- Born
- Died
- Birth nameArmelia Carol Ohmart
- Nickname
- Kariomar Sonne Traberth
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- She was one of a bevy of sexy blondes shuffled about in 50s films, thrust into the limelight by ambitious movie studios as possible contenders to Marilyn Monroe's uncooperative pedestal. Almost none of these ladies managed to even step up to the plate when it came to the powerful allure of "La Monroe" and starlet Carol Ohmart managed to be no different.
Armelia Carol Ohmart was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 3, 1927, the daughter of a dentist father (Thomas Carlyle Ohmart, a one-time actor) and an abusive Mormon mother (Armelia Merl Ohmart). Raised in Seattle and a baby contest winner as an infant, she was on stage from age 3 in a vaudeville act with her uncle. She then lived all over the place with her mother after her divorce from her father, attending high school at Lewis & Clark High in Spokane. A radio singer back in Salt Lake City, Carol won the "Miss Utah" title (then a brunette) at age 19, coming up fourth runner-up when she segued into the 1946 "Miss America" contest (came in 5th). The attention she received led to a modeling, commercial and magazine cover career.
In the early 1950s Carol found TV and commercial work and on stage on Broadway (in the ensemble of "Kismet" and also as Joan Diener's understudy) and summer stock. Paramount took interest after a talent agent caught her in "Kismet" and signed her in 1955, billing her, of course, as the "next Marilyn." But Carol came off more hardbitten and unsympathetic than the vulnerable, innocent sex goddess, and when the knockout blonde's first two movies The Scarlet Hour (1956) and The Wild Party (1956) tanked at the box office, she was written off in 1957. Only a few more film offers came her way, including director William Castle's gimmicky House on Haunted Hill (1959) (her best known); the campy horror Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told (1967); and her last, The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974). She had steadier work on TV with guest appearances on "Bat Masterson," "Perry Mason," "Get Smart," "Mannix" and "Barnaby Jones," but by 1974 she retired from the screen.
Carol wed three times. The first, to radio actor Ken Grayson, lasted two years before it was annulled. A second brief two-year marriage in 1956 was with cowboy actor Wayde Preston (ne William Erskine Strange), who starred in the rugged "Colt .45" TV western. In the late 1970s, she married a third time to a non-professional (fireman), which lasted. After a particularly depressing period dealing with medication addiction and disability, a recovered, spiritual-leaning Carol found a helpful avenue outside the Hollywood scene in the 1970s studying metaphysics, delving also in oil painting, gardening, poetry and writing. She died on New Year's Day, 2002, at age 74, in Colorado.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
- SpousesWilliam Traberth(1978 - January 1, 2002) (her death)Wayde Preston(November 22, 1956 - July 18, 1958) (divorced)Ken Grayson(August 17, 1949 - 1951) (annulled)
- She was Miss Utah of 1946.
- According to Laura Wagner, who wrote an article on Carol in "Films of the Golden Age", Issue #81, Summer 2015, Carol befriended Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, who promised her the prostitute role in From Here to Eternity (1953). However, he eventually gave it to Donna Reed, who went on to win a Supporting Actress Oscar.
- She was 4th runner up in the Miss America Contest (1946).
- Ohmart's best known role was that of Vincent Price's conniving, unfaithful wife in the original version of House on Haunted Hill. When the film's copyright was not properly renewed, it became a "public domain" title, meaning anyone could air or duplicate it without having to pay anything, thus making it one of the most widely seen of 1950s horror movies.
- She dyed her hair red and posed for artist Milton Caniff's character Copper Calhoon for the comic strip "Steve Canyon".
- When I left Hollywood back in the 1970s, I didn't want to slam the door and padlock it. I was happy there in the early years. I was a star and flamboyant. I was successful and popular. I left because I was tired and wanted to find me. I've spent a decade being a quiet, ordinary person. I've found my peace, my secret garden . . . My life is not serene and I'm healthy in body, mind and spirit. And my talents are actively at work in many areas. I've never, never reviled Hollywood. I love the people, the talents, the joy of making movies much too much.
- The Scarlet Hour (1956) - $500 /Weekly
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content