The woman who made television history as the first green Orion dancing girl in the original pilot of “Star Trek” was far more than that iconic image suggested, yet her pioneering career behind the camera has been almost entirely forgotten. Susan Oliver’s brief but striking appearance in “The Cage” became one of the most recognizable images in science fiction history. She was painted head to toe in green with bright red lips, a look unlike almost anything else on television in that era. But a new documentary called “The Green Girl,” directed by George Pappy and edited by Amy Glickman Brown, reveals that Oliver’s legacy extended far beyond that famous role.
Pappy stumbled onto Oliver’s story almost by accident. He decided to look her up on IMDb one day and discovered a nine-page biography that changed his understanding of her entirely. He found that she had directed an episode of “MASH” and worked on “Trapper John, M. D.
” three decades ago. “Women were not directing television then. They barely do it now,” Pappy said this week at a screening in Las Vegas. The documentary traces Oliver’s extensive television and film career, which spanned a remarkable range of roles.
Broadcast historian Mark Tofus noted her astonishing versatility, recalling that she appeared as different characters in multiple episodes of Route 66, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Dr. Kildare, and The Virginian. “Some weeks, you could open the TV guide and find her in three different roles in three different shows,” Tofus said. Film historians, critics, and fellow actors remembered her as incredibly multi-talented, capable of playing everything from seductress to addict to split personality to the girl next door.
But the most remarkable chapters of Oliver’s life took place outside the studio. After surviving a near-fatal plane accident, she decided to conquer her fear of flying by becoming a pilot herself. She ended up flying solo across the North Atlantic under treacherous conditions, setting five world records in light aircraft and becoming one of the first women to fly a Learjet. Her transatlantic solo flight did not end as she had hoped.
She was forced to land in Denmark instead of completing her planned route to Moscow because the Russian government denied her permission to enter its airspace. When she returned to the United States, journalists described her journey as a failure and showed more interest in her legs than in her flying skills. “Did they ever ask Lindbergh to show his arm muscles? ” Oliver wondered in her autobiography, which provided much of the voiceover narration for the documentary.
Unable to find meaningful acting roles as she aged, Oliver turned to directing. Sociologist Carrie Ferris explains in the film that there were simply no roles for middle-aged women in Hollywood at that time. Oliver had played college students well into her thirties, and after that, there seemed to be nothing between student and grandmother. Actresses like Lee Meriwether, who played Catwoman in the 1966 Batman film, and Celeste Yarnall of “Star Trek” reinforce in interviews how difficult that era was for women in the industry.
Her friend and fellow actor Gary Conway recalled: “A woman directing a film was like a woman playing professional football. ”
When Pappy asked the male actors he met whether they had ever worked with a female director, most said no. During Oliver’s second directing assignment on “Trapper John, M. D.
,” the crew resisted her authority. Star Charles Siebert commented: “I think our crew was not ready to accept a female director at that time. ” Without enthusiastic backing, it became very difficult for Oliver to secure more directing jobs. Friends and family members interviewed for the film said her condition declined afterward.
She became frustrated and stopped taking proper care of her health. In her 1983 autobiography, Oliver wrote plainly: “My life has not gone as happily ever after as in the stories. ”
Oliver’s last acting role came in “Freddy’s Nightmares” in 1988. The following year, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
She died in 1990 at the age of 58. The final scene of “The Green Girl” includes an audio recording of the last voicemail message Oliver left for herself on the day she died, telling herself goodbye. Pappy said the more he learned, the angrier he became at how limited the opportunities were for women who wanted to step outside traditional roles.
“I just felt that someone owed her this,” he said.