Sue Casey

Acting

Sue Casey

Born 1926-04-08 · Los Angeles, California, USA

While other actresses would have long given up a stalled career out of pure frustration after decades of mostly uncredited extra/bit parts and little reward, perennial starlet Sue Casey somehow found the stamina to maintain for six decades! In films from 1946, the voluptuous brunette, at most, became a campy vixen in a few 1960s "drive-in" bombs, yet has always held a remarkably appreciative outlook as to how things turned out. Successfully establishing herself as a wholesome commercial actress, she pitched everything from cereal to automobiles in over 200 assignments. Light TV guest parts also came her way in episodes of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957), The Baileys of Balboa (1964), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), The Farmer's Daughter (1963), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and Family Affair (1966), among others. As for the big screen, nothing changed. Obscure bit/extra parts continued with Bells Are Ringing (1960), The Ladies Man (1961), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), A New Kind of Love (1963) and The Carpetbaggers (1964). Finally, after nearly two decades of pursuing her dream in Hollywood, Casey nabbed a leading role! As bad girl "Vicky Lindsay" in what is arguably one of film's biggest "turkeys" of all time, The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965), she attained a notoriety that led to minor cult status. The film had a non-existent budget and was received poorly in every way, shape and form upon its initial release. Casey even had to do her own hair and makeup and was forced to pick out her vixen character's clothes from her own closet. The actors were never paid until the movie was sold years later to TV (retitled as "Monster from the Surf") and that was a mere pittance. Over the years, however, the movie has reportedly gained a cult following. Two other easily dismissed co-starring roles in unmemorable campy films followed. She played a hillbilly mom in the fugitive drama Swamp Country (1966) (which starred pearly-toothed pre-Carol Burnett hunk Lyle Waggoner) and a manipulative mom and art forger in Catalina Caper (1967) (which starred former Disney star Tommy Kirk after his fall from studio grace, and (again) Lyle Waggoner). In later years, she developed a successful real estate business. She found acting work (often without an agent) intermittently on film and TV. Featured in a couple of higher-scaled movie musicals -- as a lady attendant to Vanessa Redgrave's Queen Guinevere in Camelot (1967) and as one of John Mitchum's two wives in Paint Your Wagon (1969) -- her final film resume would add such films as The Main Event (1979), Evilspeak (1981), Whitesnake: Live... in the Still of the Night (2005) and A Very Brady Sequel (1996). In American Beauty (1999), an Oscar winner for "Best Picture" and "Best Actor", lead actress Annette Bening (a Best Actress nominee for the role), plays a desperate realtor trying to sell Casey's well-to-do character a house.

Acting credits

Rear Window poster
8.3

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Rear Window

1954

American Beauty poster
8.0

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

American Beauty

1999

Breakfast at Tiffany's poster
7.6

Holly Golightly is an eccentric New York City playgirl determined to marry a Brazilian millionaire. But when young writer Paul Varjak moves into her apartment building, her past threatens to get in their way.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

1961

An American in Paris poster
7.0

Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.

An American in Paris

1951

Paint Your Wagon poster
6.3

A Michigan farmer and a prospector form a partnership in the California gold country. Their adventures include buying and sharing a wife, hijacking a stage, kidnapping six prostitutes, and turning their mining camp into a boom town. Along the way there is plenty of drinking, gambling, and singing. They even find time to do some creative gold mining.

Paint Your Wagon

1969

We're Not Married! poster
5.9

A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later five couples learn they have never been legally married.

We're Not Married!

1952

Evilspeak poster
5.3

Bullied by classmates, a pudgy military-school student fights back by computer with the devil.

Evilspeak

1981

It's a Great Feeling poster
6.0

A waitress at the Warner Brothers commissary is anxious to break into pictures. She thinks her big break may have arrived when actors Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan agree to help her.

It's a Great Feeling

1949

Camelot poster
6.2

The plot of his illegitimate son Mordred to gain the throne, and Guinevere's growing attachment to Sir Lancelot, threatens to topple King Arthur and destroy his "round table" of knights.

Camelot

1967

Living It Up poster
6.5

Homer Flagg is a railroad worker in the small New Mexico town of Desert Hole. One day, he finds an abandoned automobile at an old atomic proving ground. His doctor and best friend, Steve Harris, diagnoses him with radiation poisoning and gives Homer three weeks to live. A big city reporter hears of Homer's plight and convinces her editor to provide an all-expenses paid trip to New York.

Living It Up

1954

A Very Brady Sequel poster
5.8

A man claiming to be Carol Brady's long-lost first husband, Roy Martin, shows up at the suburban Brady residence one evening. An impostor, the man is actually determined to steal the Bradys' familiar horse statue, a $20-million ancient Asian artifact.

A Very Brady Sequel

1996

The Ladies Man poster
6.3

After his girl leaves him for someone else, Herbert gets really depressed and starts searching for a job. He finally finds one in a big house which is inhabited by many, many women. Can he live in the same home with all these females?

The Ladies Man

1961

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty poster
6.8

Walter Mitty, a daydreaming writer with an overprotective mother, likes to imagine that he is a hero who experiences fantastic adventures. His dream becomes reality when he accidentally meets a mysterious woman who hands him a little black book. According to her, it contains the locations of the Dutch crown jewels hidden since World War II. Soon, Mitty finds himself in the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he has difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

1947

Road to Bali poster
6.2

Having to leave Melbourne in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals, two song-and-dance men sign on for work as divers. This takes them to an idyllic island on the way to Bali where they vie with each other for the favours of Princess Lala. The hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels which arouses the less romantic interest of some shady locals.

Road to Bali

1952

The Flame and the Arrow poster
6.3

Dardo, a Robin Hood-like figure, and his loyal followers use a Roman ruin in Medieval Lombardy as their headquarters as they conduct an insurgency against their Hessian conquerors.

The Flame and the Arrow

1950

The Merry Widow poster
6.3

Marshovia, a small European kingdom, is on the brink of bankruptcy but the country may be saved if the wealthy American Crystal Radek, widow of a Marshovian, can be convinced to part with her money and marry the king's nephew count Danilo. Arriving to Marshovia on a visit, Crystal Radek change places with her secretary Kitty. Following them to Paris, Danilo has a hard time wooing the widow after meeting an attractive young woman at a nightclub, the same Crystal Radek who presents herself as Fifi the chorus girl. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.

The Merry Widow

1952

The Main Event poster
5.3

A bankrupt entrepreneur attempts to recoup some of her losses by getting a washed-out boxer she picked up as a tax loss back into the ring — an idea her protégé isn't fond of.

The Main Event

1979

Annie Get Your Gun poster
6.7

Gunslinger Annie Oakley romances fellow sharpshooter Frank Butler as they travel with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Annie Get Your Gun

1950

The Las Vegas Story poster
6.0

When newlyweds visit Las Vegas, the wife's shady past comes to the surface.

The Las Vegas Story

1952

The Great Sinner poster
6.8

A young man succumbs to gambling fever.

The Great Sinner

1949

Hysterical poster
4.5

Frederic Lansing is a writer who hopes to find inspiration while vacationing in Hellview, Oregon; however, the lighthouse in which he's staying is haunted by the ghost of Venetia, who had killed herself 100 years ago and now wants to use Lansing as a vessel for her dead husband, Captain Howdy. When Howdy's ghost starts killing people, two bumbling scientists are brought in to investigate the history of the lighthouse and solve the case.

Hysterical

1982

A New Kind of Love poster
6.2

A down-and-out reporter and a fashion designer fall in love in Paris.

A New Kind of Love

1963

3 Ring Circus poster
5.6

Jerry and Pete are two friends with no money and are looking for a job. They finally find employment working in a circus, but Jerry has different dreams. He wants to become a clown.

3 Ring Circus

1954

Terror in the Sky poster
7.1

On a transcontinental flight, the flight crew suffer from food poisoning and become incapacitated. Now it's up to one of the passengers to safely land the plane.

Terror in the Sky

1971