Liz Renay, who died on Jan. 22 at a Las Vegas hospital from gastric bleeding, was a gangster's moll, ex-con, author, painter, stripper, Hollywood Boulevard streaker, actress and charm school instructor. She was 80.
She was convicted of perjury in 1959 during the federal tax evasion trial of her boyfriend, racketeer Mickey Cohen. Given a three-year sentence, she was released after 27 months for good behavior.
"It sure knocked the hell out of my career when I went to Terminal Island," Miss Renay once said of the low-security facility in California. "I would have been a big star had I not gone to prison."
Her sense of her own potential was undoubtedly exaggerated, as was everything else about this starlet who boasted of her measurements: 44DD-26-36. She once won a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest sponsored by Twentieth Century Fox studios.
Her acting portfolio consisted of roles in movies such as "The Thrill Killers," "Interlude of Lust" and her final feature, in 2002, "Mark of the Astro-Zombies."
Director John Waters provided her best-remembered part, as "dog food murderess" Muffy St. Jacques in "Desperate Living" (1977). The part required her to smother a drugged-out baby sitter in Alpo.
Her cult status was long assured. She made an appearance in crime writer James Ellroy's book "American Tabloid." She wrote a book of beauty advice and several memoirs put out by maverick publisher Lyle Stuart, including "My Face for the World to See" and "My First 2,000 Men."
Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins was born in Chandler, Ariz., on April 16, 1926, which she liked to note was the same year as Monroe. Tweaking her evangelical parents, she tried to crash Las Vegas as a showgirl and was a bra model.
In 1950, she became an extra in a mob scene when a movie company filmed in Phoenix. Her precocious behavior on the set won her a five-page photo display in Life magazine titled "Pearl's Big Moment." At the time, she had been through two marriages and had two children.
She scrapped her way to New York via Washington -- her husband worked for the U.S. Mint. She worked as a Ford model and stripper at clubs filled with underworld figures. She dated Tony Coppola, a bodyguard to Murder Inc. leader Albert Anastasia.
In 1957, she left for Hollywood and met Cohen, who helped her find television roles. She won $1,000 for correctly answering geography questions on Groucho Marx's TV program "You Bet Your Life." She also worked at a charm school.
After her release from prison, she found a niche playing madams in exploitation films, some pornographic. As a publicity stunt in 1974, she streaked Hollywood Boulevard at high noon. She attracted enormous crowds as well as the attention of the city attorney's office, which charged her with indecent exposure and being intentionally lewd.
She was acquitted by an eight-man, four-woman jury. One male juror asked for her autograph "for his 15-year-old son." Meanwhile, stripper Jennie Lee, who started an Exotic Dancers Hall of Fame, placed Miss Renay on her 10-best-undressed list.
Miss Renay encouraged her daughter, Brenda, to join her onstage. They continued to work together until Brenda killed herself in 1982, on her 39th birthday.
Miss Renay's seven marriages ended in divorce.
