Former Miss America and actress Mary Ann Mobley Collins died Dec. 9 due to complications from breast cancer. She was 77.
Born in Biloxi, Miss., Mobley Collins was crowned Miss America in 1959. She got her start in the entertainment industry on Broadway in the musical Nowhere to Go But Up and was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2002 for her musical work.
The humanitarian and actress won a Golden Globe for her film work and starred opposite Elvis Presley in Harum Scarum.
Mobley Collins’ decades-long TV career included Diff’rent Strokes, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat.
Mobley Collins was a humanitarian dedicated to documenting young victims of war and starvation in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Sudan.
She was a member of the National Board of Trustees for the March of Dimes, The National Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and the National Council on Disability, and served on the National Advisory Board of the Eudora Welty Foundation.
In 1967, Mobley Collins married actor and talk show host Gary Collins. She is survived by her daughters Clancy Collins White and Melissa Collins, son Guy William Collins, sister Sandra Young and grandsons Garrett and Gaston Collins.
