Diane McBain, whose quick rise to fame as a young Warner Bros. contract player in the early 1960s soon had her starring in the ABC series Surfside 6 and co-starring opposite Elvis Presley in 1966’s Spinout, died of liver cancer today at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.
She was 81. Her death was announced by her friend Michael Gregg Michaud. McBain and Michaud co-authored her 2014 memoir Famous Enough. “It is with great sadness that I report actress Diane McBain lost her battle with liver cancer and passed away on December 21, 2022,” Michaud wrote on social media.
Discovered by a talent scout while working as model, McBain signed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers Studios on her 18th birthday in 1959, according to Michaud.
That same year she made her TV debut in an episode of ABC’s Maverick starring James Garner. The following year she appeared in Vincent Sherman’s film Ice Palace starring Richard Burton, and was cast as yacht-owning socialite Daphne Dutton on ABC’s Surfside 6, a two-season crime series set in Miami Beach and starring Troy Donahue, Van Williams and Lee Patterson.
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