Tippy Walker | |
|---|---|
 Walker as part of the Peyton Place cast, 1969 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Tipton Walker February 19, 1947 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | actress, art gallery owner |
| Years active | 1964–1972 |
Tippy Walker (born February 19, 1947) is an American former actress, best known for her role in the film The World of Henry Orient (1964).
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Born Elizabeth Tipton Walker in New York City, her father was an engineer with Allied Chemical Corporation. She attended The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. [1]
After appearing in several television shows, such as Doctor Kildare and Peyton Place , and the female lead role in the film Jennifer on My Mind , she retired from acting and opened an art gallery called "Out Of The Blue", near the Yale University campus.
According to a 2012 article in The New Yorker by John Colapinto, director George Roy Hill handpicked Walker from hundreds of actresses who auditioned for the role of "Val" in the 1964 film The World of Henry Orient and reshaped the film during editing to focus more on her character. According to Colapinto, in the 2000s Walker revealed through a series of posts on IMDb that she and Hill began a relationship during filming that lasted throughout most of Walker's senior year in high school, even though Hill was married with children and, at age 44, nearly 30 years older than Walker. [2] In the posts Colapinto attributes to Walker, the retired actress describes being sexually assaulted by Hill as a 16-year-old while they were alone in his office [3] and describes how Hill, without warning, began aggressively French-kissing her. Walker also claimed that Hill swore her to secrecy about the resulting relationship, then himself told others, [3] and she states the resulting Hollywood gossip made potential employers reluctant to cast her, contributing to her decision to stop acting in the early 1970s. [2]
