Kipp Hamilton was an American actress. She was the sister of producer Joe Hamilton

Joe Hamilton (producer)

Joseph Henry Hamilton was an American television producer and actor.Beginning his career as a comedian, Hamilton was spotted by actress Carol Burnett. He worked with her on the short-lived CBS variety show The Entertainers and her long-running eponymous series as executive producer and composer of...

 and the sister-in-law

Sister-in-law

A sister-in-law is the sister of one's spouse, the wife of one's sibling, or sometimes the wife of one's spouse's sibling...

 of Carol Burnett

Carol Burnett

Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...

.

Career

Born Rita Marie Hamilton in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, Hamilton was a beauty pageant contestant winning the title of "Miss Optometry" in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 in March 1953. In October 1955, she was named "Deb Star of 1955" along with Cathy Crosby, Anita Ekberg

Anita Ekberg

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg is a Swedish model, actress and cult sex symbol. She is best known for her role as Sylvia in the 1960 Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita which features the legendary scene of her cavorting in Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni.-Biography:Ekberg was born in...

, Lilian Montevecchi, Jody Lawrence, Mara Corday

Mara Corday

Mara Corday is a showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and a 1950s cult figure....

, Lori Nelson

Lori Nelson

Lori Nelson is an American actress born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 15, 1933. She began as a performer, dancing at the young age of 4, as well as winning a Little Miss America title. Many of her early auditions were unsuccessful. However, in 1952, she made it into her first role as Marjie...

, Tracey Morgan, Marisa Pavan

Marisa Pavan

Marisa Pavan is an Italian-born actress who first became famous as the twin sister to movie star Pier Angeli before achieving movie stardom on her own...

, and Gloria Thomas. With little acting experience, she managed to make her debut in the 1955 movie, Good Morning Miss Dove

Good Morning Miss Dove

Good Morning, Miss Dove is a 1955 film which tells the sentimental story of a beloved schoolteacher who reflects back on her life and former students when she is hospitalized...

, playing Jincey Baker.

Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Hamilton would go on to land roles on shows like 77 Sunset Strip

77 Sunset Strip

77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....

, The Texan

The Texan (TV series)

The Texan is a Western television series starring popular B movie star Rory Calhoun. It aired on the CBS television network from 1958-1960.-Production notes:...

, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E, and continued modeling for many contemporary magazines. In 1965, she landed her most notable acting role as Pleasure O' Riley in Bewitched

Bewitched

Bewitched is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1972, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Dick Sargent , Agnes Moorehead, and David White. The show is about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to lead the life of a typical suburban...

. The following year, Hamilton appeared in the Japanese Kaiju

Kaiju

is a Japanese word that means "strange beast," but often translated in English as "monster". Specifically, it is used to refer to a genre of tokusatsu entertainment....

 movie, War of the Gargantuas

War of the Gargantuas

The War of the Gargantuas, released in Japan as , is a 1966 Kaiju film, sequel to Frankenstein vs. Baragon.It introduces two giant, hairy humanoids called Gargantuas, which spawned from the discarded cells of Frankenstein's monster from the previous film and are described as brothers...

. She was recommended for the part by her brother Joe. The director auditioned her, and she was hired for the part of a singer in the film. After filming, War of the Gargantuas, she appeared onscreen for the last time in an episode of The Virginian

The Virginian (TV series)

The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...

.

Personal life and death

Hamilton dated Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

, actors Eric Fleming

Eric Fleming

Eric Fleming was an American actor, known primarily for his role as Gil Favor in the long running CBS television series Rawhide.-Early life:...

 and Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson (actor)

Chris Robinson is an actor who played Rick Webber #2 on General Hospital...

. She was also linked to screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

/producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 Sy Bartlett

Sy Bartlett

Sy Bartlett was an American author and screenwriter/producer of Hollywood films. Born Sacha Baraniev in Ukraine, he immigrated to the United States at the age of four and adopted the name Sidney Bartlett....

 and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Hamilton married director David Geisel with whom she had a daughter, Marie, in 1963. The couple divorced in October 1965. In February 1968, Hamilton married Beverly Hills lawyer Donald Thorman Rosenfeld. Together they had a daughter, Dana, later that same year.

Hamilton died on January 29, 1981 in Los Angeles, California from unknown causes.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1950	Our Very Own Our Very Own (1950 film) Our Very Own is a 1950 American drama film directed by David Miller. The screenplay by F. Hugh Herbert focuses on a teenaged girl who learns she was adopted as an infant.-Plot:...	Gwendolyn	Credited as Rita Hamilton
1955	Good Morning, Miss Dove	Virginia "Jincey" Baker
1955–1957	The 20th Century Fox Hour The 20th Century Fox Hour The 20th Century Fox Hour is an American drama anthology series televised in the United States on CBS from 1955 to 1957. Some of the shows in this series were restored, remastered and shown on the Fox Movie Channel in 2002 under the title Hour of Stars...	Susie Hagget Christina Bradley	Episodes: "Christopher Bean" "The Marriage Broker"
1956	Bigger Than Life Bigger Than Life Bigger Than Life is an American film made in 1956 directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, about a school teacher and family man whose life spins out of control upon becoming addicted to cortisone. The film co-stars Barbara Rush as his wife and...	Pat Wade
1958	Perry Mason Perry Mason (TV series) Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...	Elaine Barton	Episode: "The Case of the Cautious Coquette"
1958	Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is the title used for two syndicated television series that followed the adventures of fictional private detective Mike Hammer...	Katie O'Donnell	Episode: "Dead Men Don't Dream"
1958	Meet McGraw	Helen Maddon	Episode: "The Setup"
1958	Richard Diamond, Private Detective	Yvette Greener	Episode: "One Foot in the Grave"
1959	The Lineup The Lineup (TV series) The Lineup is an American police drama which aired on CBS radio from 1950 to 1953 and on CBS television from 1954 to 1960, possibly in response to NBC's hit Dragnet....		Episode: "The Murdered Blonde Case"
1959	Never So Few Never So Few Never So Few 1959 CinemaScope war film directed by John Sturges and starring Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Charles Bronson, Dean Jones and Steve McQueen with uncredited roles by renowned Asian actors Mako, George Takei and James Hong. The script was loosely based on an actual OSS...	Margaret Fitch	Alternative title: Campaign Burma
1959	77 Sunset Strip 77 Sunset Strip 77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....	Lili	Episode: "Vacation with Pay"
1959–1960	The Texan The Texan (TV series) The Texan is a Western television series starring popular B movie star Rory Calhoun. It aired on the CBS television network from 1958-1960.-Production notes:...	Steve	5 episodes
1960	The Unforgiven The Unforgiven (1960 film) The Unforgiven is a 1960 American western film filmed in Durango, Mexico released in 1960. The film was directed by John Huston and starred Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Charles Bickford and Lillian Gish...	Georgia Rawlins
1960	Rawhide Rawhide (TV series) Rawhide is an American Western series that aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights, from January 9, 1959 to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965 until January 4, 1966, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes...	Shezoe	Episode: "Incident of the Dancing Death"
1961	Westinghouse Playhouse Westinghouse playhouse Westinghouse Playhouse is an American sitcom that aired from January to July 1961 on NBC. Starring Nanette Fabray, the series was also known as The Nanette Fabray Show, Westinghouse Playhouse Starring Nanette Fabray and Wendell Corey, and ran under the title Yes, Yes Nanette in...	Sylvia Morrow	Episode: "I Seen the Saw"
1965	Bewitched Bewitched Bewitched is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1972, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Dick Sargent , Agnes Moorehead, and David White. The show is about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to lead the life of a typical suburban...	Priscilla "Pleasure" O'Reilly	Episode: "Pleasure O'Reilly"
1965	The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement...	Lavinia Brown	Episode: "The Girls of Nazarone Affair"
1965	Harlow Harlow (film) Harlow is a biographical film about the life of film star Jean Harlow. It stars Carroll Baker in the title role. It was released in 1965 by Paramount Pictures, shortly after another film with the same title and subject...	Marie Tanner	Scenes deleted
1965	Burke's Law Burke's Law Burke's Law is a detective series that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965 and was revived on CBS in the 1990s. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire captain of Los Angeles police homicide division, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud...	Silkie	Episode: "Steam Heat"
1965	The Wild Wild West The Wild Wild West The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969....	Cluny Ormont	Episode: "The Night of the Glowing Corpse"
1965	The Smothers Brothers Show The Smothers Brothers Show The Smothers Brothers Show is an American fantasy sitcom featuring the Smothers Brothers that aired on CBS on Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET from September 17, 1965 to September 9, 1966, co-sponsored by Alberto-Culver's VO5 hairdressing products and American Tobacco...	Danielle	Episode: "Boys Will Be Playboys"
1966	War of the Gargantuas War of the Gargantuas The War of the Gargantuas, released in Japan as , is a 1966 Kaiju film, sequel to Frankenstein vs. Baragon.It introduces two giant, hairy humanoids called Gargantuas, which spawned from the discarded cells of Frankenstein's monster from the previous film and are described as brothers...	Singer
1966	My Three Sons My Three Sons My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS...	Maxine	Episode: "Call Her Max"
1967	Family Affair Family Affair Family Affair is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from September 12, 1966 to September 9, 1971. The series explored the trials of well-to-do civil engineer and bachelor Bill Davis as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his luxury New York City apartment. Davis' traditional...	Meg	Episode: "Fancy Free"
1967	The Pruitts of Southampton The Pruitts of Southampton The Pruitts of Southampton was a situation comedy that aired during the 1966-67 season on the ABC network. The show was based on the novel House Party by Patrick Dennis....	Greta	Episode: "Goddess of Love"
1967	Dragnet	Jane Altman	Episode: "The Bank Jobs"
1967	The Virginian The Virginian (TV series) The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...	Gloria	Episode: "The Fortress"

External links