Dana Wynter, best known for her role in the 1956 science-fiction classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Ojai Valley Community Hospital's Continuing Care Center. She was 79.
Wynter portrayed Becky Driscoll, the love interest of Kevin McCarthy's Dr. Miles Bennell in "Body Snatchers," director Don Siegel's tale of a small town whose residents were being replaced by emotionless duplicates grown in pods. McCarthy died in September.
Wynter, who was born in Germany and raised in England and South Africa, also worked in the films "Shake Hands With the Devil" (1959) with James Cagney, "Sink the Bismarck!" (1960) and "Airport" (1970).
On TV, she appeared in "Robert Montgomery Presents" and "Playhouse 90" in the 1950s, starred with Robert Lansing in the 1966-67 ABC series "The Man Who Never Was" and guest-starred on such shows as "Cannon," "The Rockford Files," "Hart to Hart" and "Magnum, P.I."
Wynter wrote the 2005 book "Other People, Other Places: Memories of Four Continents" and was an animal-rights advocate, her son Mark Bautzer, her only survivor, told the Los Angeles Times.
– The Hollywood Reporter