Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby; July 8, 1947)[1] is an American actress best known for her roles as Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969) and Jenny Meyer in Better Off Dead (1985).
Early life and film career
Darby was born Deborah Zerby in Los Angeles, California]], the daughter of professional dancers Inga (Wiere) and Jon Zerby (known professionally as the "Dancing Zerbys" or "Dancing Zerbies"). Her father nicknamed her "Derby", saying "I thought Derby Zerby would be a great stage name".[2] Her mother was from Budapest.[3]
She performed as a singer and dancer under the name "Derby Zerby".[4] Believing that she could not "hope for serious important roles in films with a name like "Derby Zerby", she renamed herself "Kim", because it was the name of a popular girl in her high school whom she admired, and "Darby", as a variation of "Derby".[5]
Darby began acting at age 15; her first appearance was as a dancer in the feature film version of the earlier New York City's Broadway theater musicale play Bye Bye Birdie (1963), about a budding rock and roll music phenomenon singing and guitar-playing star, (modeled on the real-life career of famous Elvis Presley (1939-1977), beginning seven years before in 1956, when he gained national fame). Her television work included, the two-decades long-running Western TV seriesGunsmoke of 1955-1975, (in the 1967 episodes "The Lure" and "Vengeance"); also another long-running Western, a Sunday evening prime-time staple of Bonanza of 1959-1973, (in its 1967 episode "The Sure Thing"); and as a young girl approaching adulthood on an all-child planet in the 1966-67 first-season episode of "Miri" of the original Star Trek TV series of 1966-1969.[6]
Among her many feature films is the one that she is most famous for in American and Hollywood motion pictures history, is that of co-starring with legendary John Wayne and Glen Campbell, in the Western classic True Grit (first version of 1969), in which she played "Mattie Ross", a precocious, unusually confident 14-year-old Arkansas frontier girl (when she was actually 21 years old), pursuing the murderer who killed her beloved father and his gang into the adjacent lawless frontier of the federal Indian Territory (future Oklahoma), in the mid-1870s. It was based on a popular Western novel, published in 1968, by author Charles Portis (1933-2020), The story saga was later remade as a second film, over 40 years later in 2010, with a slightly varied plot and twist on the epic, starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and introducing little Hailee Steinfeld as young Mattie Ross, (in her film debut).
Darby's 1960s television roles included two appearances on the NBC series Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus, including an appearance as Julie Dean in "To Lodge and Dislodge" (1963). She was cast as Heather Heatherton in the Wagon Train episode "The Story of Hector Heatherton" (1964) and as Judy Wheeler in "The Silent Dissuaders" (1965).
Darby was cast in an episode of the NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show ("'Tis Better Have Loved and Lost", 1965), and as Angel in the two-part Gunsmoke episode "Vengeance." She appeared in the episode "Faire Ladies of France" (1967) of the NBC western series The Road West starring Barry Sullivan and a Bonanza episode "A Sure Thing" (1967) as Trudy Loughlin, guest starring Tom Tully as Burt Loughlin, her father.[6] She appeared in another episode of Gunsmoke, "The Lure" (1967) as Carrie Neely.
Darby admitted her career declined after the 1970s, in part because she had a dependency on amphetamines.[10]
In 1990, she began to teach acting in the Los Angeles area and was an instructor in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1992 to 2009.[11] Darby also appeared in the 1999 The X-Files episode "Sein und Zeit" as a woman who confessed to the murder of her son, a boy who disappeared under circumstances similar to those being investigated by the lead characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.[6]
In 2014, she played Stacia Clairborne, a partially blind witness to a crime, in the episode "Prologue" of the show Perception.
Personal life
Darby has been married four times, including to Jack La Rue, Jr. and William Tennant.[citation needed] In 1968, she married James Stacy, with whom she had one child, Heather Elias, born in 1968.[8] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1969.[12][13] In 1970, she married James Westmoreland; the marriage ended in divorce after less than two months.[14][15][16][17][18][19]
