Carol Ohmart

draws Steve Canyon's "Copper Calhoon", with Ohmart as his model (1947) She was raised primarily in Washington state, though she briefly attended East High School in Salt Lake City, later graduating from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington. After graduating from high school, Ohmart returned to Utah with her mother, and in 1946, won the Miss Utah pageant. She then placed fourth runner-up in the Miss America pageant. Ohmart's work in pageants led to several modeling jobs in 1947, during which time Ohmart became a model for the character "Copper Calhoun" in Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon comic strip. Ohmart would serve as a model for numerous illustrations for Caniff, and was featured in a 1947 profile in Popular Photography. ==Career==

Television Ohmart was seen on early television doing commercials, appearing on NBC's Bonny Maid Versatile Varieties Ohmart moved to New York in 1955 where she worked as an understudy on Broadway. She had steady work in television until the early 1970s, with guest roles in Men into Space, Bat Masterson, Ripcord, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Get Smart, Perry Mason, Tombstone Territory, and Barnaby Jones. Film Dubbed a "female Brando" by the press, Paramount Pictures signed her in 1955 and promoted her as the next Marilyn Monroe. Ohmart had top billing in The Scarlet Hour, a Paramount film made by the distinguished director Michael Curtiz about a married woman who persuades her lover to commit a jewel robbery. In 1962, she returned to New York City to appear in an off-Broadway production titled Banderol. Ohmart took a hiatus from appearing in films for several years, selling real estate and becoming involved in studying spiritualism, and ended up in debt. Her last film role was in 1974's The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe. ==Personal life==

Ohmart married three times, most notably to actor Wayde Preston. They wed in 1956, and were divorced in 1958. In 1978, she married William Traberth in Wyoming, a veteran and former firefighter, and retired in Sequim, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. Around 1973, while filming an episode of Barnaby Jones in Los Angeles, Ohmart was attacked and beaten by three men on a street in Hollywood. In the profile, Ohmart revealed that she had an estranged relationship with her mother, who did not know of her daughter's whereabouts for the last ten years of her life, up until her death in 1987. Ohmart recalled: ==Death==

Ohmart died in Fort Collins, Colorado, on January 1, 2002, aged 74, of natural causes. She was cremated. Her ashes were scattered over Carter Lake in Loveland, Colorado. Her death wasn't publicly announced until July 2015. Her death certificate listed her as Kari Omar Sonne Traberth. ==Legacy==

Ohmart has been regarded as a talented actress, being referred to as "a female Brando" in reference to Marlon Brando by writer James Bacon of the Associated Press. In discussing The Scarlet Hour, David Bongard of the Herald Express wrote that "Carol Ohmart is the sultry boss's wife. She has an amazing physical resemblance, in some angles, to Barbara Stanwyck. Obviously she's Curtiz's Galatea in the acting field. If the material weren't so childish and over-dramatic, she might have made a bull's-eye with this. She soon might be capable of the stuff of a Stanwyck or a Bette Davis." The New York Times referred to her performance in ''One Man's Way'' as "quite effective". In reviewing Spider Baby, David Cairns stated that "Carol Ohmart excels as the nasty heiress, intent on kicking the freaks out of their decaying mansion." ==Filmography==