Deborah Walley - Biographical Information

Biographical Information

Deborah Walley was born in Bridgeport in southern Connecticut to Ice Capades skating stars and choreographers Nathan and Edith Walley. She attended Central High School in Bridgeport. At fourteen, she was playing summer-stock theatre. She studied acting at New York City's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began working on stage in the city and made her Hollywood film debut in 1961's Gidget Goes Hawaiian. From then until 1974 she appeared in fifteen feature length films, including several of the "Beach Party" films produced by American International Pictures. She also co-starred in the Elvis Presley film Spinout where she and Elvis bonded over a shared interest in spiritual matters.

From 1964 to 1966, Walley was married to actor John Ashley, a costar of ABC's Straightaway series about auto racing from 1961–1962. The couple had a son, Anthony Brooks Ashley, before they divorced. John Ashley preceded his former wife in death by four years. On his gravestone, the inscriptions says that he was a "loving husband and father."

In 1967, with her movie career starting to slide, Walley portrayed Suzie Hubbard Buell in the comedy series The Mothers-in-Law. Comedienne Eve Arden played her mother, Eve Hubbard, while singer-comedienne Kaye Ballard played her mother-in-law, Kaye Buell. Actress Kay Cole (A Chorus Line) had played Suzie in the original pilot, but Walley later replaced her, and played her through the series' two seasons on the air.

After moving to Sedona, Arizona to bring up her children, Walley co-founded two children's theater companies, Pied Piper Productions and the Sedona Children's Theatre.

Walley succumbed to esophageal cancer on May 10, 2001, in Sedona. She was survived by two of her three sons: Anthony Brooks Ashley, a director, editor, and producer in Hollywood; and Justin Ashley Reynolds, an internet entrepreneur in Phoenix, Arizona.