Tina Carver

Smokyvoiced sultry Tina Carver began her career in the postwar stages of Germany and France Having married an Indiana academic who served the High Commission for Occupied Germany in a legal capacity her acting opportunities were confined to entertaining troops under the auspices of the Special Services Nonetheless she had both the looks and the talent to secure leads in quality plays like A Streetcar Named Desire and Miranda In 1953 she joined a theatrical ensemble in Bad Godesberg while her husband ran a drama workshop on the side However her marriage subsequently went on the rocks resulting in an acrimonious divorce and a return to the States Tinas screen career got off to a start with steady radio and television work in New York In 1954 she moved to California for guest spots on two fashionable crime shows The Whistler 1954 and The Lone Wolf 1954 This exposure resulted in several small supporting roles in feature films and she was eventually signed under contract by Columbia Her first role saw her thirdbilled as partnerincrime to a racketeer played by Pat OBrien in Inside Detroit 1956 an expose of corruption in the Auto Workers Union This solitary lead in what was a relatively decent minor film noir was unaccountably followed by a return to supporting roles in bottomofthebill secondraters like Uranium Boom 1956 and The Man Who Turned to Stone 1957 There was also an uncredited bit in the Agrade boxing drama The Harder They Fall 1956 starring Humphrey Bogart It begs the question who did Tina upset to drop from starlet to bit player within a year It got worse upon leaving Columbia Tina took another step down the ladder to Allied Artists where she was cast opposite Tod Andrews in the laughable creature feature From Hell It Came 1957 The monster in this typical 50s mutation by radiation offering was a walking tree stump created by Paul Blaisdell who later breathed life into various other beasts for Roger Corman While this film has since attained something of a cult following perhaps because it is so bad that it becomes enjoyable on a comedic level a contemporary reviewer allegedly wrote about From Hell it Came and to Hell it can go For the remaining four years of her short tenure in Hollywood Tina acted exclusively on the small screen guesting in a handful of popular TV shows like Perry Mason 1957 and Bronco 1958 In January 1958 her fiveyearold daughter Katherine was struck and killed by a car in the school zone where she was playing As a result of her ongoing grief over this tragic accident she lost interest in acting She passed away in 1982 after a short illness