“My CU experience helped me the most…They taught me how to work together with a team for success. I found that, in doing this, you don’t think of yourself and feel that people are just watching you.”

– Catholic University Alumnus, Volume 18, no. 2 (Winter 1955)

Born on March 6, 1930 as Mary Jane Hayes, future Hollywood actress Allison Hayes started her life from humble beginnings in West Virginia. As a young child, her family relocated to Washington, D.C., where she graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in 1948. The young Hayes was a musical savant, performing at the piano from the age of 5 and winning performance tournaments and even touring as a teenager. Her ambition was to become a concert pianist, and to help secure this dream, she won the title of Miss District of Columbia in 1949 to secure a scholarship. This decision led to her competing for several years in beauty pageants and working as a model. [Source]

After several years along this career tangent, Hayes enrolled in the CatholicU Speech and Drama program in 1952, majoring in music. While on campus, she sought theater courses to build up her confidence. As she stated in a 1976 interview, “I had always been quite shy and introverted. I thought if I could learn to get up on a stage and learn to project myself in another character, another role, that might help my self-confidence. Some of the things I did [at CatholicU] were the best things I ever did.” [Source]

Juggling her acting, modeling, and teaching piano lessons while studying full-time proved a challenge Thus after studying on campus for three semesters, Hayes soon departed for Hollywood in 1953. She first signed on with Universal Studios before transitioning to Columbia Pictures. During her early acting career, Hayes was prolific in Western and comedies, but suffered from onset injuries that held back her rising star.

By the mid-1950s, Hayes became a frequent television actor, appearing on shows as varied as Bat Masterson, Rawhide, Perry Mason, and more. But it is in the late 1950s that she landed the roles that she most often remembered for today – cult horror and sci-fi films. Between 1957-1960, Hayes co-starred in 6 Roger Corman B-movies focused on zombies and supernatural spectres. But it was the 1958 Attack of the 50 Foot Woman that placed her within the ranks of cult film royalty. The poster alone for the film has been parodied and referenced countless times in popular culture.

These successes were unfortunately marred by a mysterious health crisis that began to emerge in the 1960s. Beginning in 1962, Hayes began to take a calcium supplement at the advice of a physician and was soon experiencing a host of negative symptoms including fatigue, hair loss, and partial paralysis. After years of uncertainty, Hayes came across a description of lead poisoning among factory workers, and the symptoms fit her illness perfectly. By 1970, toxicology tests concluded that she had metal poisoning from six years of taking the calcium supplement. It contained 190 parts of lead per million and was an unregulated medication from England.

After years of being doubted by her doctors and having no one idea what ailed her, Hayes recalled her initial reaction upon learning of this diagnosis, “My first reaction was one of relief. I hadn’t been losing my mind…then the anger set in. I’d spent thousands of dollars being bandied about from one specialist to the other with not a few of them baldly implying that my problem was primarily psycho-neurotic…in the end I had to depend on myself to educate the experts.” [Source]

From here, she launched a campaign to get the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate imported supplements. She wanted to use her ordeal to strengthen oversight in the industry and prevent others from suffering as she had. For the remainder of her life, she lobbied the FDA for these changes. In a bittersweet moment, the FDA finally accepted more heavy-metal testing standards for supplements in 1977, just weeks after Hayes passed away from leukemia.

Before she passed away, Hayes penned a final poem:

When the time comes
For the final line to be
Drawn through my name
In those personal address books,
Will it be done slowly
Or rapidly?
I should like to leave
More than one less “H”
So please hear me
I have been poisoned

With this poem, Hayes calls out for the world to remember her voice and make sure none will suffer the same fate. From humble roots and piano performances to the heights of B-movie fame and medical activism, Hayes leaves behind a legacy of film and health advocacy that touches many lives to this day. [Source]