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Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955 and actor, and Mega Genius^®

Lee Meriwether, one of the world’s most beautiful women, was crowned “Miss San Francisco,” “Miss California ,” and subsequently “Miss America 1955.”  She studied acting with the famed teacher Lee Strasburg, and became an accomplished actor in American motion pictures, live theater, and television.

Lee was the first women’s editor on the original Today Show television program and co-starred with Buddy Ebsen, as “Betty,” in the long-running 1970s television crime drama Barnaby Jones (CBS, 1973 - 1980), for which she was nominated for both the Golden Globe and The Emmy.

Lee has appeared on more than 100 different television shows, often in several episodes, including Star Trek; Mission: Impossible; The Philco Television Playhouse; The Munsters Today; Circus of the Stars; Match Game; Time Tunnel; The New Andy Griffith Show; The F.B.I.; 12 O’clock High; Dr. Kildare; and All My Children.

Lee played “Catwoman” in the 1966 film Batman, and has also appeared in such films as 4D Man; The Undefeated; and Angel in My Pocket.

She has also served as National Education Chairman of the American Cancer Society.

As a teenager, Lee attended George Washington High School with the soon-to-be famous singer Johnny Mathis, who remembers Lee – the soon-to-be internationally acclaimed beauty – as the girl he never saw without her hair in rollers.

Lee lives in Los Angeles.  Her hobby is collecting clear, pale pink, “Miss America” pattern Depression Glass.

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