Maureen Hingert, the Sri Lanka-born beauty queen who appeared as an actress in The King and I, Gun Fever and Gunmen From Laredo, has died. She was 88.
Hingert died Sunday of liver failure at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, her daughter, Marisa Zamparelli, told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a beautiful and peaceful passing,” she said.
As Miss Ceylon, the 18-year-old Hingert finished second runner-up at the 1955 Miss Universe contest held in Long Beach, California, then appeared as a royal wife in Fox’s lavish adaptation of the Broadway musical The King & I (1956), starring Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr and Rita Moreno.
She followed with more substantial parts as Native American girls in Gun Fever (1958), starring, directed and co-written by Mark Stevens, and, billed as Jana Davi, Gunmen From Laredo (1959).
Born in Colombo, Ceylon, on Jan. 9, 1937, Maureen Neliya Hingert appeared in two 1954 films made in her home country, Circus Girl and the Elizabeth Taylor-starring Elephant Walk, directed by William Dieterle.
After being crowned Miss Ceylon, she stayed in California after competing in the first Miss Universe pageant to be televised. (Her appearance was credited with helping put her South Asian island country “on the map.”) It also got her a contract at Universal and a role in Pillars of the Sky, a Western starring Jeff Chandler and Dorothy Malone.
She performed as a dancer in venues around Los Angeles, and a photograph of her on the set of Gun Fever made it into Playboy in September 1957.
Hingert’s résumé also included the 1958 films Fort Bowie and The Rawhide Trail and episodes of The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, Death Valley Days and Captain David Grief. She was done with acting by the start of the 1960s, soon after she had her first of three daughters, Gina.
Her first husband was Mario Armond Zamparelli, chief designer for Howard Hughes’ corporate empire (RKO Pictures movie posters, the Desert Inn, etc.). They first met when she was modeling for a TWA mural he was painting for Hughes, and they were married from 1958 until their 1970 divorce.
Gina Zamparelli, a concert promoter, died in 2018 of a brain tumor at age 59. Another daughter, Andrea Zamparelli, died in 2009 at age 42.
