Judy Nugent: Farewell to a Golden Age Hollywood Star
Judy Nugent, who played one of the twins on The Ruggles and a girl who flies around the world in the arms of Superman in a wonderful Adventures of Superman episode, has died. She was 83 years old.
Nugent died on Thursday October 26, «surrounded by family at her Montana ranch after a short battle with cancer,» according to a family statement released by her daughter-in-law, Battlestar Galactica and Chicago Fire actress Anne Lockhart.
Nugent, the younger daughter of an MGM prop man, also appeared in two films directed by Douglas Sirk: Magnificent Obsession (1954) as a wise-cracking tomboy who tries to wake up a blinded widow (Jane Wyman) and There's Always Tomorrow (1956) as one of Fred MacMurray and Joan Bennett's characters.
On the 1958 serial Annette, which ran during third-season episodes of ABC's The Mickey Mouse Club, Nugent played Annette Funicello's pal Jet Maypen.
Nugent was selected at the age of nine to play Donna Ruggles alongside Jimmy Hawkins (It's a Wonderful Life) as her brother Donald on The Ruggles, which broadcast live from 1949 to 1952 on ABC as one of the first TV sitcoms to originate in Hollywood rather than New York.
She was best known for her role as Ann Carson, a blind girl who enters and wins a Daily Planet contest, in the episode «Around the World With Superman,» which aired on March 13, 1954, as the syndicated series' second-season finale (and last black-and-white instalment). Superman (George Reeves) discovers a shard of glass lodged in her optic nerve after an operation restores her sight! — While being transported about by a superhero, Ann gets an incredible bird's eye perspective of the earth.
Judy Ann Nugent was born on August 22, 1940, in Los Angeles.
