Susan Oliver Biography

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 playing the nice-girl girlfriend of Eddie Fisher in Butterfield 8 (1960, with Elizabeth Taylor) and the sister of Jerry Lewis in Hardly Working (1981). 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.