Cathy Downs doesn’t have the worst record—two Mystery Science Theater 3000s and one RiffTrax, so it could be worse. That’s not even just the Donald Pleasence situation, where he has a ton of movies in each but also did literally over a hundred movies. She had a hair over forty credits, including a decent amount of TV, and while there are one or two credits where you have to say that neither group has gotten to her yet, it’s not entirely the same as looking at her entire career and just kind of feeling sorry for her. She’s got a pretty good episode of Perry Mason and a thriller with Lucille Ball, and that can’t be said of just anyone.
Downs got her start as a model. Two of her first three movies were Betty Grable vehicles wherein Downs played characters listed as something that sounds like a beauty pageant winner. (The third was State Fair, where she was “Girl on Carousel.”) She would go on to be in that 1949 Life magazine image where the careers ranged from “not much” to “actually just Marilyn Monroe.” She spent most of her career as a minor starlet, which honestly is what leads to The Amazing Colossal Man if you want my opinion.
Honestly, though, it makes sense that she’d have been seen as a potential star on the rise. In 1946, she was in a role that should have been a breakout for her. In a way, she’s the actual title character. However, you spend so much of the movie thinking about the male characters and their dynamic that there’s no time for hers. When you think of My Darling Clementine, you don’t think of Downs as Clementine, do you? You think of the gunfight or Henry Fonda standing down Walter Brennan or, if you are me, the episode of M*A*S*H where the characters watch the movie themselves. Could you picture Clementine on a bet?
I have no idea what she did in the years between that Perry Mason and her death. My usual sources don’t say. Sometimes, you can piece things together and work out that someone ended up as a housewife; this is not one of those times. She was divorced. She appears to have had no biological children, only step-children. So she wasn’t taking it off to parent. Maybe she decided the jobs weren’t good enough and she quit to hold a day job. I genuinely don’t know.
It seems, in fact, that she was destitute. Her ex-husband was reaching out to set up a trust for her at the time she died. She was only fifty, and she died of cancer. She is now one of the performers who seem vaguely familiar and yet aren’t immediately known by most people. Even if you only know her from staring up Glenn Manning, who was fifty feet tall, at least you know her at all. Next time you watch My Darling Clementine, you might take a moment to remember Clementine herself.