Zell Barry, the “First Lady of Diving” who appeared on the TV show starring Lloyd Bridges Sea fishing She doubled for Sophia Loren and Carol Baker on the big screen, and she’s dead. She was 93 years old.
Barry died Monday at her home in Tillamook, Oregon, her granddaughter, Katherine Maloney, announced on Facebook.
In 1954, Barry, then 21 years old, set the women’s diving depth record of 209 feet, a feat she accomplished four months later on an episode of the NBC game show. You are betting your lifehosted by Groucho Marx.
“Well, I like you, Zel,” Marx said. “It must take a lot of courage to go that deep.” “I feel terrified when the barber puts my head in the sink for shampoo.”
In 1955 she made the cover Sports Illustrated – “Zale Parry, Girl Skin Diver” – and began working in television on the syndicated adventure show Sea Kingdomproduced by Jack Douglas. With her blue eyes and blonde hair, some thought she looked like Grace Kelly.
In the underwater scenes, Barry played Lauren in Greece Boy on a dolphin (1957); She played the wife of Dan Dailey’s character in Underwater warrior (1958), produced by Ivan Torres and filmed in Hawaii; She intervened on behalf of Baker The miracle (1959).
She played several characters, most of them damsels in distress, along with Bridges as former Navy diver Mike Nelson in the created film Tors. Sea fishinga popular syndicated show that ran for four seasons from 1958 to 1961.
“The series combined underwater action with one of the oldest themes of the environment and conservation,” wrote Brett Gilliam, author of the 1995 book. Deep Diving: An Advanced Guide to Physiology, Procedures, and Systems. “It gave Bridges his breakout role as Mike Nelson, the detective diver. Zell became the sex symbol everyone wanted to perform CPR on.”
Barry, one of seven children, was born in Milwaukee on March 19, 1933, and grew up about 30 miles outside the city near Lake Pewaukee. She said her father made the U.S. Olympic team as a track and field athlete.
“I learned to swim when I was very young,” she said. “As one of seven children, it was like swimming or being constantly dipped by your older brothers and sisters.”
Nicknamed Zelle (her first name at birth was Rosalia), she began performing with the Sam Howard Aqua Follies in 1947, touring during the summers and Easter holidays from school — “displaying swimsuits, delicate swimming and snorkeling to the music of the big band era, a tremendous show,” she notes — and in high school she was head of aqua ballet during her senior year.
In 1951, she and her family moved to California, and she took a job at Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica as a stenographer. She also taught water safety for the Red Cross, helped polio patients with their water exercises and met her future husband, Barry Bivins, who would go on to work in hyperbaric medicine.
In 1953, the couple helped launch the Underwater Scientific Research Foundation, which tested underwater equipment to be sold to consumers. Two years later, she became the third woman certified as an underwater instructor in Los Angeles County.
Barry said she attempted record diving in August 1954 “to prepare a technical paper on the subject of nitrogen narcosis because we couldn’t find enough on the subject. We wanted to give a good, true picture of what was going on. The event changed my life.”
“All it took was three miles off the shores of Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, with a slight afternoon cutoff and a dive to 209 feet on a sandy, undulating bottom with a strand of sea grass and a discarded Schlitz beer can… Since then, radio, television, newspapers and magazines have had agents calling in for interviews and fun game shows.”
She often showed off her skin diving skills and new equipment Sea Kingdom In a three-minute live clip that concludes each episode. She then took acting lessons with Anges Moorhead at Fox for a year, followed by a Theater Arts course at UCLA.
on Sea fishingalso helped with the technical aspects of the program and sometimes worked alongside Rico Browning – The Gills Man from Creature from the Black Lagoon – A recurring bad guy on the show.
Barry also worked on Peter Gunn, Wagon train and Journey to the bottom of the sea (where she played an amphibian), among other performances, and did many commercials before appearing in the 2006 family film Tillamook Gold Legendnear her house.
She was also one of the founders of the International Underwater Film Festival, which was held for 17 years until 1974; Served as President of the Underwater Photography Society; She was among the first inductees into the Submariners Hall of Fame in 2000; He co-authored the 2001 book Scuba America: The Human History of Diving.
In 2006, the Zale Parry Scholarship was established by the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences to support students pursuing careers in deep-sea exploration, marine conservation, hyperbaric medicine, and diving technology.
Donations in her memory may be made to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Zell Barry Scholarship.
Barry Bivins, whom she married in 1955, died in 1963. She was also married to Robert Newman.
When she was once asked by a film worker why anyone would engage in diving, she replied: “I’m here because I love what I do. Aquatics is my life. I’m never tired. At the end of the day, I feel relaxed and refreshed getting in and out of the sea, and I feel really showered and very clean. I’m very curious, and I follow my bliss. This is a very happy place to be.”
