Collin Wilcox was born in 1935 in Ohio.   She was a staple guest star of the major U.S. TV series of the 1960’s and 70’s. including “The Twilight Zone” and “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” among many others.   On film, her best remembered performance is from 1962 in “To Kill A Mockingbird”  with Gregory Peck.   She died in 2009.

Interview with Collin Wilcox can be read here.

Obituary on “Boothill” website :

Collin Wilcox, who portrayed a young white woman who falsely accuses a black man of rape in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and went on to appear in numerous TV shows and films like ‘Jaws 2,’ died at her home in North Carolina last week. She was 74. Her husband, Scott Paxton, said the actress died on Oct. 14 of brain cancer, the New York Times reports.

As the character Mayella Violet Ewell, who accused Brock Peters’ character of rape, she delivers a court speech that stands out as one of the most memorable scenes in ‘Mockingbird.’ While being cross-examined by Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch, she tearfully responds:

“I got something to say, and then I ain’t gonna say no more. He took advantage of me! And if you fine, fancy, damn … ain’t gonna do nothin’ about it, then you’re just a bunch a’ lousy yella stinkin’ cowards … the … the whole bunch of ya. And your fancy airs don’t come to nothin’. Your manners and your “Miss Mayella,” it don’t come to nothin’ Mr. Finch!”
‘Mockingbird’ was her major-film debut and she later appeared on TV show such as ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ‘The Untouchables’ and ‘Gunsmoke.’

She appeared in several more films, including ‘Catch-22’ and the ‘Jaws’ sequel, before moving back to her native North Carolina where she and her husband founded a children’s arts center.

In addition to her husband, Paxton is survived by her children, Kimberley and Michael.

New York Times obituary in 2009.

Collin Wilcox, Actress in ‘Mockingbird’, Dies at 74

By Margalit Fox

• Oct. 21, 2009

Collin Wilcox, a ubiquitous actress whose face was familiar to television viewers in the 1960s and afterward for her guest appearances on shows like “The Untouchables,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Defenders” and “Gunsmoke,” died on Oct. 14 at her home in Highlands, N.C. She was 74.

The cause was brain cancer, her husband, Scott Paxton, said.

A fresh-faced Southerner, Ms. Wilcox was also billed over the years as Collin Wilcox-Horne and Collin Wilcox-Paxton. Besides working actively in television, she appeared in Hollywood films and several Broadway plays.

Her best-known film role was as Mayella Ewell, the young white woman who falsely accuses a black man (played by Brock Peters) of rape in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel. Ms. Wilcox’s tearful testimony on the witness stand as Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch cross-examines her is widely considered one of the movie’s most memorable scenes.

Ms. Wilcox made her Broadway debut in 1958 in “The Day the Money Stopped,” a drama by Maxwell Anderson and Brendan Gill. Though the play closed after four performances, she won the Clarence Derwent Award from the Actors’ Equity Association as the year’s most promising female performer.

Collin Wilcox was born on Feb. 4, 1935, in Cincinnati and moved with her family to Highlands as a baby. In the late 1930s her parents helped found a local theater company, the Highlands Community Theater, where she got her first stage experience.

Ms. Wilcox studied at the University of Tennessee, what was then the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and the Actors Studio in New York. In Chicago she performed with the Compass Players, an improvisational group that was a forerunner of the Second City theater troupe.

On television Ms. Wilcox came to wide attention in 1958, when she starred in a live television production of “The Member of the Wedding.” (An adaptation of Carson McCullers’s novel, it was directed by Robert Mulligan, who later directed “To Kill a Mockingbird.”) To land the role of Frankie, the story’s preadolescent heroine, Ms. Wilcox, then in her early 20s, appeared at the audition with her hair shorn, her breasts bound with dishtowels and her face dotted with “freckles” of iodine.

One of her television performances that continues to be seen today in reruns was in a 1964 episode of “The Twilight Zone,” titled “Number 12 Looks Just Like You.” Ms. Wilcox played a plain-looking 19-year-old woman in a society of the future who resists a ritual “transformation” procedure to make her physically beautiful (she can choose from among standard models) and give her a longer life. 

Ms. Wilcox’s first marriage, to Walter Beakel, ended in divorce, as did her second, to Geoffrey Horne. She is survived by her third husband, Mr. Paxton, whom she married in 1979; three children, Kimberly Horne, Michael G. Paxton and William Horne; and three grandchildren.

Her other television appearances include guest roles on “Dr. Kildare,” “The Fugitive,” “Ironside,” “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

Among Ms. Wilcox’s other films are “Catch-22” (1970), “Jaws 2” (1978), “Marie” (1985) and the TV movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” broadcast on CBS in 1974