Susan Oliver
Actor
Name at birth: Charlotte Gurcke
Susan Oliver played Vina, the damaged space ingenue in the two-part episode "The Menagerie" from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. (Her fantasy sequence as a green-skinned Orion slave girl became one of the series' signature moments.) Never quite a star, Oliver made dozens of TV guest appearances opposite leading men ranging from Richard Chamberlain on Dr. Kildare to Bill Bixby on The Magician. She briefly was a regular on the soap opera Days of Our Lives (1975-76), and directed episodes of M*A*S*H and other television shows. Her film roles included Butterfield 8 (1960, with Elizabeth Taylor) and Hardly Working (1981, with Jerry Lewis). Oliver was an avid pilot who once crossed the Atlantic in a single-engine prop plane; her 1983 memoirs were titled Odyssey: A Daring Transatlantic Journey.
Oliver appears with fellow Star Trek slave dancer Yvonne Craig in the loop Green Is Good.
Four Good Links
SusanOliver.info
Nifty page from a fan; great collection of photos
Classic Star Trek Women
Shots of Vina in her green and un-green incarnations
Susan Oliver Interview
Excerpts from a 1988 interview about the early Trek days
MSN Entertainment
A brief biography and a listing of her film and TV appearances
Vital Stats
Birth
Birthplace
Death
10 May 1990
(lung cancer, age 53)
Best Known As
Vina in the episode "The Menagerie" of the TV series Star Trek
