Karen Sharpe

Svelte and stunning Texas-born Karen Sharpe was put into ballet shoes as a youngster. Her initial excursion to California was, at age 12, with the interest of becoming a professional ice skater, but the lure of being a movie star intervened. Her training as a teenager in the theater paid off and, in 1952, she appeared in Stanley Kramer's production of The Sniper (1952), directed by Edward Dmytryk. Her role consisted solely of three lines delivered while sitting on a drugstore stool and ordering a cherry phosphate. Although she did not personally meet Kramer at the time, it would be a foreshadowing of a future lifelong relationship. In her salad days, she paid the rent and more as a billboard model and also graced such popular magazine covers as "Cosmopolitan" and "Pageant." On film, MGM featured her as Janice Rule's kid sister in Holiday for Sinners (1952), opposite William Campbell. Campbell went on to appear with her in other films as well, and they were paired as husband and wife i