Antoinette Bower, the German-born British actress who starred on an Adam & Eve-like episode of The Twilight Zone and portrayed the seductive catlike alien Sylvia on an installment of Star Trek, has died. She was 93.
Bower died April 30 in an Eagle Rock senior retirement home in Los Angeles, her friend Carlotta Glackin — great niece of famed Golden Age character actor Edward Everett Horton — told The Hollywood Reporter.
On the big screen, Bower got top billing in the Filipino-shot horror film Superbeast (1972), played the wife of Leslie Nielsen and mother of Jamie Lee Curtis in the slasher classic Prom Night (1980) and was kidnapped by Charles Bronson in the action thriller The Evil That Men Do (1984).
For three seasons (1989-92), she recurred as the kind Fox Devlin, an associate of Winston Rekert’s Dr. Michael Terry, on the Canadian TV drama Neon Rider, set on a ranch in British Columbia for troubled and abused teens.
On the Rod Serling-penned, Ted Post-directed Twilight Zone episode “Probe 7, Over and Out,” which premiered in November 1963 during the anthology show’s fifth and final season, the statuesque Bower portrayed Eve Norda, a woman stranded on a distant planet. The only other person around is an astronaut named Adam Cook (Richard Baseheart).
Bower also was memorable as the villainous Sylvia opposite Theo Marcuse as Korob on the second-season Star Trek episode “Catspaw,” which premiered in October 1967.
Antoinette Alexandra Jane Bower was born to a German mother and English father on Sept. 30, 1932, in Baden-Baden, Germany.
Educated in England, she was a field language supervisor and welfare counselor in the late 1940s with the United Nations’ International Refugee Organization, which assisted millions of people left homeless across Europe and Asia following World War II.
Bower rejoined her family in Canada in 1953 and in Toronto landed a job with the fledgling Canadian Broadcasting Corp., where she worked in public affairs, wrote scripts and conducted interviews on live TV. She also did some acting, appearing in a 1958 TV adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart and in 1959 on the syndicated series Hudson’s Bay.
She visited L.A. and in the early 1960s decided to stick around after landing an uncredited role in Marlon Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and guest-star parts on such shows as Adventures in Paradise, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hong Kong, Wagon Train, Thriller, Hawaiian Eye and Perry Mason.
Antoinette Bower with Richard Basehart in “Probe 7, Over and Out,” a 1963 episode of ‘The Twilight Zone.’
Courtesy Everett Collection
She remained quite busy through the early ’80s, showing up on Combat!, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Burke’s Law, The Wild Wild West, I Spy, The Fugitive, The Invaders, The Big Valley, Bonanza, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, Get Smart, Hogan’s Heroes, Mission: Impossible, The F.B.I., Columbo, Kojak and Murder, She Wrote and in the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds.
She pretty much left acting after her run on CTV’s Neon Rider.
About 10 years ago, Bower completed a documentary about chuckwagon racing in Canada that she shot, directed, edited and narrated after spending several summers with the participants.
Glackin noted that Bower, who studied carpentry at Santa Monica College, had been a valued Home Depot employee who custom-built cabinets and tall bookshelves at her home in Beverly Glen.
She added that Bower was still getting lots of fan mail from the Star Trek faithful and that William Shatner had emailed his condolences after learning of her death. (She was one of the 20 or so women to kiss Capt. Kirk on the show, according to this post.)
Bower wed Texas-born pop artist James Gill in 1963, but their marriage ended in divorce. She was pre-deceased by her half-brother, Roger.
A life celebration is scheduled for Sept. 26 in Pasadena.
