Peggy Stewart

Born on June 5, 1923, in Palm Beach (Florida), Peggy O’Rourke (her real name) suffered the traumatic divorce of her parents as a child. She took the last name Stewart from the man her mother remade her life with. Her sister, Patricia O’Rourke, was an Olympic swimmer. She hadn’t even dreamed of going into the movies when she met actor Henry O’Neill on a family vacation . He recommended her for a role, and she ended up playing the teenage daughter of Joel McCrea , in A Nation on the Move , from 1937. From that moment on, she began to appear in small roles in various titles such as Queen at Fourteen , alongside Deanna Durbin , and Heaven and You , next toBette Davis .

The company that was successful with low-budget westerns, Republic, offered her an exclusive contract in the 1940s. The house placed her as the lead female actress in Tucson Raiders , the first in a series about the adventures of comic cowboy Red Ryder, played by Wild Bill. Elliott. She would go on to participate in around thirty similar productions, including Utah , with Roy Rogers , or Trail to San Antone , with Gene Autry . 

Divorced from the actor –also from westerns– Don ‘Red’ Barry , with whom she gave birth to a child, Peggy Stewart  joined another actor, Buck Young, until his death in 2000. With the latter she had two other children.

Starting in the 50s, she lavished herself on the small screen, in series such as Twilight Zone , as she was one of the main actresses in the famous episode “The Refuge”, where a doctor hides with his family in a building that he has installed in the basement, when nuclear missiles are about to explode in the United States. His neighbors beg him to let him in with them, but he is reluctant. She was also an old lady on Seinfeld , and a high school teacher on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She played Grandma Delores, in Father’s Desmadre , her last feature film, although she later appeared in the series Getting On , in 2014.