fish for 40 years, and both had led colorful lives and rewarding careers in everything from Hollywood movies to outdoor writing, gathering up innumerable interests and friends along the way before Edna passed from heart failure at age 82.

Allan Lane (born Harold Leonard Albershart, September 22, 1909 – October 27, 1973) kicked off his career at just 20 after Notre Dame athletics and theater, arriving in Hollywood in 1929 to play supporting roles in straight dramas and even appearing alongside Shirley Temple, Lucille Ball, and Barbara Stanwyck; his rugged handsomeness and athletic build led him to 1938's "The Law West of Tombstone," his first Western, and by 1940 he signed with Republic Pictures where he replaced Wild Bill Elliott as Red Ryder in 1946, then headlined 39 "Rocky Lane" B-Westerns from 1947–1953 with his horse Black Jack, becoming one of the most popular B-Western stars of the era while earning a "Rocky" nickname that spawned comic strips, toys, and "Rocky Lane Posse" patches; after his Western series ended in the early '50s he took smaller on-screen roles and guest spots on TV, but at age 52 he took what he considered a comedown job in 1961—the voice of the talking palomino Mister Ed on the hit CBS sitcom "Mister Ed" (1961–1966), refusing on-screen billing because he thought it beneath his former status as a Western lead; ironically, the show became his most famous role, watched by millions and earning him a posthumous 2003 TV Land Award, while his earlier Westerns remain cult classics among fans of the genre, and he passed away six weeks after being diagnosed with cancer at age 64.