Carol Lynley, doomed ship’s singer in ‘Poseidon Adventure,’ has died at 77

Carol Lynley, who starred as the SS Poseidon ship singer in the 1972 action film “The Poseidon Adventure,” and in the 1965 thriller “Bunny Lake is Missing,” died Tuesday at age 77.

Her daughter, Jill Selsman, told USA TODAY in a statement that Lynley “died peacefully in her sleep.”

Born in New York City, Lynley began her career as a child model and Broadway actress, appearing at 15 on the cover of Life magazine in 1957 for a story titled ”Busy Career Girl.” The piece chronicled the day in the life of a young Broadway actress.

She starred in Disney’s “The Light in the Forest” in 1958, and in the 1959 independent comedy “Holiday for Lovers.”

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Lynley starred alongside Laurence Olivier in “Bunny Lake Is Missing,” playing a young New York mother living in London whose daughter goes missing from preschool without a trace.

The actress saw her most memorable role with “The Poseidon Adventure,” the epic 1970s disaster adventure about a luxury ocean liner turned over by a tidal wave. Lynley’s ship singer, Nonnie Parry, who fretted that she couldn’t swim “a stroke,” was one of a handful of passengers (including Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, Stella Stevens and Red Buttons) working together to escape the upside-down ship.

“Everybody in town wanted (the role),” she told critic Roger Ebert while promoting the film, pointing out there was some role jealousy even among the cast. “Red didn’t like me very much. He made my life miserable because he thought I had a better part than he did. Of course, I did…”

Lynley said that the famed scenes of the group navigating tiny catwalks were legitimately scary, as director Ronald Neame refused to use stunt actors so that he could get real reactions.

”There were no safety precautions for the first two weeks of shooting. I’d be up there on a catwalk, and if I slipped, it was six stories straight down through flames to a concrete floor,” she said. ”When we look scared, it’s real.”

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Lynley’s career ebbed in the late 1960s and ‘70s, with ensemble work or low-budget fare including “The Maltese Bippy,” “Norwood,” “The Four Deuces,” “The Washington Affair” and “Bad Georgia Road.”

She married public relations executive Michael Selsman in 1960. The couple had one daughter, Jill Selsman, before divorcing in 1964.

”She was curious about the world around her, loved to spend time with interesting people of all stripes and was generally a very peaceful person. Very live and let live,” Selsman wrote of her mother to USA TODAY describing her as a fitness devotee who ”was doing yoga in the 70s when everyone still made fun of it.”

Selsman wrote that her mother was “a bon vivant. There really was no situation that couldn’t be improved or ignored because there really was so much fun to be had.”

That outlook will continue beyond life.

Wrote Selsman: “If there is a world beyond, she’s dancing with her great friend Fred Astaire and enjoying her new life as much as she enjoyed her previous one.”

Read more at usatoday.com.

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