Lisa Seagram, Actress on ‘Batman’ and ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ Dies at 82
Actress Lisa Seagram, who appeared on such TV shows as Batman, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched and Burke’s Law in the 1960s, has died. She was 82.
Seagram died Feb. 1 at an assisted care facility in Burbank after a nine-year battle with dementia, her daughter Chela Fiorini told The Hollywood Reporter.
Seagram portrays Lila, the attractive red-headed accomplice of Milton Berle’s villainous Louie the Lilac, on the third season of ABC’s Batman. Earlier, she appeared as Edythe Brewster — the bride of Frank Wilcox’s oil baron John Brewster, the guy who made Jed (Buddy Ebsen) a millionaire — on CBS’ The Beverly Hillbillies.
Seagram also showed up on six episodes of ABC’s Burke’s Law, tried to seduce Darrin (Dick York) on an installment of ABC’s Bewitched and worked on such other series as My Three Sons, My Favorite Martian, The Double Life of Henry Phyfe, Perry Mason , McHale’s Navy, Honey West and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.
The daughter of a New York City police detective, she was born Ruth Browser in Brooklyn on July 7, 1936. She worked as a graphic artist and as a model in New York’s garment district before studying acting with Paul Mann, Herbert Berghof, Uta Hagen and Bill Hickey, then landed a small role in John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959).
Seagram walked into the office of Paramount studio head Martin Rackin without an appointment and left with a role as a college coed in Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961), starring Tommy Sands and Fabian. She then played Bob Hope’s French secretary in Bachelor in Paradise (1961) and a party guest in Come Blow Your Horn (1963), starring Frank Sinatra.
Her film résumé also included The Thrill of It All (1963), The Carpetbaggers (1964), A House Is Not a Home (1964), Caprice (1967), 2000 Years Later (1969) and several films made in Italy.
Working on The Beverly Hillbillies was “great fun,” she noted in Tom Lisanti’s book Glamor Girls of Sixties Hollywood. “Donna Douglas as Elly Mae was throwing animals at me all the time. I really conquered my Brooklyn accent on this because I had to be this haughty, high-class society woman. Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan were phenomenal. I had a ball working on this.”
Later, she worked in commercial real estate in Los Angeles and as an acting teacher in Hawaii.
Survivors include another daughter, Alisa, and grandchildren Jessica and Michael.
