Cindy Carol

The dainty, brown-eyed 1960s starlet best known for being the third iteration of Gidget was born Annette Carol Sydes, one of four offspring to high-school English teacher Thomas Sydes and his wife Ruth (née Meadows). In her mid-teens, Carol made several TV commercials for diverse products, ranging from Frisky Cat Foods and Noxzema skin cleanser to Fritos Corn Chips. Though her father disapproved of her acting aspirations, she persisted, and she accidentally finagled a guest spot in the TV series Medic (1954) for which her older brother (Anthony Sydes) was auditioning. Cast in bit parts for her first two years in showbiz, she appeared several times on the sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957) (still credited as Carol Sydes), then became a fixture on The New Loretta Young Show (1962) as one of the lead character's seven children. Though the series was axed after 26 episodes, Carol managed to get selected from among 500 other applicants by producer Jerry Bresler for the coveted role of diminutive surfing beach-bunny Gidget for the feature film Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) (Deborah Walley, who had been Gidget's second screen incarnation, had become unavailable because she had married and was starting a family). Signed to a seven-year contract by Columbia at a respectable starting salary of $300 per week, Carol underwent the usual studio publicity campaign and had her hair color changed to blonde and her name to the sweeter-sounding Cindy Carol.

She had just one significant moment on the big screen, as Pandora Leaf, the crafty 18-year-old daughter of a college professor (James Stewart) in the family comedy Dear Brigitte (1965), although most of the plaudits in the junior acting stakes went to Bill Mumy as Pandora's mathematically-gifted brother. Carol's swan song was a recurring role on the daytime soap Never Too Young (1965), which was aimed at the teenage market. She retired from acting in 1966 and, as Carol Annette Connelly, devoted herself to raising a family. Her second husband, actor Christopher Connelly, died from lung cancer in December 1988, at only 47.