Sandy Warner was an actress, model, dancer, and singer, born on May 12, 1934, in Middletown, New York, as Sandra Faye Warner. She was one of a pair of identical twins who were born to a Broadway stage electrician and his ex-dancer wife, Edna Robie. With that background, it was inevitable that Sandra and Sonia Warner would go in for show business. At five, they sang on local New York radio. “From then on,” Sandra said, “I was hooked on show business. My parents never tried to pushme: they just tried to keep up. They were wonderfully generous with time, patience encouragement —and money.”

At New York’s High School of Performing Arts, Sandra studied music, drama, and dance, in addition to the usual scholastic curriculum. After graduation, Sandra and Sonia they began performing as a dancer duo. After a lengthy tour of hospitals for the American Theater Wing, in 1949, played at Loew and RKO vaude houses. Their biggest hit happened in 1953, when as the Warner Twins they toured for a year with Danny Kaye’s International Show.

Beginning in 1956, when they matured artistically and amazed with their beauty, the duo Sandra and Sonia Warner, achieved further notoriety with a successful singing and dancing act, which unfortunately would not last long. They appeared on many TV shows like the Red Skelton show, the Bob Hope shows, and others; and performed in some of the best nightclubs across the country. They had a long stint at the Mapes Sky room in Reno, Nevada, where they were also known as “The Tune Twins” and varied their song presentations singing in both English and French. They were featured at Bimbo’s in San Francisco in the “French Folies” revue. They appeared in the role of harem girls in Paramount’s “The Loves of Omar Khayyam” starring Cornel Wilde and featuring Yma Sumac.

On Monday night, January 21, 1957, Sandra and Sonia were featured at the Star of Stars Charity Show given by Egyptian Temple No.5 of the Shriners at Frank Sennes’ Moulin Rouge, one of the biggest nightclubs in Hollywood. It was a gala affair —a complete sell out— The show got underway with M.C. Joe Adams, who introduced the Warner twins along such greats as Roy Milton’s Band, Bob Hope, Hadda Brooks, Danny Thomas, Eddie Fisher, Toni Harper, Nat King Cole, and Billy Daniels.

Shortly after, Sonia got married, she decided to leave her healthy show business act for a home life. Just, when the twins were in their prime and earning $2,500 a week. So, from March 1957, Sandra was left high and dry. “When Sonia left,” Sandy said, “I was at loose ends. It’s very difficult to begin working alone when you’ve been so close to a partner. It was a turning point in her life and Sandra career for she decided to learn to act. “I wanted to stay in show business and never again be dependent upon anyone else. So I began at the bottom and went to acting school.”

She was a Glendale college drama student for awhile. To finance acting lessons, she took a job in a chorus at $85 a week, a far cry from $2,500. Aside from her job as a chorus girl, she didn’t miss any opportunity to make herself known. That year she entered a beauty contest for the first time, and Sandy was the winner of Miss North Hollywood. In those days she was known as Sandy Warner, a cute, long-legged, tinted blonde who used to make the other contestants shudder for their chances just by entering a contest. Sandy, gorgeous enough to win any beauty contest, began working as a model for record album covers. All
it began when she answered an interview call issued by the Garrett-Howard Photo Agency, one of the most
successful in Hollywood.

It didn’t take Murray Garrett or Gene Howard long to decide that Sandy had the expressive eyes, lush figure, and silky hair they wanted for their covers, and her pictures would enhance nine Martin Denny “Exotica” album covers for Liberty Records, between 1957 and 1961. “That first cover of ‘Exotica’ took just 20 minutes to shoot,” she recalled. “On the other hand, as example, Quiet Village, required two hard days of work to get just right.” All these LP covers made her face very popular among record collectors.

One night, she overheard a group of the chorus girls discussing a forthcoming audition at 20th Century Fox studio. They wouldn’t tell Sandy about it, but she got up early the following Monday and went to the studio, that happened to be on a talent search. She was one of the more of 300 interviewed. Until then her stage talents had been limited to singing and dancing. But these artistic qualities, added to her beauty, were enough for 20th Century Fox to put Sandy under a non-exclusive contract. She was finally in her way. Sandy knew that acting required hardwork, experience, and training. At the big studio she was given the opportunity to study theater under the tuition of Sanford Meisner, one of the best dramatic coaches in the business.

Meisner, after a 20-year teaching career at Manhattan’s Neighborhood Playhouse, moved to Hollywood in 1958 to train young actors for the New Talent department at 20th Century Fox Studios. Sandy began to get a few bit parts in Hollywood but kept up her chorus work. “I was working from 6 am to 6 pm in movies,” she said. “Then I’d run home, change my make-up, eat a bologna sandwich and rush to the nightclub. I’d do three shows from 8 pm to 1 am. Then I’d go home for four hours of sleep. I did that for a year and a half.” This in turn led to roles in such films as Party Girl,with Cyd Charisse; Some Like it Hot, with Marilyn Monroe; Ask Any Girl, with Shirley Mac Laine, and a number of parts on network television.

In Some Like it Hot, Sandy played her role as a member of the girl’s band, and during the filming she became known as “the girl they kept away from Marilyn.” Marilyn, no fool she, observed Sandy and wanted no part of her. The first indication was in the efforts hairdressers and make-up men made to keep the two at a distance. Another was the sudden order that Sandy’s dyed platinum hair be changed to make it “as yellow as possible.” Marilyn, of course, had the lighter shade.

In May 1958, shortly after she completed her supporting role in the Marilyn film, she was crowned Miss San Fernando Valley. According to the contest jury, her female attributes were her brown hair and hazel eyes, being 5 feet 7 inches tall and measuring 36-24-36. In the talent competition, she won with a rendition of “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

The following month she was also the first runner-up for Miss California at the Miss America pageant. They were busy days since Sandra was working as a dancer and singer at the glamorous Moulin Rouge. She also became one of the famous Varga model girls. In October 1958, Sandra, 24, once engaged to songwriter Mack Gordon, married Charles Gerstel, 42, who was in the metal fabrication business. The ceremony took place at Del Monte Lodge in Carmel.

In December 1958, she was picked Miss Paramount Week, and her job was to promote and to explain all about the 700 Paramount movies acquired by the KNXT station to be released on channel 2, from January 1959. On February 8, 1959, she made her first Palm Springs appearance when she opened at the Playhouse in Tunnel of Love. In the summer of 1959, Sandy was not only an accomplished dancer, but also an admired top model and budding actress. Then, encouraged and helped of television host, pianist, and composer Steve Allen, she also tried to relaunch her singing career and was preparing to record an album under her name. Allen invited Sandy to appear at his TV show in color and introduced her as a newface in the singingworld. She offered her rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is Your Love.”

“I like to sing the way I feel, which is usually on the warm side,” she grinned. After a few months of rehearsals, in January 1960, she recorded for the Tops label with Dave Pell as musical director. The LP, released as Steve Allen Presents Sandy Warner “Fair & Warner” came out with a sexy, full-length photo of her on the cover. The repertoire included engaging songs, most of them composed by Allen himself. The fine arrangements and the varied instrumentation make this album an interesting example of Sandy’s compelling artistic versatility. Sadly, bad promotion made the album go quite unnoticed.

In 1960-1961, she continued to play only supporting roles, playing mean girls or strippers, in popular crime television series such as Perry Mason, The Detectives, and The New Breed–in an episode called “I Remember Murder,” whose cast also included singer and actress Tina Louise.

In August 1961, continuing the “one thing led to another” theme, producer director Howard Hawks was impressed with Sandy’s talent and provided Sandra with some test film. “Mr. Hawks taught me one important thing: to listen, really listen, to the other actors in a scene. And to react, not to go into a scene with an act worked out beforehand,” she said. It was a scene directed by Hawks, in which Sandra was going to be tested for a small role in a new John Wayne picture. Another girl was ultimately chosen for the part.

Then, Hal Stanley, producer of the forthcoming ABC-TV’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington series, was looking for an actress to play opposite Fess Parker saw the test and signed her on the spot. So, in summer 1962, Sandra, after dozens secondary roles on the screen as the bad girl, the evil girl on television and movies, Sandra was set to play of Mrs. Smith, the wife of Fess Parker, who had the title role. Sandy laughed when her agent suggested she go and read for the part of the senator’s wife on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. “Me play a good girl?” she said. “You must be kidding.” But, being a good girl, Sandy Warner went over, read for the part, and got it. “They’ve gone and made an honest woman out of me,” says Sandy. “It’s incredible.” “You don’t know how happy I am to have what I call a normal role,” she said. “Until now, I’ve always had the bombshell parts and that’s a one way road to nowhere.” The series finished airing in 1964.

During the period from1964 to 1967, she continued to be called for small roles in episodes of such series as Perry Mason, Bonanza, Burke’s Law, Wendy and I, and Holiday Playhouse. In 1967, she landed a waitress role in the excellent film Point Black starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, in what was probably her last on screen appearance. Since then, she practically disappeared from the movie and entertainment scene, and very few details of her life and activities seem to be known, except that she divorced from Charles Gerstel in October 1966. She married again with Edward Gendel in January 1969 and divorced in 1975. She attended a celebration at the Hotel del Coronado of the 50th anniversary of the filming there of Some Like It Hot in September 2009.

Sandra Warner died in Los Angeles on March 13, 2022, at the age of 87. Although she had a minor career beyond her appearances as a tiki icon, it is these cover photos that defined her career and created a cult following that still exists today. For those who remember Sandy Warner only as the exotic top model, or for one of her many but brief appearances in film and television, but do not know her facet as a singer, I assure you that "Fair and Warner" is worth listening to as the only album recorded by this versatile artist, and which shows that she was a vocalist with a suggestive, balanced and tasteful voice, and with significant talent.

—Jordi Pujol (From the inside liner notes of FSRV 136)