Judy Nugent, who portrayed one of the twins on the early TV sitcom The Ruggles and a girl who flies around the world in the arms of the Man of Steel on a heartwarming Adventures of Superman episode, has died. She was 83.
Nugent died Thursday surrounded by family at her Montana ranch after a short battle with cancer, according to a family statement shared by her daughter-in-law and Battlestar Galactica and Chicago Fire actress Anne Lockhart (the older daughter of Lassie and Lost in Space star June Lockhart).
The younger daughter of a prop man at MGM, Nugent also appeared in two films directed by Douglas Sirk: as a wise-cracking tomboy who tries to get a blinded widow (Jane Wyman) to snap out of it in Magnificent Obsession (1954), and as one of the daughters of Fred MacMurray and Joan Bennett’s characters in There’s Always Tomorrow (1956).
Nugent also played Annette Funicello‘s pal Jet Maypen on the 1958 serial Annette, which aired during third-season episodes of ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club.
When she was 9, Nugent was hired to portray Donna Ruggles opposite Jimmy Hawkins (It’s a Wonderful Life) as her brother Donald on The Ruggles, which aired live from 1949-52 on ABC as one of the first TV shows to emanate not from New York but from Hollywood.
Nugent, however, is probably best known for her turn as Ann Carson, a blind girl who enters and wins a Daily Planet contest, on the episode “Around the World With Superman,” which aired on March 13, 1954, as the second-season finale (and last black-and-white installment) of the syndicated series.
After an operation restores her sight — Superman (George Reeves) had spotted a piece of glass lodged near her optic nerve! — Ann gets an amazing bird’s eye view of the planet while being whisked around by a superhero.
“That was top secret. I was told never to tell anyone about how George Reeves flew,” she recalled in an undated interview for the website Western Clippings.
“Anyway, they put George on this cement thing and dressed him over it, form-fitting up to his chest. They had a huge fan that made his cape fly out. The special effects people did the ups and downs. There was a ladder underneath — I’d sit on the ladder and he’d hold me up. Even though I was still little, I got awfully heavy.”
Judy Ann Nugent was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 22, 1940. Her father was Carl Nugent, who propped up the Cowardly Lion’s tail in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
“He put my picture and my [older] sister Carol’s picture on the side of his prop box,” she said. “We were seen and offered a part in [1943’s] The Man From Down Under with Charles Laughton.”
Her mother, Lucille, then managed her daughters’ acting careers.