Armelia Carol Traberth

Actress. Born Armelia Carol Ohmart in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Armelia Cragun and Thomas Carlyle Ohmart, a traveling dentist. Her mother entered her in a national beautiful baby contest which she won. At the age of three she appeared in her uncle's vaudeville routine in the Orpheum Theater in Seattle. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved between Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, and Spokane. By the time she graduated from Lewis & Clark High School in Spokane in 1944, she had attended more than a dozen schools. In 1945, she was crowned Miss Utah at the Utah State Fair in Salt Lake City, in the subsequent Miss America Contest, she won fourth runner-up, and the publicity led to modeling offers. She appeared in several commercials and on several magazines covers such as her first; the 1947 'National Police Gazette.' Cartoonist Milton Caniff used her as a model for his Copper Calhoon character for the 'Steve Canyon' series. Illustrator Al Moore used her as his 1949 Esquire calendar girl. In 1953, she earned a role in the ensemble of the Broadway production of 'Kismet' doubling as an understudy. A Paramount Studios talent agent spotted her and signed her in 1955. The studio aggressively billed her as the 'next Marilyn', one newspaper called her 'a female Brando.' It all turned out to be too much, too soon. Her first two features, 'The Scarlet Hour' (1956) and 'The Wild Party' (1956) did nothing at the box office, and she was written off. Her exclusive contract, however, meant that she was unable to work for other studios. In early 1957, Paramount informed her that they would not be renewing her contract. Finally free to work, she appeared in 'Born Reckless' (1958); 'The Scavengers' (1959); and perhaps most memorably, 'The House on Haunted Hill' (1959); followed by "Wild Youth" (1961). She appeared on numerous television series over the next five years, including 'Johnny Midnight,' 'Tales of Wells Fargo,' 'Route 66,' 'Perry Mason,' '77 Sunset Strip,' and 'Get Smart.' In 1967, she appeared in the low budget 'Spider Baby' which gathered a small cult following but otherwise was unheard of, and the thriller 'Caxambu' before retreating from Hollywood. After a hiatus of almost five years, she returned with a guest role in the television series, 'Mannix' and a 1973 episode of 'Barnaby Jones', entitled 'A Little Glory, A Little Death.' Her final film appearance was in the 1974 feature, 'The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe.' After then suffering a vicious assault, she was badly hurt and would be diagnosed with partial amnesia, short term memory loss, and eventually became addicted to pain medication. After a long struggle to overcome addiction, she married fireman William J. Traberth in 1978, and virtually vanished, apparently living under the name of Kariomar Sonne Traberth . She was eventually found by the former head of the Carol Ohmart Fan Club, who traced her to a suburban Seattle neighborhood a decade later. She had spent the intervening years in studying metaphysics, oil painting, gardening, and writing. A registered orchid strain was named after her; the Cymbidium Carol Ohmar

Marriages

Carol wed three times. The first, (1949-1951) to radio actor Ken Grayson (ne Kenneth J. Grossman), lasted two years before it was annulled. A second brief two-year (1956-1958) marriage in 1956 was with cowboy actor Wayde Preston (ne William Erskine Strange), who starred in the rugged "Colt .45" TV western. In 1978 she married a third time to a non-professional (fireman), William John Traberth, Jr. which lasted until her death in 2002. After a particularly depressing period dealing with medication addiction and disability, a recovered, spiritual-leaning Carol found a helpful avenue outside the Hollywood scene in the 1970s studying metaphysics, delving also in oil painting, gardening, poetry and writing. She died on New Year's Day, 2002, at age 74, in Colorado.

• Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ohmart#Death
• Reference: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0645120/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 22 2023, 15:43:02 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: May 22 2023, 15:43:42 UTC schwartz

Carol Ohmart - A brief story of Hollywood's last starlet and her filmography

The story of Carol Ohmart reads like a script from one of her movies, but this story is true and here fact is indeed stranger than fiction. As we delve into Carol Ohmart's past, an often bizarre, sometimes tragic, but mostly cautionary tale unfolds.

Armelie Carol Ohmart was born on July 3 1927 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Carl Thomas Ohmart, a failed actor turned dentist, and Armelia "Merle" Ohmart. Her parents' union was a troubled one, her father was her mothers senior by nearly 30 years, and they divorced when Carol was 15. Her mother was known to be an overbearing, controlling woman who lived vicariously through her daughter. Carol suffered physical abuse at her mother's hands as a child and struggled to escape her mother's meddling and mental torture for decades.

Wayde Preston, with whom Carol was briefly married in the late 1950's, later told how Merle would interfere in Carol's and his business affairs. She would allegedly make phone calls impersonating her daughter, make and break appointments, all in an effort to maintain her mental stranglehold over Carol.

Carol Ohmart's mother, Merle, was a lifelong and devout Mormon, her family being descendant from the earliest Mormon pilgrims. In later interviews Carol said that as a child she was told by her mother:
Until I became of legal age, I was terrorized. It was hammered into me that God's command was to love your mother or God will kill you... I forgave her, but I haven't forgotten. How could I? I tried to be a dutiful daughter, I wrote her all those (hundreds of) letters, but she never let me live my own life. She tried to live through me. I appreciated her supporting me during the lean years, but she wasn't doing it for me, it was for her own selfish ends, to keep me taking orders. She controlled my life.

Ohmart's father was largely absent in her life, employed as a traveling dentist by the "Painless Parker Dentists"(a.k.a. Painless Parker dental circus). When they settled in Seattle, Washington, her parents were frequently separated until their eventual divorce in 1942. Little else is known of Carol Ohmart's father other than that he died in Tacoma, Washington, in 1955 grasping a copy of a newspaper column by Louelle Parsons entitled : "Carol Ohmart to Star in Her First Picture".

Even as an infant Ohmart's mother had designs of stardom for Carol. She was entered and won a national baby contest at the tender age of one. At the age of three she appeared in her uncle's vaudeville routine in the Orpheum Theater in Seattle.

Carol Ohmart was a natural beauty : her serenely piercing blue eyes, a 5' 7 frame, with measurements of 36-24-35, made her a born beauty queen. She was crowned as Miss Utah at the Utah State Fair in Salt Lake City on September 6 1945. She began working as a vocalist on a local radio station and at night clubs. The next year, during September of 1946, she competed in the Miss USA Pageant where she was placed fourth, receiving a $1500 scholarship prize.

Following the Miss USA pageant Carol moved to New York, her mother in tow, to pursue her career and use the pageant money to receive vocal and dramatic coaching. Carol quickly found work as a model, vocalist and actress. She appeared in several commercials and graced the covers of magazines. Such as the 1947 "National Police Gazette" wich was her first cover. Famed cartoonist Milton Caniff used her as a model to create his Copper Calhoon character for the "Steve Canyon" series. Illustrator Al Moore also used her as his 1949 Esquire calendar girl.

Carol, at the age of 21, married radio actor Ken Grayson, on August 17 1949. The couple later had the ill-fated union annulled in 1951.

Continuing to find increasing success as an actress, she appeared on the NBC showcase "Vesatile Varieties" as the Bonny Maid alongside other emergent actresses such as Anne Francis and Eva Marie Saint. Ohmart continued to work

1949 esquire

in commercials and off-Broadway plays until she landed the part in "Kismet"as Joan Diener's understudy. One fateful night Miss Diener was unable to perform. Carol went on in her place, and caught the attention of a Paramount representative in the audience.

Hollywood had it's first look at Carol Ohmart on January 12 1955 when she was brought out from New York to do a screen test for Paramount executives. On the day of her screen test, 13 January 1955, she was suddenly strickened by appendicitis and was rushed to Ceders of Lebanon Hospital for emergency surgery. In spite of this, on January 18 1955, she was signed to a seven year contract by Paramount. Earning $500 a week for the first year, her salary escalating to $2000 in the seventh year.

It was a whirlwind romance as Carol was shoved into the limelight. Paramount spent a reported $2 million (a not-so-small fortune in 1955) in an effort to transform Ohmart into an instant star. On July 3 rd 1955, her 28 th birthday, Carol Ohmart was revealed to the world at a studio press event that spared no expense or effort. She was touted as the next big star and the media and their cameras loved her for it. She was referred to as the "feminine Brando". Life and Newsweek ran feature stories on her. Her likeness appeared in full page spreads in trade papers, on billboards and in theater lobbies. There was even a newly registered strain of orchid named after her : the "Cymbidium Carol Ohmart". But instead of turning Carol into the next Marilyn Monroe as was intended, the Hollywood star system simply ran straight over her.

At the very least her success allowed her to create some degree of independence and separation between herself and her mother, who was working at this time as a beautician in Hollywood.

Her first, and as it turned out – last, film for Paramount was the film noir "The Scarlet Hour", directed by legendary director Michael Curtiz of "Casablanca" fame, wherein she portrays the femme fatale Paulie Nevens. It was later revealed that the role was initially offered to Barbara Stanwyck who had turned it down.(The film did not perform well at the box office.) Paramount made several mistakes here : the first was to over saturate the press with Carol Ohmart. Bob Fender – a Paramount publicist – admitted that they "murdered her with
exaggerated publicity". And the second mistake was to have her debut as a wholly unsympathetic character.

Paramount had Carol Ohmart tethered to an exclusive contract, but after the disappointment of "The Scarlet Hour" did not use her further. Both Harry Cohn from Columbia Pictures and MGM's Dore Schary contacted Y Frank Freeman, the president of Paramount, about loaning her out for other projects but he flat-out refused. The writing seemed to be on the wall but Ohmart was powerless to do anything about it. So it came as quite a surprise when Freeman out of the blue agreed to let her star in United Artists' "The Wild Party" opposite Anthony Quinn.

Thanksgiving day (25 th November) 1956 brought a surprise as Carol Omhart revealed that she had married William Strange, at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Fransisco. Strange was an aspiring actor who would shortly change his name to Wayde Preston. Preston was an unknown name but his association with Ohmart was sufficient to get him cast in the lead role of the new Warner Bros. TV series "Colt .45". Their marriage scarcely lasted two years and she filed for divorce in July of 1958. Ohmart later confessed in an interview that they "could have been great friends" but that their greatest mistake was getting married.

Then, in early 1957, Paramount informed Ohmart that they would not be renewing her contract for a third year, stating that they could not afford her automatic yearly increase due to budgetary constraints. After being under contract for two years Paramount had only put her in one film and borrowed her to United Artists for another, neither of which were hits. She was now a free agent but the damage to her reputation had been done.

Carol Ohmart and Vincent Price

She had no difficulty finding work however, as she appeared next in Warner Bros.' 1958 film "Born Reckless". 1959 saw her in "The Scavengers" and William Castle's "House on Haunted Hill". Her portrayal of Annabelle Loren in "House on Haunted Hill" is still one of her best remembered roles. The next feature she would appear in was "Wild Youth" in 1961 where she played a sex obsessed heroin addict.

Carol Ohmart also appeared in a slew of television shows until around 1962, when apparently she became disillusioned with Hollywood. She briefly moved back to New York before returning to California. She appeared in 1964's "One Man's Way" and on episodes of the TV's

"Get Smart" and "Branded". She also took the role of Emily Howe in "Cannibal Orgy", but due to legal reasons this film was delayed until 1968 when it was released as "Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told". "Spider Baby" has become known as a bizarre little cult gem to horror movie fans over the years. The last role Ohmart would accept in that decade was with "Caxambu!" in 1967.

Ohmart began studying spirituality at the Institute of Religious Science and joined the Church of Devine Consciousness. Carol left Hollywood to return to Salt Lake City after the Woodland Hills/Malibu fires in 1970. This however put her back under the control of her mother, with whom she had been largely estranged for nearly a decade prior. After only 14 months Carol decided that she would rather face Hollywood alone than spend any more time with Merle.

Carol Ohmart again returned to Hollywood in 1972 with her star now faded, her fortune spent, having not worked as an actress for five years(and barely worked at all for nearly ten); without an agent she managed to land a part on an episode of "Mannix". Then, in a grimly ironic and perhaps eerily prophetic 1973 episode of "Barnaby Jones", entitled "A Little Glory – A Little Death", she plays the part of a former starlet who ends up getting murdered. The show used her own publicity shots from the '50's in the story. Carol Ohmart's final on-screen appearance was in the 1974 film "The Spectre of Edgar Allen Poe".

At this point the somewhat sad story turns abysmally tragic. Ohmart was attacked and brutally beaten<assaulted> by three men. After receiving emergency treatment for her injuries she would be diagnosed with partial amnesia, short term memory loss, narcolepsy and she suffered from chronic back pain amongst various other ailments. She subsequently became addicted to pain medication. All this prevented her from obtaining further work as an actress. Seeking help from a drug abuse hotline she overcame her drug addiction and was placed on disability.

The once bright future of a Hollywood starlet with the world at her feet had in two decades been reduced to poverty and destitution. In a 1976 letter to her mother Carol Ohmart wrote of her receiving $174 a month in financial aid, her 3 year battle to recovery and sobriety as well as her desire to seek employment again. She wrote : "Still, I can't afford to be proud. I'll work as a nude model for art schools. For bust shots only. It pays $12 per hour for 3 hours, but it's something. I'm so in need, I'll drive the 45 miles for the $36."

Following her recovery she finally retreated from Hollywood for good in 1978. She was 51 years old. Returning home to Salt Lake City to live with her mother, who was now 75 years of age and wheelchair bound, it did not take long for their love-hate relationship to resume it's old patterns.

Carol soon attracted the attentions of a retired fireman by the name of Bill(William), who was 55 at the time. Unbeknownst to them though, and without his encouragement, Carol's mother had her sights set on the same man. When Carol accepted a marriage proposal from Bill it led to a screaming match between mother and daughter. The exchange ended when Merle yelled at her daughter "I am GOD!!" to which Carol replied "You'll never see me alive again!".

Carol kept her promise. She and Bill moved away shortly after. At the time of her mother's death in 1987 Carol Ohmart had been missing for nearly ten years. Neither family nor friends had any idea what had become of her or where she might be. She was not heard from again until 1989, when a reporter called Gregg Barrios published a two part article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "The Last Starlet". He wrote of how he managed to, by sheer determination and luck, track down Carol Ohmart and convinced her to grant him an interview on the condition that her husband's full name and her exact whereabouts not be revealed. If you are interested in Carol Ohmart, I highly recommend you read his LA Times story(published January 1 st and 8 th 1989).

As of last account she was resident in Seattle, Washington. She has made peace with her past and remained happily married to the same Bill she met in 1978. In an open letter to the Los Angeles Times in response to the 1989 story about her she wrote : "My life is now serene and I'm healthy in body, mind and spirit. And my talents are actively at work in many areas".

Written by The Classic Movie Master
Posted 01 March 2013

U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007

Name Earliere L Melzack
Gender Female
Birth Date 3 Jun 1927
Birth Place Salt Lake City, Utah
Death Date 1 Jan 2002
Claim Date 4 Oct 1976
Father Thomas C Ohmart
Mother Amelia M Cragun SSN 528249273
Notes 29 Aug 1975: Name listed as EARLIERE L MELZACK; 08 Sep 1976: Name listed as CAROL OHMART; 11 Sep 1980: Name listed as KARI OMAR TRABERTH; 28 Apr 1987: Name listed as KARIOMAR SONNE TRABERTH; 05 Jan 2002: Name listed as KARIOMAR S TRABERTH