Carol Wayne dazzled on "The Tonight Show," though a deal with NBC would mark the beginning of the
end for her career. But perhaps the biggest tragedy occurred only a few short years later.
Carol Wayne was one of a pair of sisters with big dreams. She and her sister Nina were both
pushed in the direction of performing from a young age. Nina told The Oil City Derrick
that she started ballet school when she was three years old, and when she was six,
she and her sister Carol were enrolled in another school for ice skating. She said,
"My sister and I used to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and skate
three hours before we went to school. Then, we'd skate again after school."
That meant some shockingly long days for the pair: In addition to school and homework,
they averaged another eight hours a day training, exercising, or taking dance and skating classes.
It eventually paid off. When Carol was 16,
she and her sister dropped out of school after they were both hired by the Ice Capades. But
Carol later said in an interview that she wasn't sure if all the work was worth it.
"When you train for something so young and become good at it as we did,
you never know if that's what you were meant to do in the school of things of life,
or if it was just because it was someone else's idea. We missed a childhood of growing up."
After a lifetime of training to become a professional ice skater,
Carol seemed to have achieved her dream. But then it all came crashing down in an instant
thanks to the negligence – or possible cruelty – of a stranger. She explained in an interview,
"Sometimes, people would unconsciously,
or perhaps on purpose, throw pennies that would stick on the ice and make you fall down."
That's exactly what happened, causing a catastrophic knee injury that abruptly
brought her skating dreams to an end. The accident left her with a
5-inch scar on her knee. Although she did recover enough to finish the tour,
the career she'd spent her life training for was suddenly gone — and it made her do some
serious soul-searching. She wasn't sure what the future held, saying,
"We were two pretty girls with no education. There was nothing else to do."
After a stint as Las Vegas showgirls, Carol and Nina moved to Hollywood,
where they both found work as actors. In 1967, Carol made her first appearance
on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. The chemistry was obvious,
and in 1971 she began regularly appearing as "The Matinee Lady" in Carson's recurring
"Art Fern" sketches. This launched her to a decade of stardom as a regular guest on game
shows like "Celebrity Sweepstakes" where she smartly capitalized on her image as a loveable
ditz – an image producer George Schlatter told "A Current Affair" was maybe her best acting job.
"She was not a dumb blonde. She was a bright woman."
But things changed in 1981 when Johnny Carson nearly walked off "The Tonight Show."
The way NBC kept him was to agree to shorten his hour-and-a-half program to an hour. But that meant
some content needed to go, too. On the cutting room floor were Wayne's Matinee Lady sketches,
and when the "Tonight Show" gig disappeared, so did many of her other showbiz opportunities.
Amid her dwindling popularity on "The Tonight Show," Carol Wayne started
dabbling in movies with varying degrees of success. But according to "Hollywood's
Babylon Women," there was something else that had a bigger impact on her life:
Her teenage son. In 1984, the Beverly Hills High School student reportedly introduced
Wayne first to clove cigarettes — which she smoked relentlessly, to the dismay of all
the stores and restaurants she frequented — and then to progressively harder stuff.
In December of 1984, just a few months after posing for Playboy, Wayne declared bankruptcy.
In her petition to the courts, she claimed an income of $0. As for where most of her
money had gone? Wayne's cigarette habit had reportedly escalated into alcohol and cocaine,
to the point where her friends pleaded with her to check herself into a rehab facility.
One of those friends was Richard Pryor, who told her that not only would he pay for her treatment,
but that once she was clean and sober, he would guarantee her a role in one of his
upcoming movies. She wouldn't live long enough to take him up on either offer.
On Jan. 14, 1985, the Associated Press reported that Carol Wayne's
body had been discovered in the waters off the coast of a resort in Manzanillo,
Mexico. The official cause of death was given as drowning, with a footnote stating
that Wayne had never learned to swim. Authorities told "A Current Affair,"
"The official conclusion was that it was an accidental death. The body didn't show any
signs of physical violence. There was no evidence that it was a homicide."
So what happened? According to reports, Wayne was staying at a hotel with her friend Edward Durston,
and employees later interviewed remembered them just sort of doing
all the fun things anyone does when they're on vacation in a beachside resort. However,
on the day they were scheduled to leave, there was reportedly some kind of disagreement that
led to a delay in their trip back. Their hotel was booked solid, though, so they had to get a
room at another hotel instead. Wayne — reportedly upset over the change of venues — stormed off.
Meanwhile, Durston checked out of that hotel and into another,
and the following day, headed to the airport with her luggage. He dropped
it off — letting airline staff know she was going to pick it up later — and went home.
By the time Wayne's body was recovered, it was estimated she had been dead for between
36 and 48 hours. There were no drugs or alcohol in her system, and ultimately,
it was ruled accidental. But some, including representatives from the American consulate,
suggested that it may not have been an accident.
"A drowning, of course. But, uh, there's more to it than that."
That led to the case being reopened and reinvestigated several times,
including a reevaluation in 1990. With no signs of physical violence, the official
ruling that it was an accident remained. It's generally believed that she was walking along
the beach when she slipped and fell into the water – a tragic end to a celebrated life.