Midge Ware

A pretty brunette leading lady who had her heyday in the early days of television, she was born Muriel Florence Bendelson (nicknamed 'Midge') in New York's Bronx. Midge came to the screen after extensive work as a photographer's model, appearing in fashion ads and on the cover of more than a hundred popular magazines, including Esquire. In 1953, she was named "the girl with the trimmest torso" and selected from 5000 applicants as 'Miss No-Cal' to promote a high profile beverage company on billboards and in printed media (No-Cal specialised in producing carbonated, sugar-free, zero-calorie soft drinks). Midge had already been snapped up by Universal-International two years earlier and was cast in a few films, but her total screen time amounted to little more than background eye candy. Her sole featured performance for the studio was in The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), a swashbuckler set in medieval Tangiers, now chiefly remembered for its star (Tony Curtis, as an Arabian prince) utter