Aliza Gur


Aliza Gur is an Israeli actress who was Miss Israel of 1960 and a semifinalist in the Miss Universe pageant held in Miami Beach that same year. Her parents had fled Germany during Hitler's dictatorship and settled in Mandatory Palestine, where she and her brother were born.

Personal life

Gur was born on 1 April 1940 in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, in Palestine, prior to Israeli statehood. A woman of many talents, she attended the University of Haifa, where she designed and made dresses to help pay for tuition. Her first pageant win was as Miss Haifa.
She trained as a combat soldier in the Israeli Army and studied acting in Tel Aviv under Peter Fry, a well known director. After her success in national and international beauty pageants, she settled in California, where she began her film and television career. Her parents emigrated to the United States, as well, and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, for a time; they died in the 1970s. In 1960, she toured America to help support the purchase of Israeli Bonds. Gur married twice, first in 1964 to Sy Shulman, the Director of Hollywood's Cedar of Lebanons Hospital, and next to Sheldon Schrager, and had one son from her first marriage. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Acting career

In 1965, she made a guest appearance on Perry Mason as Dr. Nina Rivelli in "The Case of the Baffling Bug". Her other television credits include The Big Valley, Daniel Boone, Get Smart, The Wild Wild West and Adventures in Paradise. Her film credits include Exodus, A Place to Go, From Russia with Love, Night Train to Paris, Agent for H.A.R.M., Kill a Dragon, The Hand of Night, and her last movie Tarzan and the Jungle Boy.
Her most famous role was as one of two fighting gypsies in 1963's James Bond film From Russia with Love, where she fought Miss Jamaica's Martine Beswick. The female lead in the film, Daniela Bianchi, had been Gur's roommate at the 1960 Miss Universe pageant.

Partial filmography