Barbara Nichols

About Barbara Nichols

Barbara Nichols (December 30, 1929 – October 5, 1976) was an actress who was something of a cross between a sex symbol and a character actress often playing brassy comic roles in a number of films in the 1950s and 1960s.

Nichols was born as Barbara Marie Nickerauer in Queens, New York. She began modeling for pinup magazines in the early-1950s and for a period worked as a stripper. In the mid-1950s, she moved to Hollywood and began regularly appearing in second leads in a number of films including Miracle in the Rain (1956), The King and Four Queens (1956), The Naked and the Dead (1957), The Pajama Game (1957), Pal Joey (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and That Kind of Woman (1958).

On Broadway, she appeared in the 1952 revival of Pal Joey and in Let It Ride (1961).