Carolyn Lee, later known as Carol Lynley, was born Carole Ann Jones in New York City to Frances Fuller (Felch) from New England and Irish immigrant Cyril Roland Jones. She began her career as a child model at age 10, working for Sears & Roebuck department store in New York and becoming nationally recognized as "the Coca-Cola Girl".
Lynley learned ballet at age seven and got her face nationally recognized as "the Coca-Cola Girl". She tried to branch out into acting early on, but discovered another individual with the same name was already on the books of Actors' Equity, so she fused "lyn" and "lee" to create "Lynley". From age 15, she appeared on Broadway, played juvenile roles in early anthology television, and was featured on the cover of Life Magazine in April 1957.
Her first important film roles came in wholesome fare, beginning with The Light in the Forest (1958) for Walt Disney Productions, in which she played indentured servant Shenandoe. She went on to play other ingénues and troubled teens before shedding her wholesome image by the early 1960s.
Lynley's breakthrough role was in Return to Peyton Place (1961),where she played a best-selling novelist who reveals the town's darkest secrets and scandals. She then appeared in the sex farce Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963),followed by a double role in The Cardinal (1963) and as the tormented mother of a kidnapped child in the psychological thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965).
In 1965, Lynley posed nude for an issue of Playboy magazine and played the title role in a biopic of 1930s Hollywood sex symbol Jean Harlow. She continued to appear in films and television shows throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and a string of B-pictures.
After 1967, television provided most of her work, including guest spots in seminal shows like Mannix, The Invaders, Hawaii Five-O, and The Night Stalker. Lynley retired from the screen in 2006 and passed away on September 3, 2019, at the age of 77, from a heart attack in Pacific Palisades, California.
