Vanessa Brown

Born in Vienna, Austria, to Jewish parents (Nah Brind, a language teacher, and Anna Brind, a psychologist), Brown and her family fled to Paris, France, in 1937 to escape persecution by the Nazi regime. Within a few years, the family had settled in America, and Brown auditioned for Lillian Hellman for a role in Watch on the Rhine. Fluent in several languages, the youngster impressed Hellman, and she was signed as understudy to Ann Blyth, eventually doing the role of Babette on Broadway and in the touring production. In high school, she wrote and directed school plays. She graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 1949, having majored in English. While there, she was movie critic and feature writer for the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper.

Brown's IQ of 165 led to two years of work as one of the young panelists on the radio series Quiz Kids. She specialized in literature and language. In her adult years, she had an interview program on the Voice of America. She was heard on Lux Radio Theatre, Skippy Hollywood Theatre, NBC University Theatre, and Theatre Guild on the Air.

In the 1950s, Brown was a regular panelist on I'll Buy That on CBS. She acted in live television dramas of the early 1950s, including Robert Montgomery Presents and The Philco Television Playhouse, and she appeared on Pantomime Quiz and Leave It to the Girls. She later appeared on the television series The Wonder Years and Murder, She Wrote. She played the title role on the television series Wagon Train S1E28 "The Sally Potter Story", airing April 9, 1958, where her love interest was a young Martin Milner. She had a guest appearance on Perry Mason as Donna Kress in the episode "The Case of Paul Drake's Dilemma" (1959).One Step Beyond, The Lovers..

Back on Broadway, she originated the role of "The Girl" in The Seven Year Itch, the character portrayed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film version. She continued to do much television through the 1950s, and was one of the narrators of the United World Federalists documentary Eight Steps to Peace (1957), along with Vincent Price and Robert Ryan. Brown ventured into writing for the stage. She was the author of Europa and the Bull, based on the legend of Europa.

In 1959, Brown was described in a newspaper article as "a promising artist whose oil paintings hang in the homes of top film colony personalities." She signed her paintings with her birth name, Smylla. A gallery in Beverly Hills, California held a one-woman show of her work in 1958.

In 1952, composer Bernie Wayne wrote the much-covered song "Vanessa" about her.

Brown was married to Dr. Robert Alan Franklyn, a plastic surgeon, from 1950 to 1957. In 1959, she married television director Mark Sandrich Jr. – son of director Mark Sandrich – and they had two children, David Michael and Cathy Lisa. Upon her death, she was cremated and her ashes returned to her son, David. Brown has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a motion pictures star at 1621 Vine Street and a television star at 6528 Hollywood Boulevard. Brown was active in the Democratic Party, serving as a delegate to the party's national convention in 1956. In 1962, she was a member of a committee that promoted a write-in campaign for Adlai Stevenson as governor of California.