Happy Birthday Jill St. John!!!

I find it so hard to believe actress Jill St. John is 70 today!


But I'd better, since she is only two years younger than my own mother, and was a child actress in the late 1940s.


Born Jill Arlyn Oppenheim in Los Angeles on 19 August 1940, she made an impact on me on 12-13 January 1966, when I first saw her in the pilot episode of Batman.  I was 6½ years old at the time, but the episode was a powerful one for me.

Jill St. John, circa 1958

Somehow, I ended up with a love affair that rivals that of mine with the City of Albany, NY (and that dates back to at least 1964)!  By the time I got interested in her again in 1981, she had done Diamonds Are Forever, and I was a student at Syracuse University.  I did research on her at Bird Library at the university, and learned a lot in the process, including the process of researching.


I do not have pictures of her posted all over the place.  Indeed, she has her own life, out West, while I reside in New York.  But the "pretty lady" is a real creative inspiration for me, and thinking of her has helped me through hard times, both in the 1980s and again in the early 2000s.  She has her own section in my Catwoman fan site as well.  And she is the inspiration for the Carrie Kelley Robin who is the focus of the planned fan series as well!!


Happy Birthday, Ms. St. John!!!  May you have many more!