A former ballet dancer, graceful Mari Aldon married Hollywood director Tay Garnett, who encouraged her to become an actress. She did, but did not leave a deep imprint on film history, with one exception, the role of Judy Beckett, a prisoner of the Seminoles and Gary Cooper's charming romantic interest in Distant Drums (1951). Besides this, she appeared in few feature films, and then only briefly in two major movies, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and David Lean's 'Summer Vacation' (1955). The rest of her career was devoted to television.
