Georgine Darcy, 68; ‘Miss Torso’ in Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’

Georgine Darcy, who played the across-the-courtyard dancer dubbed “Miss Torso” by wheelchair-bound voyeur James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1954 thriller “Rear Window,” has died. She was 68.

Darcy died of natural causes on Sunday at her home in Malibu, said her friend and attorney Bill Swearinger.

The former ballerina, who never viewed herself as an actress, was one of the last surviving members of a stellar cast that included Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Wendell Corey and Raymond Burr.

Darcy was 17 when she was chosen for the film. Hitchcock hired her based on a publicity photo of her with a green feather boa and dressed in a black leotard that emphasized her voluptuous figure.

In the film, restored and reissued in 2000, Stewart plays a professional photographer sidelined with a broken leg who observes his neighbors through a telephoto lens and solves a murder. Kelly, as his classy girlfriend, frowns on his delight in the constantly gyrating Miss Torso.

When Darcy met Hitchcock, she had no idea who the legendary director was. He suggested she get an agent, but she didn’t and consequently was paid only $350 for the role that would make her a pinup.

After the film was completed, Hitchcock suggested, “If you go to Europe and study Chekov, I could make a big star out of you.” But she didn’t follow that advice either.

“Well, what a crazy suggestion! I assumed he was just teasing,” she told director Malcolm Venville earlier this year for a documentary to be introduced at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland.

While “Rear Window” was greeted as a Hitchcock masterpiece and Darcy’s role memorable, she was not impressed. Recalling the premiere for Venville, she said: “I was never an exhibitionist. I’d never seen myself so big as I was on that screen, and I was terrified.”

Although detractors claimed Hitchcock manipulated women, Darcy told Venville: “He was incredibly gentle and quiet. People may think him ferocious, but to me he was a big old penguin.”

Born in Brooklyn, Darcy was urged by her mother to become a stripper. Instead she chose ballet, and acted sporadically. She married twice -- once at 19 and for the last 30 years to actor Byron Palmer, who is her only survivor.

Other than “Rear Window,” Darcy’s most memorable role was as the irreverent secretary Gypsy on the 1960-61 television series “Harrigan and Son,” featuring Pat O’Brien as her attorney boss.

She also appeared in the films “Don’t Knock the Twist” in 1962, “Women and Bloody Terror” in 1969 and “The Delta Factor” in 1970, and in guest roles on television’s “M Squad,” “Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse” and “Mannix.”

Darcy conceded in 2000 that she could no longer button the pink shorts with the 21-inch waistband that she wore in “Rear Window.” She could, however, still get them on and had never deteriorated to Thelma Ritter’s sardonic prediction from the movie that Miss Torso would end up “old, fat and alcoholic.”

Swearinger said that services would be private and that Darcy had suggested memorial donations be sent to Guide Dogs for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.; Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah; or Dogs for the Deaf Inc. in Central Point, Ore.