Leigh Chapman

Leigh Chapman (March 29, 1939 – November 4, 2014) was an American actress and screenwriter. She began her career in acting during the 1960s, notably in a recurring role as Sarah Johnson, a secretary in the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., 1965.

Chapman transitioned to a career in screen and scriptwriting from the 1960s to the 1990s. Her screenwriting credits included Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry in 1974 and The Octagon in 1980.

Biography

Early life Chapman was born Rosa Lee Chapman in 1939 in Kannapolis, North Carolina. She married right out of college, and her husband wanted to be an actor, so they moved to Los Angeles during the early 1960s. She initially hired for her first job as a secretary for an attorney at the William Morris Agency, a major Hollywood talent agency.

Hollywood beginnings Chapman got interested in acting and began to take classes and do auditions. In April 1963, she joined the cast of a stage production of Come Blow Your Horn. She began to get television work, appearing in episodes of The Eleventh Hour, McHale's Navy, Burke's Law, and Ripcord as well as the feature Law of the Lawless (1963). She had another stage success when she joined the cast of a production of Under the Yum Yum Tree in early 1964. She appeared in Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Combat!, Dr. Kildare, and The Wild Wild West. She alternated between acting and writing, having a semiregular role on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., playing the secretary of Napoleon Solo.

She wrote episodes of It Takes a Thief, and Mod Squad. She did the unproduced feature Occam’s Razor (1969) for a company she formed with Harley Hatcher: Har-Leigh. The film was not made.

Chapman wrote Impulse (1990), directed by Sondra Locke and produced by Ruddy. She wrote Storm and Sorrow(1990), based on her own novel. In the early 1990s, she wrote a script for Jean-Claude Van Damme that was not made.

Chapman appeared in the 2001 television film After the Storm.

Later life and death Chapman picked up underwater photography during her later life. An exhibition of her aquatic photographs was held at Calumet Photography in Hollywood in 2011. Chapman died at her home in West Hollywood on November 4, 2014, at the age of 75. She had been diagnosed with cancer eight months before. She never remarried, but among the men she dated were Robert Vaughn and Harlan Ellison.

Television Year Title Role Notes1966 The Monkees Joannie Jans S1:E12, "I've Got a Little Song Here"