Reply #60: Actress Phyllis Kirk, aged 79, star of House of Wax. [View All]

[CBHagman]

Like our dearly departed Jane Wyatt, she was a Jersey girl AND a liberal. God rest her soul, not that she couldn't rest if she were a conservative. :-)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102101117.html

Her acting career slowed down by the late 1950s and she turned her focus to social causes.

She spoke out against the death sentence of convicted kidnapper and sex offender Caryl Chessman, whom police nicknamed the "Red Light Bandit." Kirk visited Chessman several times in prison until he was executed in 1960.

After the 1965 Watts race riots, she helped fund two preschool programs for poor families in the South Los Angeles neighborhood. She later launched a career in public relations.