Marjorie Cameron(1922-1995)
- Actress
Red haired, blue eyed Marjorie Cameron was born April 23, 1922, in
Belle Plain, Iowa, and grew up in Wisconsin. Her parents were Hill
Lislie Cameroun and Carrie V. (Ridenour) Cameroun. She was in the Navy
in WWII, and served in Washington as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and as a photographer. After the war she moved to Los Angeles.
There she was introduced by a friend to the Agape Lodge of the OTO,
where she met future husband John W. (Jack) Parsons. He was a
pioneering genius in rocketry, an author, and very involved in the
occult. He was associated with Aleister Crowley. Parsons considered her
to be an "elemental" and in early 1946 she, Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard
undertook the famous "Babylon Working", a long complex magical working
attempting to create a magical child. She married Jack Parsons on
October 19, 1946 in San Juan Capistrano, California. They were friends
of many science fiction writers. Jack was killed in a mysterious
explosion in Pasadena in 1952. At the time they were living with
several artists and actors, and the house was reputed to be a hotbed of
occult and sexual behavior not in keeping with Pasadena's image. She
later married Sharif Kimmel. She saw a flying saucer in 1953 and became
very interested in them. She painted and was involved in the Los
Angeles art world. Her works have been shown at several major art
museums. In 1954 she appeared as the Scarlet Woman and as Kali in
Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). In 1957 she won an obscenity trial when one of her
drawings caused a raid on the art gallery. She was a friend of Dennis Hopper
and Dean Stockwell, and appeared with Hopper as the Water Witch in _Night Tide (1963)_.
She died in 1995, at age 73.
