Betty Anne Rees, who played tough and not very nice women in The Unholy Scrolls And Sugar Hill, both 1970s offerings from B-movie mill American International Pictures, has died. She was 81 years old.
Rees died Monday at her home in Hemet, Calif., after a series of falls and a possible stroke, said her niece, Kathleen Loucks. The Hollywood Reporter. He was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the early 1990s.
The Ohio native played Janet Ingram, secretary to Fred MacMurray’s Steve Douglas, in the last of the episodes. My three sons‘ 12 seasons in 1971-72. (Abby Dalton was Janet in an episode three years earlier.)
In The Unholy Scrolls (1972), directed by Vernon Zimmerman, Rees played Mickey Martinez, a star of the Los Angeles Avengers roller derby team who doesn’t get along with popular new player Karen Walker (1970 Playboy Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings ).
The film, produced by Roger Corman and edited by Martin Scorsese, was rushed out to capitalize on the publicity generated by MGM’s big-budget roller derby film, Kansas City Bomberwith Raquel Welch.
Betty Anne Rees (left) and Claudia Jennings in 1972 The Unholy Scrolls.
Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Paul Maslansky’s cult film on blaxploitation Sugar Hill (1974) starred Marki Bey as Diana “Sugar” Hill, a woman who recruits a voodoo priestess (Zara Cully of The Jeffersons) to bring back long-dead African slaves to get revenge on the Southern mob boss (Robert Quarry) responsible for the death of her fiancé.
As Celeste, the racist girlfriend of the gangster, Rees fights in a bar with Sugar and (spoiler alert) gets carried away by the zombies at the end.
Elizabeth Anne Rees was born April 14, 1943 in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Her father, James, was a lawyer who owned racehorses and her mother, Margaret, was a housewife.
She graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1961 and attended the University of Miami before studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and appearing on daytime soap operas. General Hospital And The doctors. In New York, she coexisted with the future Benson star Caroline McWilliams, later wife of Michael Keaton.
Rees appeared in a 1966 episode of the ABC series Shanewith David Carradine, then appeared in two films released the following year, The cool ones And Prohibition.
Rees later appeared in other shows such as Adam-12, Medical Center, Mannix, Mod Squad, The FBI, Policewoman, CRUSH, The streets of San Francisco, Lou Grant, Barnabas Jones and, in 1978 for his last credit, The Incredible Hulk.
She later ran Gloria Marshall figurine salons, designed kitchens, and reportedly invented a wacky ’80s gift for bosses called the “executive teether.”
In addition to his niece, survivors include his sister,…
