Mary Ann Mobley

Mary Ann Mobley was one of the few Miss Americas to achieve true success as an actress or television personality. Crowned Miss America in 1959, Mobley went on to guest star in many popular television shows of the 1960s through the 1990s.

The lively brunette appeared on such shows as Mission: Impossible, The Partridge Family, Love, American Style, Diff'rent Strokes and Designing Women. She also joined her husband, Gary Collins, in hosting the Miss America pageant for many years.

Upon her passing, Mobley's family released the following tribute:

Mary Ann Mobley Collins, 77, died at her Beverly Hills, California, home on Tuesday morning, December 9, 2014, from complications due to breast cancer. Services will be held Monday, December 15, at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, with burial at Parkway Funeral Home.
 
A native of Mississippi, the former Miss America, actress and humanitarian led a fascinating and varied life. A Golden Globe winner, Mobley starred opposite Elvis Presley on screen, performed death-defying circus acts in television’s Circus of the Stars and dedicated many years to documenting the young victims of war and starvation in places like Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Sudan.
 
Mobley was blessed to have achieved success in film, television, Broadway, personal appearances and as a documentary filmmaker. She appeared in countless television series, including Diff’rent Strokes, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Falcon Crest and Hearts Afire, and made hundreds of additional television guest appearances.
 
Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mobley was crowned Miss America in 1959 (Mississippi’s first Miss America). Her show business career started on Broadway in the musical Nowhere to Go But Up, followed by the revival of Guys and Dolls in Boston, the first of 16 productions starring Mobley as Sarah Brown. Some of her other musical and theatrical productions included Brigadoon, The King and I, Oklahoma!, Cabaret, The Pajama Game, On a Clear Day, Irene, The Music Man, Hello Dolly!, Finian’s Rainbow, Love Letters and countless others. For her musical work, she was voted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2002.
 
Mobley was the first woman ever to be voted into the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame. The group included her friend from her years at Ole Miss, William Faulkner.
 
In 1967, she married actor and television talk show host Gary Collins. They were active volunteers and fiercely committed to numerous worthwhile causes, traveling the world with various relief organizations to end world hunger. Mobley was a member of the National Board of Trustees for the March of Dimes, The National Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, and the National Council on Disability. She was also a passionate advocate for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and for Childhelp (which honored Mobley with the 1999 Woman of the World Award). She also served on the National Advisory Board of The Eudora Welty Foundation.
 
In recent years, Mobley completed a three-season run that the Annenberg Theater in Palm Springs in a new musical entitled Senior Class and debuted a new cabaret act.
 
Mobley is survived by daughters Clancy Collins White (and her husband, William Dean White) and Melissa Collins; son Guy William Collins (and his wife, Michelle Collins); sister Sandra Young; and two grandsons, Garrett and Gaston Collins. She was preceded in death by husband Gary Collins.