Ina Balin (Wikipedia)
Ina Balin was born in 1937 and was an American actress. She is best known for her role in the film From the Terrace (1960), for which she received two Golden Globe Award nominations and won one for Most Promising Newcomer – Female.
Balin was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents. Her father, Sam Rosenberg, was a dancer, singer and comedian who worked the Borscht Belt. He later quit show business to join his family’s furrier business.
Balin graduated from high school at age 15 after having spent five years at a boarding school in Pennsylvania.
Balin first appeared on television on The Perry Como Show. She guest-starred on dozens of television shows, including Wonder Woman, Adventures in Paradise, Bonanza, The Lieutenant, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Battlestar Galactica, Get Smart, It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Twelve O’Clock High, Quincy, M.E. and Magnum, P.I.
She appeared with Joseph Cotten, Fernando Lamas and Dean Jagger in the 1969 made-for-television movie The Lonely Profession.
Balin did summer stock, which led to roles on Broadway. She first starred on Broadway in Compulsion, portraying Ruth. In 1959, she had the role of Alice Black in the comedy A Majority of One.
In 1959, Balin landed her first film role in The Black Orchid. She was Paul Newman’s love interest in the 1960 screen adaptation of From the Terrace. In 1961, she appeared as Pilar Graile in The Comancheros with John Wayne and Stuart Whitman. Co-starring with Jerry Lewis in the 1964 hit comedy The Patsy, Balin also had a secondary part in 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told. She also co-starred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film Charro! She co-starred in the 1971 film The Projectionist. She also co-starred in the 1982 comedy The Comeback Trail, and she starred in The Young Doctors, the 1961 hospital drama opposite Ben Gazzara, and Fredric March.
In 1966, Balin toured Vietnam with the USO on the first of many trips to the war-torn region. In 1975, she aided in the evacuation of orphans during the fall of Saigon. Eventually, she adopted three of these orphaned children. In 1980, she played herself in a made-for-television movie based on her experiences, The Children of An Lac.
While working on The Children of An Lac, she became acquainted with Christy Marx who, at the time, worked as a producer’s liaison for various television programs. According to Marx, she used Balin’s story as a basis for a character in the animated show Jem when she became a writer. The character of Ba Nee is based on Balin’s adopted daughter, Ba-Nhi. Ba Nee’s obsession with and struggle to find her birth father are the focus of several episodes of Jem.
Ina Balin, died on June 20, 1990 at Yale–New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, aged 52, from complications of chronic lung disease, including pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure of the lungs). She had been at the hospital awaiting a lung transplant.
A single mother, she was survived by her father, Sam Rosenberg; her three adopted children: Nguyet Baty, Ba-Nhi Mai, and Kim Thuy; a brother, Richard Balin; and two grandchildren. Ba-Nhi Mai and Kim Thuy were raised by Hollywood talent agent Ted Ashley and his wife Page (née Cuddy).
In 1959, Balin won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Broadway comedy, A Majority of One.
In 1961, Balin won the New Star of the Year-Actress Golden Globe Award, and she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress — Motion Picture — both for her performance in From the Terrace.
